His public statements are meant to make the Taliban believe he is mad at the US. His brother is CIA and he's a US darling.

cooperation between the two governments in getting bin Laden. It's just a matter of time

in breaking Al Q'aeda's back. Now they are breaking Taliban's back.

Indian government will soon be using them against Kashmiri terrorists infiltrated by Pakistan.

Go drones!

A live terrorist, esp. the high ranking ones that hide out in NW Pakistan.

And 'terrorizing' it is, literally.

Traumatizing millions of people and turning them into life long enemies with a burning desire for revenge on the 'American terrorists' is not a winning strategy for the US. That is, of course, if you actually want the US to 'win'.
Al Qaeda could never have hoped for such global, powerful advertising. And a 'high ranking terrorist' is not a general or officer. Its a guy available locally that has some ability to command others and may have received some weapon training that he can relate to others.

And what about the terrorist we have in our own government that think we have the right to go just about anywhere, uninvited, and decide who is or is not a terrorist, put them on a Kill List and blow them and the people around them, up?

The war on terror is just as ineffective as the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the Viet Nam war, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan...

concluded with the observation that if Obama feels he has the legal right to order that drones assassinate people he considers terrorists, then the heads of state of other countries have that same legal right to order drones to assassinate him if they consider him a terrorist.

http://www.esquire.com/features/obama-lethal-presidency-0812-4

The "war on terror" may be ineffective in ending terrorism, but it's very good at drumming up business for the Military Industrial Security Congressional Complex.

but also, for many of us, our personal morality

Calling people who have a different opinion or viewpoint as "immoral" is what the right wing has successfully done.

Those who support such acts are either immoral or amoral - pick your poison.

My morality says killing a terrorist who is determined to kill thousands of innocent people is just great. If he chooses to hide amongst civilians and a half a dozen of them get killed in a drone strike, it is still better.

Hypothetically, if we had killed Osama bin Laden and say a 100 people around him in a drone strike before 9/11, would you have called it immoral?

Your "morality" disgusts me.

According to your logic, it wouldn't have mattered if the Boston bombing had been averted by blowing up some apartment block were it perhaps was being planned. After all, with the right timing, the collateral damage wouldn't have been that great, entirely acceptable and no big deal really. Also, the lucky ones who weren't at home at the time of the strike should not expect any compensation for having lost family, friends and everything they owned as their property went up in flames. After all, they sacrificed their future for the greater good.

That would be moral.
Right.

Since civilian casualties really don't matter. Its their fault for being in the same county as a terrorist.

Your "morality" is purely keyed on your racist hatred for Pakistan so that anything that
happens to kill Pakistanis is automatically "just great", "still better" and "justified" ...
even when that identical action would never be accepted if the target was in India
(or the US for that matter).


Your own words condemn you in any interpretation of "morality" in the civilized world:
> and a half a dozen of them (innocent civilians) get killed in a drone strike, it is still better.

And to think that you implied that someone else on this thread was using a "right-wing" viewpoint.

Pleased to meet you, Mr. Machiavelli. Thanks for making yourself clear. I don't often meet genuine Übermenschen and when I do they are usually neocons.

How about some self-appointed moral people saying homosexuality is a sin and gays shouldn't be allowed to marry? I call it blatant homophobia and discriminatory -- it doesn't fit my morality.

Some people say abortion is immoral according to their morality -- I say it is between a woman and her doctor and that fits my morality just fine.

There is no absolute morality in the world and everyone has one's own set of values.

The world should operate on a harmonious consensus that benefits the most people while hurting the least rather than on "morality."

is trying to deny that it exists.

Everybody everywhere--people of all times, races, religions, philosophies, and political affiliations--agrees that murder and theft are wrong.

Sophists are fooling only themselves when they try to argue that since killing is sometimes right, and theft is sometimes justifiable, therefore murder and theft are not wrong.

I went from Machiavelli to one of the Übermenschen to just a plain vanilla sophist in record time!

but they rarely fool anyone else.

I am impressed by your ultra high level logical and objectively reasoned thoughts without the use of name calling! Bravo.

Lemme know.

ALERTER'S COMMENTS:

Drone strike apologist - definitely NOT progressive

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Thu Oct 24, 2013, 12:44 PM, and the Jury voted 0-6 to LEAVE IT.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: Who defines progressive? Are we not interested in everyone's opinion? This post was not insulting or rude.

Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: Lots of Democrats support drones. In fact, I imagine the overwhelming majority of rank and file Democrats support drone usage. This is flagrant abuse of the Alert system.

Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: I despise all things "War on Terror" but this doesn't violate any rules. It's a sad commentary on just how right attitudes have shifted but it's still just a differing opinion within the scope of opinions held by registered Democrats.

Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: A disagreement in a policy position is not justification for an alert.

Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: Seriously? Democrats can, and do, disagree on issues like this. Alerter should make their case politely in the thread, rather than using the alert/jury system to enforce an arbitrary line on what they think progressives should think.

Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: No explanation given

This is a democratic message board and plenty of Democrats, including the president, support drone use.

Not secret except here in the USA either.

I can't believe people here on DU are pro-drone. Horrifying.

Politicians like it because it gives the illusion of "doing something" (and spends a lot of money, of course, so they can dip their bucket in the money river as it goes by); and as others here say, it can be devastating to the enemy-du-jour, but it makes more enemies than it eliminates. It kicks the can down the road, meanwhile making it worse, but leaving the current incumbents blameless, and the current contractors rich. And they call this "public service".

Just like its obvious that the governments of the EU countries knew about almost all of the NSA spying and, like Pakistan with the drones, are keeping up the pretense of being surprised to save face.

THEN it becomes a problem. Nobody likes to be watched all the time, employees are watched all the time, and citizens are not employees, they are owners.

Edit: and same with the drones, they are great as long as they are not watching you.

This is not a surprise at all. Any outrage being voiced is all for show.

Merkel cannot ignore it once it goes public, she still has to run for office. 2014/2016 should be a very interesting elections here too.

by anyone else who possesses the requisite skillset and unless they decide to use or reveal that knowledge in some way (or if you have the necessary monitoring tools common to medium to large sized corporate networks) chances are you will never know it has been done. That is the reality of the kind of networks we all use on a daily basis.

Many of us, me included, have cheered on anonymous vigilantism, but it amounts to a group spying on and collecting data that was on other people's computers or devices or email or social media accounts that they never authorized anonymous to have.