&gt; Is the author seriously suggesting to view deliberate terror attacks against civilians<p>No. The prompt for the article is pointing out the difference in coverage &amp; attention from the white house and press about a casualty from a <i>US drone strike</i> when the innocent victims were Western. Various terror attacks are mentioned, but that is not the core topic of the article.<p>&gt; the same as military strikes performed against enemy combatants,<p>From the article: &quot;Indeed, Obama officially re-defined the term “combatant” to mean “all military-age males in a strike zone.” In other words, as The New York Times reported in 2011, all males between 18 and (roughly) 54 killed by U.S. drones are presumed to be combatants — terrorists — “unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”&quot;<p>&gt; by people who are trying to minimize civilian casualties as far as they can?<p>from the article: &quot;There are so many heinous stories of U.S. drones blowing up children and innocent adults. Obama used cruise missiles and cluster bombs to kill 14 children and 21 women in a Yemeni village (weeks after winning the Nobel Peace Prize), while a 2012 drone strike attacked a Yemeni wedding convoy and “killed 12 passengers in the vehicle, including three children and a pregnant woman.”&quot;<p>And then the more recent one: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;us-doctors-without-borders-american-airstrike-afghanistan-hospital&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;us-doctors-without-borders-ameri...</a><p>...<p>In other words, your first sentence is a straw man. The comparison is not between terror attacks and military strikes, the military strikes are often not against enemy combatants (and they&#x27;re almost never against high-ranking terrorists), and the attacks are not trying particularly hard to minimize civilian casualties. That you would try to make such a point, despite all evidence to the contrary, is the result of precisely the propaganda that the article is trying to pick apart.<p>EDIT: rdancer&#x27;s comment probably makes this point better than mine: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10795263" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10795263</a>