Speaking with CNN, Rehman emphasized the problem of so-called "signature strikes," in which a drone is used to attack a group of unidentified people judged as behaving suspiciously. Like many people, she's uncomfortable with a foreign power killing her country's citizens without knowing who they are or what they're doing.

The issue of drones in Pakistan is terribly complex. Pakistanis seem, simultaneously, to love and hate them: love, because drones are responsible for killing many of the terrorists who have brutalized communities across the northwest; hate, because they kill innocent people and because it's humiliating to grant America the right to bomb your country.

In recent years, U.S. intelligence services have built up the ability to target the destroy targets in Pakistan without involving the Pakistanis, and that has rankled many in the Pakistani government and security services. At the same time, opportunistic politicians like Imran Khan have taken the hurt pride at having America bomb the country and morphed it into outrage at America -- a worrying development if left unchecked.

Untangling the many feelings Pakistanis have about drones, then, is not easy. As Reuters reporter Myra MacDonald has noted quite eloquently, many of the voices most essential to understanding the effects of drones -- the residents of the tribal areas themselves -- are deliberately marginalized by opportunists in support of and in opposition to drones.

A recent Pew global poll suggests there is global opposition to the U.S drone campaign. More worryingly, however, is the decrease it shows in Pakistanis' perceptions of the U.S.: 19 percent favorable under President Bush in 2008, but only 12 percent favorable under President Obama in 2012. Whatever the cause, the U.S. is losing the war of perception in Pakistan.

It's not clear what can be done to stem America's unpopularity. Policymakers don't seem to think they have many options outside using drones to identify and kill suspected terrorists. While Rehman says she thinks that there are other ways to go after terrorists -- she wasn't clear on specifics -- Washington still seems to consider drones the least-bad way to kill bad guys.

One way to think about stemming American unpopularity is to change the terms on which the U.S. relates to Pakistan. Despite last week's apology and reopening of supply lines, relations between the two countries remain tense.The prospects for a close alliance don't seem likely, but the U.S. could help deescalate tensions in part by doing more to consider Pakistan's national pride. Including Pakistani officials in the targeting process more often could be one way of building trust -- though U.S. officials often warn that this can make plans for a drone strike more likely to leak, allowing the target to get away. So it's not clear that a mutually beneficial balance could really be struck.