Uncommon Commentary #346: If Our Strikes Are "Surgical", They're Guilty of Malpractice (Alternate Title: Droning On and On)

Pakistan may be a poor ally in the War on Terror, but it is a sovereign state whose government has formally asked us to terminate our campaign of "drone" (unmanned aerial vehicle) attacks within its territory.  We ought to either honor that request, or be honest enough to invade the country and so establish a military presence by right of conquest.
On a similar topic: Whenever, wherever, and however one fights a war, at least some noncombatants are going to die, and so I don't necessarily regard the accidental casualties from our War on Terror in Pakistan, Yemen, &c. as reasons to call off that war; but it would be nice if our government would stop using the dehumanizing euphemism "collateral damage" to refer to such deaths, as if killing Anwar al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son and his son's friend were no more regrettable than, for instance, knocking out someone's tooth with a clean check in a hockey game.