New Pentagon Budget Offers Smaller Wars, But More of Them | Yale Journal of International Affairs: Drones are undoubtedly useful. If President Clinton had used them instead of Rangers in Somalia, he probably wouldn’t have faced anywhere near the sort of popular backlash he did in 1993. In 2011, the American people found it easier to stomach a third theater of war in Libya in times of economic hardship because they didn’t risk great human or financial costs. Drones were a central part of this story.
Without any mechanisms of accountability, the use of drones gives the president too much power to carry the nation to war without considering the consequences. Isn’t that what Obama ran against in 2008? “Future presidents should think through the implications of a military incursion before they launch one,” he said in 2007. By shutting Congress out of the drone equation, Obama is ensuring that doesn’t happen.