As long as we're talking about drones and how the Obama administration has deliberately misled the American public about how and when they kill people with them, I thought I'd point to a 2012 Stanford/NYU study that dismantles the myth of the "surgical" strike.

Some commenters on yesterday's post say drones are great because they're more precise and less violent than invasions, so (they seem to infer) drones reduce the overall amount of violence in the world. This is flawed thinking for a few different reasons—not least because armies using drones are more likely to engage in deadly hostility because their risk is so minimized.

Furthermore, drones are obviously becoming weapons of psychological warfare. They hover noisily above villages, sometimes 24-7, and occasionally spit missiles that often kill unintended targets, including rescue workers. That's a pretty effective, if inadvertent, terrorist recruitment tool.

From the opening paragraphs of the 2012 NYU/Standford report:

In the United States, the dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling “targeted killing” of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts.

This narrative is false.

Following nine months of intensive research—including two investigations in Pakistan, more than 130 interviews with victims, witnesses, and experts, and review of thousands of pages of documentation and media reporting—this report presents evidence of the damaging and counterproductive effects of current US drone strike policies. Based on extensive interviews with Pakistanis living in the regions directly affected, as well as humanitarian and medical workers, this report provides new and firsthand testimony about the negative impacts US policies are having on the civilians living under drones.

If you're going to argue for drones, at least understand that the "surgical strike" myth is just that—a myth. And that all kinds of unintended targets do die as a result, which might inspire more anti-US sentiment and action than the drones manage to deter.