Elusive Logic

The people who are flying the UAV’s that are dropping bombs on Pakistan, a nation with which we are presumably not at war, are putatively located in Nevada and New Mexico.

If Pakistan, which is not at war with us, decided to fly airplanes over Nevada and New Mexico and drop bombs on the operators that were harming them by bombing their citizens, we would probably become all snotty and high handed about how they are violating our national sovereignty, and would be outraged that they are killing citizens within our borders without asking our government for permission. Their argument that they were in some fashion defending themselves would be...

Of course our government would say no, so their asking permission is more than likely a bit moot.

I’m not sure I get the principle involved. We can bomb their territory because we think there is someone there who might harm us some day in the indefinite future, who we believe is planning to harm us, but who is not doing anything right at the moment. They cannot bomb us even though there is someone here who actually and provably is harming them now, and is actually bragging to the world about doing it.