“It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,” the official said. “They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.”

By “militant,” the Obama administration literally means nothing more than: any military-age male whom we kill, even when we know nothing else about them.

There is no question whether this change in the definition of “militant” forces is ethically wrong or not. It is deplorable. However these arguments forget that drone strikes reap major benefits that can easily equal civilian casualties. If the accurate amount of civilian deaths were released instead of the redefined definition, public support of the military and Obama would plummet. In order to appease the public, military activity might be slowed and drone strikes may even be suspended. The U.S. government needs to change the definition of “militant” in order to preserve public support and continue operations. The candid fact of the matter is that drone strikes are far off from getting more accurate.

As stated in the article, they rely on “intelligence”, which is never 100% sure. Is the government just supposed to stop drone strikes all together in order to save the lives of potential civilians? Drones not only save money, but also save potential U.S. soldiers lives along with foreign civilian lives. A drone attack has a controlled strike zone which can be contained to a small location, for example a city block. However, a firefight between U.S. soldiers and actual militant groups cannot be contained, and can spill out into an entire city and even neighboring cities, resulting in multiple American soldier deaths as well as civilian deaths. If the public catches wind of the real amount of civilian casualties in drone strikes, they will move forward in a direction of suppressing or even suspending drone strikes.This will result in not only the increase of civilian deaths but U.S. soldier deaths as well.

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/