Are the drone attacks in the tribal areas of Pakistan morally justifiable?

All they have to do to stop the attacks is stop harboring terrorist leaders. The accountability for any civilian losses in this case lies with the cowards that hide behind the civilians, not the people tasked with killing the terrorists.

Innocent civilians should stay away from terrorists.

@RocketGuy Not all innocent civilians have that much of a choice.

The wars aren’t morally justified – why do you think this would be?

People can make up moral justifications for just about everything, and they do, all the time, even rapists, murderers, etc.

No moral statement is the truth.

Yes there should be accountability, if we say so. I say there should be. Some evidently don’t, or don’t care, or think the ends justify the means, or whatever they think.

I am certain there are people mad about it. It upsets me that we are doing this. Of course Americans would be upset if anyone did that to us. We Americans have become a nation of self-entitled righteous cowards, in my opinion, labeling others terrorists and acting righteous as we use that label to justify terrorizing others.

Oh, I guess I’d correct myself that it’s not that we are self-entitled righteous cowards, but that a lot of us have been acting that way, mostly not realizing it.

Actually the pilots of those drones are incredibly brave, i think they deserve a medal.

Do they pilot them from a Starbuck’s in Virginia?

Pakistan is not the only country we’re not at war with that we are making drone strikes in.

I feel better about the morality of the drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen (and those countries where we’re probably doing this and not telling our citizenry about it) than I do about the invasions of either Afghanistan or Iraq.

I don’t know that there’s any real way to justify the death of innocent civilians and thus I find the modality that leaves the least civilian casualties the least objectionable. While there have been a number of civilian casualties related to the drone strikes, it pales in comparison with the death toll that would arise from invading the northern Pakistan.

It should be noted that we’re doing this with the tacit approval of the Pakistani government as well. It is not as much an act of war against Pakistan as an act of mutual “law enforcement”. The corrupt regime in Pakistan is threatened by another regime that threatens to be even more corrupt and thus we aid the lesser of the two evils.

My issue is that we’re pissing away so many billions of dollars chasing around a few minor players with the worlds largest and most powerful military. We’re doing surgery with a samurai sword.

@crazyivan ”My issue is that we’re pissing away so many billions of dollars chasing around a few minor players…”
True dat.