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Heads in the Sand or Not, Americans Widely Support Drone Attacks

At the end of the day, it seems American drone strikes on terrorists enjoy widespread popular support no matter how much or how little Americans read up on the all the knotty ins and outs that mark the government's seemingly boundless shadow war.
Armed Predator drone (via Flickr / collectionlaw)

An interesting thing is happening as news of America's lethal drone campaign abroad continues going mainstream. At the end of the day, it seems American drone strikes on terrorists enjoy widespread popular support no matter how much or how little Americans read up on the all the knotty ins and outs that mark the government's seemingly boundless shadow war.

That's according to figures published today by Gallup. Of 1,020 adults polled, 49 precent said that they follow news about lethal drones "very" or "somewhat closely." (The other half follows drone coverage "not too closely" or "not at all.") The kicker? That 49 percent "closely following" figure is below a 61-percent average strewn across the over 200 "news events" that Gallup says it has tracked using the same metrics.

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So on one hand, half of Americans don't bother keeping up with today's torrent of droned-out news. If the breathless reporting isn't stright boring, it's maybe just becoming less and less interesting or relevant to this subset as word of, say, yet another double-tap strike in Pakistan becomes more and more routine. Just because a wide majority of Americans--Gallup puts it at 65 percent--back lethal drone strikes on terrorists overseas doesn't at all mean that keeping up with news of the controversial program enjoys nearly the same attention. As Gallup adds, Americans simply aren't paying a "particularly high level of attention" on a relative basis to what's going on throughout the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. Ignorance is bliss, or something?

At the same time, the findings go on to suggest that it's those people who follow drone news closely that are more likely to support their use in counterterror programs.

When polled, folks weighed in on four scenarios: strikes outside the US on suspected terrorists; strikes outside the US on US citizens who are suspected terrorists; strikes inside the US on suspected terrorists living in the states; and strikes inside the US on US citizens who are suspected terrorists. In each of these four circumstances, people who said they keep up with the drone cycle were more likely to support the kill campaign than those who for whatever reason don't follow news of the strikes. In three of the four scenarios, Gallup notes, this was at least partially because "those not following the news closely are less likely to have an opinion in either direction." Even still, it was only that first scenario, of launching strikes on suspeted militants in other countries, that a majority of these drone-new junkies said they're OK with.

In a somewhat surprising twist, Gallup's findings suggets that general support for drone strikes abroad skews Republican, not Democratic. Nevermind Rand Paul's recent filibuster decrying the thought of a near-future where US citizens could be targeted with drones on US soil; the rank-and-file Right "are actually more supportive" of raining Hellfire on suspected terrorists outside of the US when compared to the left and Independents alike.

You can check out all the numbers here. If anything, an increasingly complicated national portrait of support is coming into focus as a day no longer goes by without some nugget of infomation on the US government's lethal drone program being dragged into the public spotlight, kicking and screaming.

Reach Brian at brian@motherboard.tv. @thebanderson // @VICEdrone