Let’s ignore, for a moment, the debate over killing civilians and assassinating American citizens with armed drones.
Let’s hold off on wondering whether these drones create more enemies than they kill.

Instead, let’s focus on the context in which we’re using them, and why it’s problematic.

In the Washington Post last week, Mark Jacobson called armed drones “the weapons of choice for today’s battlefield without boundaries.” For The Daily Telegraph, Con Coughlin wrote in favor of using drones by arguing that “al-Qaeda and its allies are waging a war against the West which knows no boundaries.”
This theme of a global battlefield has become common and accepted. And what Jacobson, Coughlin, and others are saying, of course, is partially true: that terrorists and gangsters are not confined by lines on a map. But somewhere along the way, we redefined the words war and battlefield.