Obama's drone attacks on al-Qaeda operatives are helping the war on terror.

Thank you to ScarletGhost4396 for accepting and we have a healthy debate. My first point is that it's civilian cost is too high. Since 2004, between 2,464 and 3,145 people are reported to have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan, of whom up to 828 were civilians (535 under Obama) and 175 children. http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com... 2,792 people died in 9 11 and it was rightly described and covered in the media as an outrage and a terrorist act. Somehow if America does the same to Middle Eastern countries it is acceptable. The media turn a blind eye and laud it as, 'protecting our country.' http://www.foxnews.com... There is no difference between these lives in terms of their value. Every human life is equal. That is one of the founding agreements of our society and the way we live and if it is ignored then it gives us an excuse to do many inexplicable things which are dangerous to humanity. It is astounding the range in media coverage between the two atrocities but it is also telling. According to the media, an American life is worth more than a Pakistani one. This also means that when an American life is lost, it is a greater tragedy than if a Pakistani life is lost. These statements are diluted to sound less radical on the Fox news but if you just stop for a minute and read between the lines, the messages that are being fed into American homes are pretty poisonous. Why are these lives less valuable then the ones of American citizens? Why are the murders of the American Government described as a positive thing? These are the questions which my partner should attempt to answer. I will be interested to see how. The thing I'm interested in is why they have become so popular and such a prominent tactic used by the U.S recently. The answer I think is this. They do not pose any dangers to the U.S military. If a drone goes wrong it is a few Pakistani children who suffer, not the American people. This leaves them with no guilty conscience but more importantly with no angry headlines or crying parents. At least no American ones. You can see why all of these things make drones an attractive option for Obama. But what I am arguing is that the fact that they are unmanned and don't pose an internal risk means that is easier for the Military to distance themselves from the killing. The lack of empathy makes it easier. Anyone can shoot someone in a video game but not many can do it in real life. That is the underlying difference here. In Vietnam, many people who had been forced to go and fight were incapable of shooting someone as it goes against their human inside them. They had to train them and wear down that bit of human in them. With drones, you face no such difficulty, as it is exactly like a video game. You control it from a computer and if it doesn't work and crashes into a village, it's only a picture on a screen it doesn't affect you in the same way that physically firing a missile at something and watching it burn would. Having this no need for empathy is an extremely dangerous aspect to modern warfare and could lead to so-called, "Clinical wars", where no humans would ever be needed to fight. Just to die. So yes they may kill a senior al-Qaeda operative every now and then. This is what is hammered into every person in America. But what is kept away from public attention are the reports of little Pakistani children out playing on a field getting blown up by a loose drone. These are the pictures that are hidden from the American people and the pictures that are used as propaganda for al-Qaeda.