Put another way, the drone program in Pakistan succumbed right from the beginning to a temptation critics warned about. Killing wasn't restricted to targets that posed an imminent threat to the United States; rather, the CIA killed people who wouldn't have even been targets but for the fact that the ruling regime in another country wanted them dead, a criterion that poses problems moral and strategic. What better way to invite blowback than killing, on behalf of Pakistan's rulers, people who the United States judged to be no threat to the American homeland?

We live in a time that really tests our ethics.

The power to press a button and kill people now exists.

Do you watch Homeland at all?