First, I don't accept that the people killed are necessarily plotting anything. If you blindly believe what the government tells you, then why not believe the R

First, I don't accept that the people killed are necessarily plotting anything. If you blindly believe what the government tells you, then why not believe the Russian government when they say they don't kill anyone. Because they kill journalists of course, so they can't be trusted. Oh wait, but that's circular reasoning. How good is the intelligence? Is it as reliable as "Curveball" was (and we went to war based on that)? If so, then we are knowingly killing alot of innocent people, and not just the collateral damage, the targets themselves. Second, terrorism is not an existential threat. In fact, there is a strong argument that the drone strikes actually increase the number of "terrorists" and make a successful strike against the US more likely, not less. So the way I see it, Russia kills journalists who threaten the existing power structure, and the US kills more-or-less random people in order to bolster the existing power structure. Two, equally-disgusting, sides of the same coin.