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Neutalizing North Vietnamese. There was a war on...

Read the story in order to understand it better. War does not justify murder. Do you know what a non-combatant is ? Soldiers should not be killing non-combatants to put down an insurgency without verifying that each non-combatant is actually a part of said insurgency.

Drone attacks, ok? But against whom?

Once again, read the story. Your own question is the key - against whom ? It's a case of very questionable justification.

Does Chechnya ring any bells for you?

Chechnya does not provide justification for US drone attacks.

From CFR...

Philip Alston, the former UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, condemns the U.S. claims of self-defense as overly expansive, stating that "if other states were to claim the broad-based authority that the United States does, to kill people anywhere, anytime, the result would be chaos." Waxman says that while the strike on bin Laden would normally be a violation of state sovereignty, the U.S. government "is well within its rights" to use force on foreign soil without consent if there is an overriding necessity of self-defense.

CFR national security expert John B. Bellinger says the law is in need of a significant update. "The 2001 AUMF is more than ten years old now and getting a little long in the tooth--still tied to the use of force against the people who planned, committed, and or aided those involved in 9/11," he says. "The farther we get from [targeting] al-Qaeda [e.g., al-Shabaab in Somalia], the harder it is to squeeze [those operations] into the AUMF."

Meanwhile, among about a third of the Iranians, the words "Death to America" are like pure poetry.

That's not a valid cause for initiating war.

Who's side are you on? Pick one.

My loyalties are to God, country and family, in that order.

I've simply stopped listening to war mongers. I was a neocon, then I found out that I was being played for a fool.

I wholeheartedly suggest this guy's writings, there are also youtube videos of interviews with him that are very interesting. In order to really appreciate them, you have to read up on the Hoover Institution's roots. (It's so amazing that so many people just ridicule this info, dismiss it, and go on rah ! rah ! for their politicians).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_C._Sutton

There is a lot more info out there from various sources. Most of it is unverfiable or quackery. But here and there are specific facts that force the honest reader to some very uncomfortable conclusions.

For instance, I had come across a statement that FDR's grandfather was a drug lord. Well, let's looky for some corroboration, but not from some ultra-right-wing website, or they'll say it's a wacky conspiracy theory. Let's look ere:

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/28/opinion/the-opium-war-s-secret-history.html

From NYTimes:

"Along with the slave trade, the traffic in opium was the dirty underside of an evolving global trading economy. In America as in Europe, pretty much everything was deemed fair in the pursuit of profits. Such was the outlook at Russell & Company, a Boston concern whose clipper ships made it the leader in the lucrative American trade in Chinese tea and silk.

In 1823 a 24-year-old Yankee, Warren Delano, sailed to Canton, where he did so well that within seven years he was a senior partner in Russell & Company. Delano's problem, as with all traders, European and American, was that China had much to sell but declined to buy. The Manchu emperors believed that the Middle Kingdom already possessed everything worth having, and hence needed no barbarian manufactures."

There is history that is omitted from schools and public discourse as much as possible. Occasionally a quick news article here or there, only mostly read by people who already know or don't care. The rubes like me are kept in the dark as much as possible.