How Americans Think About Drones, part deux

Here is a summary of another recent of survey of Americans' attitudes towards the use of drones. The conclusions are pretty similar to those I posted about earlier based on another survey.

What is interesting here, I think, is how attitudes change a bit depending on the context of the question. Seventy-six percent of respondents approve of using drones "to kill terrorists". But 49 percent think that using drones is more important to use drones to avoid the diplomatic problems they create in relations with Pakistan. Thirty-three percent prefer to avoid problems with Pakistan than to use drones.

This suggests that support for drones drops when the problem of relations with Pakistan are explicitly mentioned. Perhaps respondents are factoring in this cost when they evaluate drones, at least when prompted to do so. Recall from an earlier post that one approach to understanding the use of force would draw attention to the public's perception that the force will be successful. These polling results may mean that support for drones could follow the same pattern--it will drop when the drone campaign is perceived as less likely to succeed. To date  I think that the drone campaign has been presented as successful to the American public, who see high tech weapons targeting enemies and less of any civilian casualties or diplomatic problems they might create. Maybe this poll means this pro-drone consensus would decline if drones start to fail. This could happen if, for example, the terrorists are able to launch an attack on the homeland of the United States that was planned in Pakistan.