Anwar al-Awlaki wasn’t just some American minding his own business on holiday overseas. He was connected to the following:

Fort Hood shooter
Christmas Day “Underwear Bomber”
Sharif Mobley
Times Square bomber
Stabbing of British former minister Stephen Timms
Seattle Weekly cartoonist death threat
British passenger plane plot
Cargo planes bomb plot

Had the Christmas Day “Underwear Bomber” been successful, 290 people would have been murdered.

Oh, and drones are incidental since they’re merely a weapons delivery system. However, it does make for good page hit grabbing headlines.