... starts deploying lethal drone strikes against their real or imagined enemies abroad? Killing a "militant" here, a "terrorist" there, maybe, along with the wedding parties, funeral processions, and assorted other innocent civilians?

Will we smile knowingly about how humane and wise it is for those countries to consider the entire world a "battlefield?" Pat them on the back for not using nukes or carpet bombs on civilians?

This is madness and delusion, and it is a shame America may never escape, just as we may never escape the war in Iraq, the prison at Guantanamo, and our torture program.

And yet we carry on, because to people at home, these killings are invisible and bloodless. Because dead foreigners somehow don't count. Because we assume our own motives to be pure and our own methods to be just.

That is simply not the way it is. We are fooling no one but ourselves, and the only solution is to STOP.