"Read an absolutely amazing article today. Entitled "Droning on about Drones," it was published in the online version of Dawn, Pakistan's oldest and most widely read English-language newspaper, and written by one Michael Kugelman, identified as the Senior Program Associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

In this piece, the author's thesis is that all this fuss about America's drone policy is overdone and perhaps a little hysterical.

Yes, he admits, there are some figures that suggest that as many as 900 civilians have been killed in drone strikes between 2004 and 2013.

But, he notes, that only averages out to about 100 civilians a year. Apparently, we need to put that number in perspective:

Now let's consider some very different types of statistics.
In 2012, measles killed 210 children in Sindh. Karachiites staged numerous anti-drones protests last year, but I don't recall them holding any rallies to highlight a scourge that was twice as deadly for their province's kids than drone strikes were for Pakistani civilians.
Nor do I recall any mass action centered around unsafe water.

More people in Karachi die each month from contaminated water than have been killed by India's army since 1947 . . . 630 Pakistani children die from water-borne illness every day (that's more than three times the total number of Pakistani children the BIJ believes have died from drone strikes since 2004).

So I'm reading this and thinking, he's not really going to go there, is he? But he does:"
Read More of Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi's article at:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/at-least-were-not-measles-rationalizing-drone-attacks-hits-new-low-20130214

The article that sparked Taibbi's ire is "Droning on Drones at:
http://dawn.com/2013/02/14/droning-on-about-drones/

Matt's observation is spot on. When we see the justification of civilians being killed as "it's less than die a year by what ever disease or condition of the Third World, it should make us pause and think.
What are we doing?
There's a huge difference between Patriotism and Nationalism. We're not better simply because we're Americans. A human life in Pakistan is just as valuable to their families as ours are to us. Ask the mother of one of the 900 people that were killed by Drones over 9 years how she feels about losing her son or daughter.
Measles or contaminated water is still an act of God in these places where modern science hasn't caught up. But a bomb from a drone? Is it?
Maybe we'd find these people more helpful and appreciative were we to vaccinate their children and show them how to purify their water.
But no. What we do is less bad than what measles and bad water does, and it's expedient.
Does our rationalization continue to the point we could justify nuking their country? After all, it's only a few million civilians but 'we got the bad guys'.
America's video game war continues. And we believe we have no blood on our hands because drones don't jeopardize American lives and it's cleaner. Cleaner for whom? Hiroshima was rationalized the same way.
My guess is it's only judged to be immoral, depending on who's doing it to whom.