Could be perfect except for a couple of things. First, the ROE are sloppy enough that they still lead to attacks against purely civilian, harmless targets. We've killed thousands of innocent people, on the order of what was done to us on 9-11, but we don't think of that. Their innocent dead don't count. Didn't mean to kill 'em, nothing personal, sorry about your Dad, Mom, kid or whatever, bad luck, have a good life.

Second, they are acts of war. When some Russian dissident is hiding in an American embassy somewhere and they take him or her out with a drone missile we will take umbrage. Or if the person is hiding on American soil and the Chinese send a drone after them, we will also know an act of war has been performed.

They need to be more precise and deniable. And the US needs to realize that those attacks can and will be done on American soil, too. It will be impossible to take the moral high road in that case, but there is a class of people who will try.