The US can't sustain casualties and maintain any popular support for the war or the reputation of the military, so they use remote control killing machines on p

The US can't sustain casualties and maintain any popular support for the war or the reputation of the military, so they use remote control killing machines on people the media don't care about. Unless you have people on the ground (and even then!) you can't really be sure of your intel. This media strategy allows them to not care about the quality of the intel. While the power of the state is still terrifying, it is vastly weaker than during the Vietnam era.