Republican Sen. Rand Paul has stirred concerns about our use of unmanned, missile-firing drones to fight terrorism.

But during his long filibuster last week to block the nomination of President Obama's new CIA director, he focused narrowly on one scenario: a targeted killing ordered against a U.S. citizen on American soil.

“We’re talking about someone eating at a cafe in Boston, or New York, and a Hellfire missile comes raining in on them,” was how he put it on Fox News.

That’s a hair-raising image. Nobody wants shrapnel in his coffee. But could it actually happen?

Paul asked that question in a letter, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder wrote the administration’s reply — which, essentially, was no. “The U.S. government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and has no intention of doing so,” he said.

Why? Because the justification to use drones requires three conditions: The target must be a known high-level terrorist. He or she must be planning an “imminent” attack. And other options must present unacceptable risk.

In the mountains of Pakistan, you can meet all three criteria. But in the United States, it’s impossible to imagine that happening. A terror suspect here would not be imbedded in a sympathetic population, surrounded by armed protectors. We will never see a drone attack in a West Village coffee shop.

That said, Paul is right on one point: Exclusive executive control of drone strikes is undemocratic and dangerous. This is the real issue with drones: They need court oversight.

When the government wants to use a wiretap, it must get approval from a judge on a special confidential court. How could the same judicial review not apply when it wants to kill someone in a drone strike?

And with court oversight, there might be a rare case in which we’d launch a drone strike in the United States. Military weaponry used on home soil is an unsettling idea. But ask yourself: Would you rule out drones in all conceivable circumstances?

We would shoot down a plane headed for a skyscraper in downtown Manhattan if it were the only awful option. Shouldn’t the same logic apply to a drone? It’s just a difference of hardware.

Drones have given us a huge advantage in fighting terrorism and they’re not going away. Once a president learns that specific enemies in some remote location in Yemen or Somalia are targeting us for attack, we don’t want him to ignore that threat.

And rather than risk American lives in a commando raid or full-scale invasion, why not use a flying robot that fires missiles with sharp aim?

Like Paul, we haven’t said we’re opposed to drones. Just that the Obama administration must be clear on how we use them.