The Huffington Post: We want to know what you think. Do you feel safer knowing that the U.S. is willing to target citizens it believes mean to do harm to the country?
I'm a liberal in the American Midwest and I'm all in favor of hunting down and killing al-Qaeda and anyone directly affiliated with it, Americans included. Under Article 3, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, the moment an American swears allegiance to an enemy (e.g. al-Qaeda) or takes up arms or participates in plans against the United States, that American loses his right not to be attacked by the Armed Forces and intelligence services of the United States. What are we arguing about here? Pretend enemies? Besides, the only difference between a drone and a fighter bomber is that a pilot sits in the latter. Plus drones can gather more information by lingering and can, unlike cruise missiles, divert their rockets from a target at the last moment. I hope no one—Democrat, Republican, Independent—slows down the U.S. drone program. With drones, President Obama has done more damage to al-Qaeda than W did in seven years.
Finally we get a president capable of finding and killing our number one enemy and some in Congress are up in arms? Please. I'm particularly amused that Sen. Grassley (R) Iowa worries more about killing al-Qaeda operatives than he does about the Affordable Care Act killing Grandma or NRA assault-style weapons killing more Americans than al-Qaeda could ever dream of.
I find your "we want to know what you think" question inept or biased or both, an insult to what otherwise is an fine journal. No, I am not in favor of targeting a citizen because a single person "believes" that citizen means to do harm to the United States. But I'm definitely in favor of targeting citizens identified by the Armed Forces, the intelligence services of the United States, and the federal executive branch as willing to harm the United States. Such persons are no longer American citizens; they are enemy combatants disguised as citizens. Many al-Qaeda Americans killed by drones publicly aligned themselves with al-Qaeda and not only created plans to harm the United States but also actively engaged in recruiting of others to do the same.
As for the killing of innocent civilians, American or not, that's the price of war, a horrible price, and a caution to go to war only as a last resort. My father was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in World War II, flying in the U.S. Army Air Force that killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of citizens. As a country we're still arguing whether those German and Japanese citizens were innocent or not, as we should be. But no one at the time wanted that war to go on one more goddamned day. al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11, going out of its way to kill thousands of ordinary Americans on American soil. That attack, an operation of a war already well underway by jihadists in a failed state, has changed the ways war must be conducted. As Sherman so bluntly put it, "War is hell." War still is hell, whether fought on water, ground, or in the skies. If drones protect our troops, why not drones? If drones keep our fighter bomber pilots out of harm's way, why not drones? If drones mean injuring/killing fewer innocent bystanders, why not drones? Yes, innocents will be killed, American and others. But they would be killed in much larger numbers using twentieth-century weaponry. They always will be killed. But in admitting that awful inevitability, we should also admit that when a drone goes up, its target is al-Qaeda.