&gt;Military Aged Males are considered enemy combatants. Effectively that means all males ages 18-49 are considered enemy combatants. Since you&#x27;re guilty by association, your age makes you a target.<p>You are conflating what the US considers enemies before targeting and after a strike. The US doesn&#x27;t just bomb any random male 18-49.<p>But when the US does target what it thinks is a legitimate target, it counts any unknown males killed in the strike as enemy. It doesn&#x27;t use that assumption to do the strike. Only to count the enemy v. civilian kill total.<p>And it&#x27;s a pretty reasonable assumption, depending on the circumstance. If the US drone strikes a Taliban hide out, the unknown males there were very likely foot-soldiers of the Taliban. If you accidentally blow up a wedding, then counting all the men is essentially lying.<p>But your sex and age don&#x27;t make you a target. You being near a target doesn&#x27;t really make you a target either. It makes you a tragic accident.<p>Unless the Taliban want to line up like 18th century foot soldiers, there are going to be people killed who aren&#x27;t involved. Sending in ground troops would only make it worse.<p>And it&#x27;s not like the Taliban aren&#x27;t a real threat to Afghanistan. They just took over the 5th largest city in Afghanistan two weeks ago.