The drone strikes are evidently not always killing the persons we want dead. Don't you think that matters? Is there no empathy possible for people you're killing alongside the ones you want dead?

Nononononono, not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that, innocent, or 'guilty', if a mission is launched with a drone intending to kill a person at say, a big wedding, or at home surrounded by family, it shouldn't change our opinion of the act itself. Using a remotely operated drone is just a further abstraction of using force to achieve a political end. The pilot of a F-18 or whatever we'd use doesn't want to kill the guy he's bombing, his commanders do, and they want him dead because it should accomplish a political goal of someone else halfway around the world. All you're doing is shuffling pieces around, without changing their relative power structure.

It's not the act, it's the idea that even if we were using manned missions to kill these people, that doesn't somehow make it more or less evil.

Edit: It's not like if we were using high altitude bombers these guys would hate us any less. Dead is dead.