Contrary to assurances it has deployed U.S. drones only against known senior leaders of al Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified “other” militants in scores of strikes in Pakistan’s rugged tribal area, classified U.S. intelligence reports show.
The administration has said that strikes by the CIA’s missile-firing Predator and Reaper drones are authorized only against “specific senior operational leaders of al Qaida and associated forces” involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks who are plotting “imminent” violent attacks on Americans.
I'm a knuckle dragger, obviously, since I have no problem with killing lower level "militants" out in the field. The president only has a problem because he is trying to make these drone strikes fit a law enforcement template. Which is stupid.
Yet the best part of this whole story is that dead lower-level jihadis are the logical conclusion of a sequence of decisions that started with the left's agitation to shut down Guantanamo Bay. If we can't capture them, killing them is the only other alternative to just letting them stay free to keep making runs at American civilians in the hope of a high body count over here.
We won't kill them up close in Afghanistan any more. We weren't supposed to kill them up close in Iraq, obviously. Now we shouldn't even kill them from above. Sometimes I get the feeling our left just doesn't want to kill jihadis.
UPDATE: Obviously, this guy has reason not to like our drone strikes:
The deputy leader of al-Qaida in Yemen slammed Saudi Arabia's policy of allowing the U.S. to launch deadly drone strikes from bases in the kingdom, calling on Saudis to revolt against the ruling family in a new audio message released Wednesday.
So I'll cut him some slack--although he isn't too enamored of even the "good" drone war against specific senior operational leaders of al Qaeda. Rumored to have been killed by a drone strike, al-Shihri doesn't want to merely delay the actual announcement of his splatterhood.
