A very bloody business of no strategic, national security, or intelligence collection value that has quite likely incurred a lot more collateral damage than this particular incident. Sure, blowing up jihadists is fine and dandy, a noble pursuit in and of itself, but these animals need to be captured and "tortured" if necessary to extract from them the information needed to cut to the proverbial chase rather than just randomly "droning" them in piecemeal fashion - surgical, rapier thrusts rather than a serial, slow motion shotgun blast. Indeed, one can argue convincingly that water-boarding, say, is a far more humane mode of treatment of illegal enemy combatants than a high velocity Hellfire missile.
What the latter is, of course, is much less visible, which corresponds with its strategic worthlessness and propensity for collateral damage. And that appears to be how the Left really regards the War on Islamic Fundamentalism: They're perfectly fine with pretending to fight this conflict but oppose actually fighting it, which requires all the boots-on-the-ground and "torture" and the U.S. victory that they find so morally distasteful.
Still, it doesn't take much imagination to picture the streets of America choked with angry, raging "anti-war" protestors if this story had erupted during the Bush years:
A U.S. drone strike in January targeting a suspected al Qaeda compound in Pakistan inadvertently killed an American and Italian being held hostage by the group, senior Obama administration officials said.
The killing of American development expert Warren Weinstein and Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto is the first known instance in which the U.S. has accidentally killed a hostage in a drone strike.
Mr. Obama, speaking at the White House Thursday morning, said he takes “full responsibility” for the death of the two hostages in the strike. He also conveyed his “deepest apologies” and “profound regret” for the operation.
Big whoop. It's easy to "take responsibility" when nobody is either eager or willing to hold you to any account anyway.
In addition to the hostages, U.S. intelligence agencies believe American-born al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn was killed in January in a separate incident. U.S. intelligence analysts believe he was likely killed in a CIA drone strike that took place after the one that killed Messrs. Weinstein and Lo Porto.
Along with Messrs. Weinstein and Lo Porto, the strike on the compound killed al Qaeda leader, Ahmed Farouq, another American citizen, the officials said. The CIA had observed what they believed to be a senior al Qaeda member entering the compound in the days just before the strike but intelligence analysts didn’t know that it was Mr. Farouq, the officials said.
Oh, no! Barack Obama is murdering American citizens without due process! Quick, grab your pitchforks and hissing torches, storm the White House, and hang him from the nearest tree!
Rand Paul wept.
Personally, I have no problem with blowing into chunky salsa "American citizens" who are only so technically, having in every practical sense become defectors to the enemy and therefore, traitors by definition. But I would rather that they be captured and "coercively interrogated" first, and then summarily executed. If for no other reason (and there are other eminently sensible and logical reasons) than to see if there's any level of foreign policy muscularity that would turn the Left against their demigod.
It's an idlely academic intellectual exercise, of course, as obligatory as the hordes of "anti-war" protesters that will "spontaneously" pour out of their spider holes the instant Scott Walker claims victory a year and a half from now before he's made so much as a single national security decision. For in this, as on every other issue, "tribalism" is the trumping factor.
Kinda suggests what President Walker should do with the drones, though, doesn't it?
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