Droning On..

The WaPo has a rather shocking article today about Obama's drone program, discussing it's overall secrecy and an overall lack of outrage by our formerly outraged world neighbors (who were outrageously outraged when Bush was doing secret stuff):

Senior administration officials say they deserve to be trusted on drones, in part because Obama kept his pledge to do away with the CIA’s secret prisons and the use of harsh interrogation techniques. At home, the drone program has escaped serious public questioning because it is widely perceived as successful in eliminating insurgent leaders, has not put U.S. personnel at physical risk and has taken place largely out of sight. Abroad, no other government has offered public support for the program. “If you sat around a cabinet meeting in my country and asked the attorney general what he thought of the administration’s legal reasoning, he would say we disagree,” said a senior diplomat from a European ally. But public concerns in his country, he said, are not loud enough to force a confrontation with Washington.

Not surprisingly, the WaPo writer failed to pick up on their own part of that equation, ie, the number of Pulitzers won during the Bushitler era for exposing secrecy. At any rate, that was then, this is now: the era of the 4th best, or possibly best president ever.  Things are different!

You see, this is a war on terrorism, not some police action, and we've gotta fight it like a war, including the use of drones on targets (picked by the no-longer-evil CIA) and indefinite detention at Gitmo, even for American citizens. The "battlefield" is the world, not some dusty dirt patch in South Asia.

In other words, Obama is now Hitler without the fanfare. Another way of looking at it--Bush was never Hitler, just a president trying to win a war after a massive attack who was demonized for political reasons so America would elect a guy like Barack Obama.