President Obama Orders Drone Attacks Against Pakistan: 20 Dead
Fresh from his inauguration, President Barack Obama told the CIA to continue carrying out drone attacks against terrorist targets in Pakistan. The CIA acted immediately on Obama’s orders, killing between 15 and 20 individuals.
The drone attacks caused major tension between the United States and Pakistan last year. These attacks often result in civilian casualties, making it easy for extremists to pretend that the U.S. is purposefully killing children and women. Additionally, the attacks make Pakistan’s own government look powerless and inept.
Obama made clear during his campaign, however, that he supported attacks against Pakistan. He even went so far as to say that he would order direct operations by the U.S. military inside Pakistan (not merely drone attacks).
The liberal blog Newshoggers isn’t happy with the attacks, publishing an article titled “High Value Terrorist… Children.” It also ran this video showing the damage caused by the drones:
Whether his liberal supporters like it or not, President Obama believes the attacks are vital in the war on terrorism. “This is the central front in our enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism,” he said yesterday.
The attacks against targets inside Pakistan are highly controversial but, one could argue, absolutely necessary and, ironically, perfectly in line with the Bush doctrine. This doctrine holds countries where terrorists hide responsible; sometimes this means that an all-out war is declared, at other times it only means that the country has to accept U.S. attacks against the terrorists. Pakistan has opposed such strikes, but hasn’t done everything in its power to prevent them.
Liberal supporters of Obama may not like it, but a different policy isn’t tenable.
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Yet again they ignore what he said in his campaign, hoping it was rhetoric. Trouble is, is it rhetoric if you’ve been saying it since at least 2003/2004? That’s a long time to try and play the “tough on terror” role without slipping.
Michael M, I didn’t ignore Obama’s campaign rhetoric at all. I said at the time I thought it was a mistake. I even linked previous posts detailling why in the post MvdG cited.
MvdG, “a different policy isn’t tenable”. I disagree. I think this policy isn’t tenable because I believe (as do many intel experts) it will lead to the downfall of what little pro-Western leaders there are in that nuclear-armed state. The next government in Pakistan if this continues will likely close supply routes, end intelligence co-operation and do even more deals with the Taliban. There’s no way to feed Kabul without the Pakistan supply route. Famine in Kabul would be the beginning of an endgame win for the Taliban.
Admittedly, I didn’t go to your site. I watched the video from here. Not all liberals were oblivious (as appears to be the case for you), but it seems like many happily ignored these statements, perhaps hoping they were more rhetoric than truth. I just submitted a rebuttal to one of this type at a forum I frequent.