The facile rule of thumb pursuant to which certain drone deaths are excluded from even the minor inconvenience attendant upon acknowledging that regrettable (though purportedly unavoidable, thus justifiable) "collateral damage" has occurred turns out to have been made public at a particularly inconvenient time.

Focused by the tendency to commemorate events on decadal anniversaries, an embarrassing comparison comes serendipitously to hand. Outraged by the assassination of his beloved "beast", Reinhard Heydrich, which occurred 70 years ago in the Czech city of Prague, Hitler ordered a collective punishment be inflicted on non-combatents who were surely no more "culpable" than the funeral mourners who get the drone treatment for having the temerity to assemble in final farewell for some local "militant"

What gives rise to my flagrant pre-emptive Godwin violation is the careful calculus ordered by Hitler. Not EVERY man, woman, and child was to die. The males were sorted by military age or younger, with certain among the younger considered for exclusion from the general massacre.

Sound familiar?