Earlier this month, the United States finally provided a public estimate of the number of civilian casualties resulting from its drone program that targets terrorists around the world. Critics ridiculed the timing of the report, claimed the number was too low and complained the transparency measures it advocated are too limited. The drone program deserves more scrutiny and accountability as it looks increasingly like how conflict will be fought in the future.

A pillar of U.S. President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign for the presidency was his opposition to the Iraq War and his pledge to end the U.S. force presence in that country and Afghanistan. His position on the need for greater accountability and a higher threshold for action when deciding to go to war not only won him the presidency but earned him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. In his speech accepting the prize, Obama focused on the tensions between war and peace, the idea of "just war" and offered what was for many a surprising defense of realism in foreign policy, a position that acknowledged the need to use force in defense of national and international interests. To call Obama a starry-eyed idealist or a naive pacifist, as critics often do, is an unfair and misinformed assessment of his thinking.

Obama has tried to honor his campaign pledge. Since winning the White House he has reduced the number of U.S. troops deployed to fight around the world from 180,000 to less than 15,000. At the same time, he has increased the U.S. reliance on drones, or unmanned remotely operated aircraft, to attack discrete targets. The use of drones has been largely invisible to public scrutiny: The program has been highly classified, the targets are distant and the strikes usually occur in remote locations.