[jacobush]

The tactic is pretty effective.

The strategy is a dragon seed. Every collateral drone strike breeds resentment for generations. The chickens will come home to roost. (But then the MIC can sell even more weapons, so I guess everything will be fine.)

[red75prime]

How collateral drone strike differs from soldiers' errors and war crimes in this respect? Or even from killing combatants who are someone's children?

[jacobush]

Even the sloppiest teams on the ground don’t routinely kill 100 wedding guests, time and time again like the drone strikes do. And if they do, they don’t get to get home at 5 pm and have dinner in their suburb after a deed well done. Drones scale out with little immediate cost, other than festering resentment half a world across.

Currently the drone operators experience PTSD from loitering over targets for hours, but with increased automation, maybe someone won’t even have to look at the images. Just “authenticate” a strike based on weighed parameters. War can be made much more streamlined yet.

[red75prime]

The time when battles were up-close and personal isn't known for its peacefulness. With an exception for Pax Romana, where enemies were crushed and more or less successfully integrated.

[jacobush]

Are you saying we have peaceful times because of drone strikes?

I rather believe other factors are at play and we have peaceful times despite drone strikes.