different meaning from what it has in Europe, the whole of its male population are potential fighters". Likewise, the Obama administration deals with complaints about civilian deaths by simply counting all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants -- on the specious logic that anyone in an area of known terrorist activity is probably up to no good. Therefore, we get the absurd official claim that no civilians have been killed in Pakistan since August 2010. However effective official propaganda made British aerial control out to be - almost single-handedly guaranteeing the survival of the Royal Air Force as a separate military service - the scheme failed miserably. Anger at civilian deaths and continual foreign surveillance provoked frequent insurgency, mistrust of local governments that cooperated with the British and the anxiety about western imperialism that has led to our present discontents. Bombardment had the same affect in the Middle East that it has anywhere: it bred defiance and paranoia. Moreover, the targeted population then, as now, grew adept at evading surveillance. Memory of the British experiment makes it even more unlikely that today's drone wars will fare any better. Societies that experienced covert empire from the sky only a generation or two ago are wise enough to recognise the spuriousness of talk about their sovereignty and will push back against even the subtlest hint of foreign intervention, making the security that is the alleged objective of the drone program a pipedream. Being discreet is not very helpful in places