America terrorizes others in its take no prisoners strategy in the war on terror

This photo released on Dec. 8, 2012 by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, claims to show the US RQ-170 Sentinel drone captured by Iran.

Katalusis readers already know how I feel about America’s current weapon of choice, the deadly unmanned Predator drone. This morning the CS Monitor reports the Obama Administration’s resumption of drone attacks in Pakistan after a brief hiatus following the NATO air strike in November that mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Ariel Zirulnick, Staff writer, reports:

A US drone strike killed a senior militant in northwestern Pakistan today, one of two drone attacks on suspected militants this week.

Pakistani intelligence officials and Pakistani Taliban members told Reuters that the strike in the town of Miran Shah killed Bador Mansoor, a leader of a faction of the Pakistani Taliban with close ties to Al Qaeda. At least three others were killed in the strike, which came on the heels of a strike yesterday that killed 10 people.

Mr. Mansoor led a group of more than 200 Pakistani Taliban fighters in North Waziristan (see map here), a key sanctuary for militants, an insurgent told the Associated Press. Intelligence officials said they could not confirm for the AP that Mansoor was among those killed in the strike on Miran Shah’s bazaar.

So we continue to kill off our enemies with these antiseptic air strikes that remove us from the messiness of human death and the complications that arise from taking prisoners and bringing them to trial.

And even though Iran recently captured one of our drones and may now be able to repair and replicate it for its own use, the Obama Administration continues to pursue this immoral use of force. 

Has it never occurred to President Obama or our military leaders that one day Americans may be targeted by a “made in the USA Predator drone?”

Superman Obama’s Wait and Then Pounce Leadership Style

Frank Rich’s op-ed in the Sunday NY Times offers a revelatory look at Barack Obama’s leadership style. Here’s a sample (emphases mine):

After a good couple of years of living with the guy, we know the drill that defines his leadership, for better and worse. When trouble lurks, No Drama Obama stays calm as everyone around him goes ballistic. Then he waits — and waits — for that superdramatic moment when he can ride to his own rescue with what the press reliably hypes as The Do-or-Die Speech of His Career. Cable networks slap a countdown clock on the corner of the screen and pump up the suspense. Finally, Mighty Obama steps up to the plate and, lo and behold, confounds all the doubting bloviators yet again by (as they are wont to say) hitting it out of the park.

So it’s a little disingenuous for Obama to claim that he is not distracted by the 24-hour news cycle. What he’s actually doing is gaming it for all it’s worth.

Rich goes on to say:

Wednesday night’s address on health care reform was inspired, lucid and, in the literally and figuratively Kennedyesque finale, moving. It was also (mildly) partisan, a trait much deplored by high-minded editorial writers but in real life quite useful when your party is in the majority and you want to rally the troops to get something done. But there was little in the speech that Obama couldn’t have said at the summer’s outset. Its practical effect may prove nil. Short of signing a mass suicide pact, the Democrats were always destined to pass a bill. Will the one to come be substantially better than the one that would have emerged if the same speech had been delivered weeks earlier? Not necessarily — and marginally at most.

I questioned the propriety of Obama calling his adversaries liars – think “death panels” - during his speech while self-righteous outrage erupted when a Republican representative spontaneously shouted “You lie,” in the midst of the president’s peroration.

Keep that in mind as you read Rich’s conclusion:

When we look back on these months, we may come to realize that there were in fact “death panels” threatening Americans all along — but they were on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and on Wall Street, not in the fine print of a health care bill on Capitol Hill. Obama’s deliberative brand of wait-and-then-pounce leadership let him squeak — barely — through the summer. The real crises already gathering won’t wait for him to stand back and calculate the precise moment to spring the next Do-or-Die Speech.

Reminder: Frank Rich was among the liberal pundits during the Democratic primary caught up in the Obama swoon who joined his sexist brethren in slandering Hillary Clinton at every turn.