We on the left need to get over this idea that drones are some mystical creature that roams free throughout the world just waiting for the president of the United States to tell it to strike. It is not, and making it out to be anything more than a remote piloted airplane makes the discussion of US military policy impossible, and makes you susceptible to the type of grandstanding that Republicans like to do.
A drone is an airplane. No, there is no pilot, but if you think that makes it somehow more likely to send one somewhere than an piloted airplane, you haven't been paying attention to how the military works. Are you old enough to remember Kosovo? Before drones there were pilots flying really high up and firing missiles. Lots of them. And even when one of the planes went down, we still went on bombing. Does anyone think that, if drones did not exist, Obama would have had any trouble sending Navy pilots into Yemen?
And why would we use a drone here in America rather than, say, an armed helicopter? It's not like the missile blowing up is going to be quieter. If they somehow think that killing someone with a missile is preferable to using people, they might as well launch one from a military base, skipping the transportation all together.
Drones are a military weapon. Stop with the fantasizing over how they are somehow special and let's have a proper discussion over how we use our military. When you focus on drones, you get cause supporting people like Rand Paul, who honestly would have no trouble using drones against Americans if they were, say, attempting to unionize coal miners. Leave drones out of the discussion.
Can you imagine what the Civil War would have been like with planes? And do you think that Lincoln wold not have used drones if he had had them?