esrosedotblog

WET

There is a lot of whining about drones and targeted killings especially killings of US citizens abroad.

As though this is something new.

The drone is new, yes. The killing not so much.

The CIA and other services have been assassinating defectors, counterspies, avowed terrorists and before that soviet aparatchiks all over the world.

Not wholesale. Just occasionally.

Well, we just occasionally killed that rat. The one with the granny glasses. Anwar al-Awlaki.

I know. I am a liberal. A progressive. But I am not naive.

We have been doing this stuff as long as we could do it on the sly since the birth of our country.

This is called "wet work".

Does this go against our values? I don't think so. There have to be so many layers of decision to get to the point where we do the deed that plenty of hands and heads get involved in it. It is what we have a bureaucracy for. To draw it out, take time, deliberate.

For example, today:

From Politico:

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers on Sunday defended President Barack Obama’s use of drone strikes, saying he reviews every attack after it happens.

“I, as chairman, review every single airstrike that we use in the war on terror, both from the civilian and the military side when it comes to airstrikes,” the Michigan Republican said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “There is plenty of oversight here. There’s not an American list somewhere overseas for targeting, that does not exist. … The oversight rules have been consistent.”

But what about the conspiracy theorists? What really really goes on?

Yes. I have seen those movies too. The ones that have the conspiracies and the behind the scenes bastards pulling the strings.

Life is not a movie. Very hard to do this stuff and especially go get away with it.

Look at what is going on now.

Every so often something comes up like a nomination (Brennan) or a leak (White House letter on the legal aspect) that gives us a chance to chew it all over again.

Good. Go for it.

I am glad that they got Anwar al-Awlaki. I was glad when I heard of it and I am glad of it now. He was an open terrorist and flaunted his citizenship for protection.

This is akin to my reluctance to condemn torture. They say it does not work. I have read enough about the Gestapo's methods in WWII to know that when a member of the underground was captured, they dismantled his or her network immediately on the assumption that everyone, me included, will talk.

So here we are again. Having one of these discussions and it is a good thing.

Should there be another layer of bureaucratic second guessing? A special court? I don't know. It is OK if they do it.

The people out there on the job of keeping us safer will do what they need to do regardless. Period.

As I think that they should.

Labels: assassination, terrorism, torture