On October 18th, Progressive Alaska published an article by Sherwood Ross on the huge expansion of the use of lethal drone aircraft in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Obama administration. While use of the drones limits possibilities for American combat casualties compared to his predecessor, George W. Bush, the efficacy of the weapon as used is questionable. This is from Jane Mayer's detailed New Yorker article about use of drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan:Still, the recent campaign to kill Baitullah Mehsud offers a sobering case study of the hazards of robotic warfare. It appears to have taken sixteen missile strikes, and fourteen months, before the C.I.A. succeeded in killing him. During this hunt, between two hundred and seven and three hundred and twenty-one additional people were killed, depending on which news accounts you rely upon.
The resentment among Pakistanis to this form of warfare is quickly spreading and deepening. And even moderate-conservatives like Joe Scarborough question the morality and feasibility of the use of drones like the Predator and the Reaper:
In the same New Yorker issue containing Mayer's article on automated mayhem, premiere investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has penned a very disturbing article on the vulnerability of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal to attack and compromise by Jihadists from within or outside of the creaky country's military establishment.We're entering an entirely new frontier area of unintended consequences here. The shift of the Bush administration of resources from eastern Afghanistan to Iraq is once gain coming back to haunt the USA.
1 comment:
Where to begin with this? You say "premiere investigative journalist", others say "laughable, egotistic, anti-American hack". Seymour Hersh is a discredited spinner-of-tales. The only reason his hysterical and mostly fictitious rants are given any coverage whatsoever, is because his anti-American, pro-islamic worldview mirrors that of the Left-leaning mainstream media. Amongst Hersh's numerous false predictions - America will invade Iran in 2005.How did that work out in the real world ?
As for the current Leftist meme that killing America's enemies during a war is somehow wrong..what can one say ? The predator strikes are getting criticism because they work...dozens of Taliban & Al-Q officials have been killed and hundreds of Taliban foot soldiers have been eliminated. Each time these people die it's one less murderer available to carry out suicide bombings, ambushes on US troops, torching of girl's schools and murder of "unislamic" women.
If US combat troops had been used to hunt down and raid these Taliban "safe-havens" then dozens ,if not hundreds, of US soldiers would have died. How strange that the Left which constantly tells us it supports the troops and not the war, wishes to see more American casualties and not less.
Perhaps the Left need a reminder that this is a war NOT a theoretical legal debate. The Taliban aren't breaking zoning laws - they are slaughtering ordinary Afghans who don't want a hardline Islamic Caliphate, they are murdering women who want an education, they are killing UN workers in the country to help Afghans. Again, we have the question, why does the American Left constantly defend Islamic Extremists while condemning conservative Americans as "terrorists". It's sobering to reflect that if the current Left had control of our military during WW2 then the Axis powers would have won the war.
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