The Atlantic: Hey, since Obama supporters are cool with accusing Romney of murdering a woman, is now a good time to bring up drone strikes?

This is precisely why you can't take the anti-war left seriously.

Republican in the White House: perpetual mouth-frothing outrage, with a side of paper-mache puppets.

Democrat in the White House: *crickets*

What I found most absurd about the advertisement, however, is the notion of enthusiastic supporters of President Obama attacking Mitt Romney for being complicit in the death of innocent people. Are they totally oblivious to Obama's record? It's true that the president has never led a company that closed a plant that employed someone whose wife later died of cancer.

(Has Obama ever fired anyone? I'd be curious to know.)

On the other hand, Obama personally approved a drone program that has killed hundreds of innocents since taking office. (Admittedly, few of them have TV-ready relatives living in a swing state.)

It would be nice if Obama defenders could respond that he's done everything in his power to minimize civilian casualties, but that isn't true. Drones that fire missiles, then sometimes fire again when rescuers rush to the scene, or when funerals are held, does not minimize civilian casualties. When a drone program defines "all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent," the effect is not to minimize civilian casualties, but to maximize the cover the United States has to kill people without raising alarm from outside observers.

Which one of these two has a 'kill list' again?

posted by JohnE. at 11:09 AM

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