If what we're talking about here is the extreme danger of declaring war on an ill-defined organization rather than a nation state, you and I are on the same page. The 2001 AUMF against "Al Qaeda" will probably go down in history as a world-historical foreign policy blunder.
But if what we're talking about is the idea that a clearly-defined Al Qaeda target operating in a territory that is self-evidently fertile ground for the operation of paramilitary death squads should somehow have been served with some kind of due process notification rather than being sniped from orbit, I'm less sure I'm on the same page with you.
For one thing, drone strikes kill far fewer people than ground operations do. Read any story about soldiers operating in middle eastern theaters (or Vietnam, for that matter) --- hell, read accounts of Army Ranger squads operating in theater --- and I think you'll see where I'm coming from. Somebody's old grandfather sticks his head out a window looking to see what the commotion is at the wrong time, and blam, he's a target. Ground combat (at least as long as it's conducted by humans on the ground) is necessarily horrific and anything that spares both sides those horrors is at least worth considering.
So that's a little shotgun blast of my thoughts about drone strikes.
But if what we're talking about is the idea that a clearly-defined Al Qaeda target operating in a territory that is self-evidently fertile ground for the operation of paramilitary death squads should somehow have been served with some kind of due process notification rather than being sniped from orbit, I'm less sure I'm on the same page with you.
For one thing, drone strikes kill far fewer people than ground operations do. Read any story about soldiers operating in middle eastern theaters (or Vietnam, for that matter) --- hell, read accounts of Army Ranger squads operating in theater --- and I think you'll see where I'm coming from. Somebody's old grandfather sticks his head out a window looking to see what the commotion is at the wrong time, and blam, he's a target. Ground combat (at least as long as it's conducted by humans on the ground) is necessarily horrific and anything that spares both sides those horrors is at least worth considering.
So that's a little shotgun blast of my thoughts about drone strikes.