Quote Originally Posted by leo9 View Post
So the important question, as I and the article's author see it, is not that this is a new technology, but if it's being used to do things we shouldn't be doing.
Which is closely related to the question "Is killing Osama bin Laden and his ilk something we should be doing?" With the strikes in Pakistan, the worrying aspect for me is not that the terrorists are being killed, but that Pakistan isn't making enough of an effort to do it. If you live next door to me and your home has termites, you have a legal and moral obligation to stop them spreading to mine even if you don't care about your own property; if someone breaks into my home then you enable him to escape through yours, you can face criminal charges as well.

If the Pakistani or Yemeni government doesn't want other people doing their job for them, there's a nice easy answer for them: do their own job! Where there isn't a functioning government, of course others will have to do the job instead, like dealing with the Somali pirates - but that's purely a failing of the government concerned, not the others stepping in to fill the void.