With the rise of the Islamic State and its subsidiaries across the globe, foreign policy has found itself in the political spotlight of the 2016 presidential elections. From hawks such as Hillary Clinton and the entire Republican cadre of contenders, Rand Paul aside, the most common pieces of rhetoric range from an increase of U.S. air power to simply spending more on defense and going back into the Middle East. Even with this range of interventionist options available, one weapon of war seems to be a constant in all policies offered, aside from Rand Paul: more drones.

Although drones have been utilized by the United States military and CIA for several decades, they only recently have acquired the capability to seek and deliver lethal payloads to kill those in their digital crosshairs. Drones that had once been used to peacefully garner intelligence and surveillance details from high above the earth, weaponized and semi-autonomous combat killers now rain down bombs and missiles on assumed terrorists across the Middle East.

The wonders, perhaps evils, of modern military technology have on one hand reduced the number of civilian casualties in contrast the older carpet bombing techniques and the use of “dumb” ordnance. On the other, they have made it extremely easy for the United States to project power into other nation’s sovereignty and yet deny the actions and their consequences. This is not to say that the existence of drones is inherently terrible, nor that the military does not have a purpose for them, but rather that the mission to which they have been assigned, the global killing of any and all who may be a terrorist, live near, walked past or happened to be in the same market place as a terrorist, is entirely immoral and represents a further extension of the misguided and militaristic foreign policy that the United States has conducted for the last 50 years.

In Vietnam, with the advent of laser guided weapons, it became common place for “surgical strikes” to be undertaken to eliminate higher ups in the communist’s chain of command. However, these strikes, both conventional and precision, killed over 14,000 South Vietnamese civilians in attempts to root out suspected enemy enclaves. Similarly, the unmanned and fuel efficiency of drones represent a technology as versatile as laser guided weapons, but also carries with them the same capability to be used in haste and for indiscriminate killings.

Now, in the 21st Century, drones are continuing what manned fighter air strikes have done since the First World War, with one glaringly large exception: drones are operated largely by the CIA and involve one human being, pulling the trigger on another, from 7500 miles away, and with no absolute certainty that the person being targeted is even a threat. Many reports continue to surface regarding the trauma inflicted upon drone pilots due to hours upon hours of blowing away fellow humans with the click of a button, as if in a video game, even before mentioning the destruction wreaked upon the unknowing populace below.

Under the Bush Administration, drone use in the lethal rule was kept to a minimum and only with permission from the country they were being flown over. This is not to say that Bush’s foreign policy was a constitutional and rational set of ideas, but the usage of unmanned aircraft was used largely for its intended role as surveillance craft and not tools of assassination. During Obama’s terms, the number of drone strikes within Pakistan and Afghanistan has risen to record highs, along with a string of proud announcements regarding the many “high value targets” that had been eliminated with “minimum civilian casualties.”

Of course, to governments, “minimum civilian casualties is highly subjective, and is extremely euphemistic. Government estimates from the DoD place the number of civilians killed at less than a thousand, while Senator Lindsey Graham has stated that the real number is closer to 5,000, and then research studies from several groups such as Larry Lewis of the Center for Naval Analysis, who speculated that drones have killed ten times the number of Afghan civilians than traditional air strikes have.

Declassified reports have also issued figures regarding the number of fatalities involving children, and found than almost one third of drone strikes result in at least one dead child. Killing children will not fight the extreme perversions of Islam running rampant. In fact it only serves to increase the rise of insurgents as it brings up new generations to hate the United States because their parents and siblings were killed from an unknown entity in the sky. The carnage only increases as there have been reports that military drone units operate on a quota system that bases career advancement and promotion on the number of targets “neutralized,” in essence meaning that civilian fatalities could be counted towards a “kill count” of sorts when high value targets were reported as being taken out.

Aside from the barbaric violence that the drone campaigns in the Middle East have carried, there are numerous legality issues. President Obama’s use of the drones over other nation’s air space violates their sovereignty, considering that rarely are those nations given much notice on when and where the strikes may occur. The strikes are also extremely unconstitutional as they are acts of war conducted without a formal declaration. So far the only justification for the killings has been the decade and a half old authority Congress gave to President Bush in 2001 regarding the invasion of Afghanistan, a legal document which has long since expired.

Lastly, there is the issue that arose as several American citizens have been killed with drones while in Middle Eastern countries. Although evidence does show they had supported jihadist movements, it does set a dangerous precedent, because it leaves the definition of a terrorist in need of targeting up to the federal government, which according to their own list of threats against the homeland, includes both Christians and gun owners as “domestic extremists.”

Senator Rand Paul filibustered over this point for over ten hours to make the President state that he would never use armed drones on American citizens over the U.S. Even as then Attorney General Eric Holder issued the president’s response, it came more so as something he didn’t want to do, rather than something he would never ever do. Similar to the “indefinite detention without cause” clause in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2014. The President doesn’t want to use these powers, but he can’t say he’d never use them.

Although drone technology is a fantastic evolution in the capabilities it could present, its usage to hunt down and murder individuals suspected of terrorism has resulted in thousands of dead civilians in nations where no formal declaration of war even exists. Drones should be used as minimally as possible or when used in the air support role against forces like ISIS rather than suspected individuals. After almost a half a century of meddling in Middle Eastern affairs and attempting to spread democracy with bombs, the U.S. must accept that these efforts are in vain and that continuing the destruction in the name of democracy is only furthering the cause of the jihadists.