Kill Enemies

We are at war with jihadi terrorists. I have no problem with our armed drones killing Americans who travel overseas to join the terrorists.

If pro-al Qaeda Americans want to support anti-US terrorism without risking death at the hands of our CIA and military drones, they can join an American college's history department and wage war from there. Then their only risk is a scalded tongue from a too-hot latte at the local fair-trade, shade-grown coffee house.

It is surely fine to question the scope of the program and the method of designating Americans as subject to being considered an enemy on the battlefield. We must want safeguards in place.

But I will not condemn President Obama for the program itself. I often wonder if the president even believes we are a nation at war. I cannot in good conscience complain when he acts like he might.

Now, I'm perfectly willing to slam those on the left who aren't outraged by this program considering how they treated President Bush 43 as he waged war against jihadis ...

UPDATE: Really, since our president was granted the Nobel Peace Prize for his potential, I like to think he's achieving world peace one dead jihadi at a time.

UPDATE: Huh. "New York Times and Washington Post knew about secret drone base in Saudi Arabia but agreed not to disclose it to the public." It should go without saying that it is inconceivable that either paper would have failed to blare the news on the front page if George W. Bush was president. Or Romney, for that matter.

UPDATE: Thanks to Mad Minerva for the link. She cites a post where the author complains that Krauthammer said that Americans who join al Qaeda to fight us should lose their citizenship. I don't think Krauthammer actually said that. I thought that he said that Americans who decide to wage war on America shouldn't expect the benefits of citizenship to extend to exempting them from being killed as any other enemy on a battlefield is subject to. That's a big difference.

You don't need a government bureaucracy to decide that you don't get the benefits of citizenship--you took that step by waging war on the rest of us. That simply means that if you look like an enemy and act like an enemy, we get to kill you like an enemy without checking your ID card. We can't check for citizenship here, but abroad we are supposed to? What? Just because some jihadi is pale and blue eyed we should check ID? Isn't that profiling?

But I'm a knuckle-dragger. What do you expect? I believe the only good jihadi is a dead jihadi. Capturing and questioning them is surely necessary, sometimes. But only because that results in even more good jihadis.

UPDATE: Further thoughts here. If the administration was just waging war, the policy would be no problem. But is the Obama adminsitration needlessly mixing war and domestic law enforcement in a way that will cheapen our civil liberties?