A year ago, President Obama's "drone speech" appeared to temporarily assuage anger about the use of unmanned weapons on terrorist targets. In reality, the subsequent revelations of Edward Snowden, which started a week later, tamped down the backlash to drones directed anger elsewhere. So Obama got away with a strawman argument that asked Americans to pick one: Drones of land war. "Any U.S. military action in foreign lands risks creating more enemies and impacts public opinion overseas," he said.

There was a little more to work with in today's speech:

[A]s I said last year, in taking direct action, we must uphold standards that reflect our values. That means taking strikes only when we face a continuing, imminent threat, and only where there is near certainty of no civilian casualties. For our actions should meet a simple test: we must not create more enemies than we take off the battlefield.