War without end, Amen?

Drone strikes are not, as Gibbs clearly understood, a major voting issue in this campaign. And for that sliver of the electorate concerned about this airborne assassination program, November 6 offers scant choice, unless you want to cast a minor-party protest vote. Mitt Romney -- whose overall tone in this campaign has been more hawkish than Obama’s -- unhesitatingly embraced the president’s drone policy during Monday night’s final debate.

The Washington Post reported this week that the Obama administration is developing a “disposition matrix” for its next-generation terrorist assassination program. (The adjective Orwellian is over-used, but it is undeniably apt for a kill list being euphemistically reworked as a “disposition matrix”).

During the Vietnam War, George Aiken, a Republican senator from Vermont, suggested that America should declare victory and come home. Eleven years after the Sept. 11 attacks and 18 months after the death of Osama bin Laden, it is time to debate how long America is justified in using drone attacks against the remnants of al-Qaida and other groups of loosely affiliated terrorists.

Is this war without end, amen? Does the bureaucratic momentum of the drone program mean that it will continue for decades? Is there another kind of disposition matrix that will tell us when the costs of the drone program (from terrorist recruiting to collateral damage) outweigh its benefits?

Obviously, America should not relax its vigilance against terrorist threats. (Of course, heavy-handed airport security is another story). But drone strikes are a form of military convenience – no boots on the ground and no American casualties (aside from the stray teenager in Yemen). And at a certain point, it becomes difficult to justify both practically and morally such extraordinary measures based on a horrible morning in 2001.