Osama bin Laden is a special case, we needed absolute positive confirmation on the target too.

When my husband was in Afghanistan during Obama's initial push we lost several senior key members of Special Operations who worked diligently to dismantle whole city blocks that members of Al Qaeda had booby trapped in case they were discovered and someone showed up for them.  They set all that off to kill large numbers of civilians if anyone boots show up to take them in.  They know that dead civilians really stirs crap up for our troops and the Administration as well as the civilians on the ground where they are.

We lose people all the time attempting to keep civilians safe.  It isn't all bang bang shoot em up like some people attempt to portray it all as.

1. How many dead Americans are we willing to risk per potential terrorist target?

I assume your answer is that there is no limit because drones are always wrong.  My answer is easier: zero.  If we can get a guy with a drone and avoid one dead marine, I choose drone.  But maybe your threshold is 10 marines. Twenty?

2. The insertion of bodies onto foreign soil presents complications regarding sovereignty that even countries friendly to our intervention cannot ignore (see reaction in Pakistan to the OBL raid).Many countries tolerate drones but won't tolerate constant incursions and will stop cooperating if that were to occur.  Are we willing to risk what is more likely to be viewed as an act of war to use special forces in every circumstance as opposed to drones?  

3. In many situations it is impossible to approach the bad guys without full military support and contingents.  50-100 troops, with 100-200 support staff and all sorts of transports and such would be required to get some of the folks we targeted in Pakistani mountains. The costs and dangers would be enormous.  In many cases, it is simply impossible (which is why the bad guys hide there).  In that case, with drones off the table, I take it we are in option 2.

I just think it is very easy to complain about the drones without having an alternative that works quickly and efficiently in the real world.

And let's really, really look at numbers and alternatives.  Let's get down to fundamental ethics.  Drones kill innocent people.  We all acknowledge that and it is easy to focus on that number in a vacuum.  But it is not a vacuum.  We can compare it to other efforts.  What do those comparisons say:

"AVERY PLAW, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts, put the C.I.A. drone record in Pakistan up against the ratio of combatant deaths to civilian deaths in other settings. Mr. Plaw considered four studies of drone deaths in Pakistan that estimated the proportion of civilian victims at 4 percent, 6 percent, 17 percent and 20 percent respectively.

But even the high-end count of 20 percent was considerably lower than the rate in other settings, he found. When the Pakistani Army went after militants in the tribal area on the ground, civilians were 46 percent of those killed. In Israel's targeted killings of militants from Hamas and other groups, using a range of weapons from bombs to missile strikes, the collateral death rate was 41 percent, according to an Israeli human rights group.

In conventional military conflicts over the last two decades, he found that estimates of civilian deaths ranged from about 33 percent to more than 80 percent of all deaths."

Link

I am sitting on no high horse. I am giving you opinions I strongly believe, as anyone else is.

The difference is that opinions contrary to a certain non-establishment party line are viewed as coming from above, or from a position of brain washing or what have you.

Any criticism from Obama's left is viewed as the rational views of those standing firmly at sea level.

I have, over the last month or more, consistently expressed my fear of a Romney/Ryan victory - I have not uttered one jb-like defense of anything these people are saying or proposing, not even a weensy little bit.

Being able to ascertain the obvious - that Romney/Ryan is not the answer - does not mean I can - or should - lull myself into believing that means Obama/Biden represent my vision for where I think we need to be.  To me, that is what being a sheep means - and I'm not going to be anyone's shut-up-and-get-in-line, roll-over-and-play-dead person, as much as that's what you'd prefer.

There is something just so authoritarian and repressive about saying someone should wait until after the election to express their dissatisfaction with the administration; do you really believe this represents participatory democracy?