It is probably easier to get pilots to bomb civilians with a Playstation controller in what looks and feels like a video game, than an actual person present.
Some drones are operated by a division of the CIA and are out of military control, however. This is probably the most worrisome aspect of the program.
However, as long as 99% of their targets are bad guys, Americans are going to continue supporting the program. It's zero risk for American pilots, and everyone likes to read about more dead terrorists with their morning coffee. More points to whoever's in charge.
Governments like Yemen's will also support it because #1 it does their dirty work for them, and #2 they can blame an evil foreign power. Win-win.
Even so, and despite all the training, some do refuse orders. They're also at least theoretically obliged to refuse illegal orders (i.e. war crimes), at least in my country.
The United States is not a party to either treaty.
Do you really think that the disconnection doesn't have an effect on some level? Whether it's the number of people signing up at all, being ready for a mission, or actually following orders?
How many people would follow the order of shooting from a controlled plane to unsuspecting people in a convoy -vs- an order to take a knife and kill an unarmed not resisting person in front of them? The end result is the same. Giving them enough distance just makes it much much easier.
Unmanned:
I think the previous commenter was speaking on the level of disconnect between a drone pilot and their intended targets. It's much, much easier for someone to go through with clicking a button and watching an explosion on a screen than it is to say, murder each of those people if they were in the same room.
The problem here is that 100% of the targets are bad guys while seemingly a very low percentage of the casualties are. Americans continue to support the program because the media does not do it's job. Instead they act as a mouth piece, a cheer leader, instead of doing actual journalism.
The War on Terror, much like the War on Drugs, is a utter failure. It has ZERO chance of being successful because of tactics like this.
Tech equivalency is a meaningless concept and it is completely stupid to apply it in particular to WW2 where the majority of civilians never asked or wanted a war to begin with.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-Killing-Psychological-Learning-So...
General Marshall discovered after WW2 that only 15% of front-line soldiers even fired their weapon at the enemy. Even soldiers don't like to kill enemy troops in the middle of a battle!