Remember when our jihadi enemies taunted us with the accusation that we only hit them with ineffective cruise missiles strikes and feared to take them on in combat on the ground?
Then we kicked their asses across Afghanistan and Iraq and they no longer accused us of lacking the courage to face them head-on.
Now they aren't even happy with our distant firepower as practiced by our drone operators and the intelligence assets that create the target lists for the drones:
Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan are openly calling for supporters to help develop methods (electronic or otherwise) to deal with the American UAVs that constantly patrol terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan (Waziristan) and Afghanistan (the Pakistani border area) and constantly find and kill Islamic terrorist leaders with missiles. This has led to the deaths of hundreds of key terrorist personnel and, despite the heavy use of civilians as human shields, few civilian deaths. The Taliban are increasingly frustrated at their inability to deal with this.
I could wish that this was a clever information operation by our side to craft a message of despair within a call to the faithful for tips on avoiding our fear-inspiring drones. But the simple explanation is that the enemy really is scared witless by the drone campaign.
Why some in the West are eager to put down a sword that allows us to kill enemies more effectively is beyond me.
I know, the expressed fear (as opposed to what I imagine is their guilt that the weapons work so well) is that it is so easy that we will do it everywhere.
But we aren't doing it everywhere, are we? Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia are the places our drones hit enemies. All are done in war zones with the cooperation of the host government or where there is no government (Somalia).
We haven't hit jihadis in Iran, Syria, Mali, Kosovo, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, or Libya--or Germany for that matter. We really are using this weapon in places we'd use manned planes, conventional missiles, or troops. I don't see an escalation in usage because of their relative safety for our drone crews (the safety of the people providing the intelligence is another matter, no?).
Face it, our enemies prefer to have open season to kill us and hear us express our sorrow that our necks dulled their culturally significant scimitars.
I'm happy that we have an effective weapon in the war on terror that makes our jihadi enemies void their bowels whenever they hear a car backfire or a distant lawn mower engine.
