1. The goal of US drone assassinations is not to effect political change but to keep the status quo. That's a different question than one you asked.

2. On a more general level, your question can be rephrased as 'has violence ever been effective at making a (political) difference'. The answer to that is - absolutely. It has actually been the most effective strategy at effecting change throughout history.

1) Fair point

2) This is not a valid generalization and represents a leap of logic. I was talking specifically of assassinations.

Ok - re #2 - look at what % of political movements succeeded despite most of their leaders being killed. I'd say that since majority of political movements succeed with live leaders, it must mean that the ones whose leaders were killed in time, did not succeed.

It's like the WW2 story about looking for holes in returning fighter planes :)

I feel like it's more war than assassination. I may be looking at it incorrectly though.

Yitzhak Rabin's - his assassin succeeded in halting the peace process Rabin was leading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Rabin

No it didn't, the peace process continued even under the "right wing" government which was elected after wards.

It crumbled for many reasons but the assassination wasn't one of them.