Wond'ring Aloud

Last night I did something I almost NEVER do: I watched the local 10 p.m. news. The lead story was the trumpeting of the deaths of up to 5 al Quaeda members, including a member of the so-called "inner circle." In this case, the featured player was the "master bomb-maker" Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar. Also believed killed was the son-in-law of al-Quaeda's #2 guy Ayman al-Zawahri. As you may know, this attack launched from Afghanistan was accomplished using bombs dropped from drone aircraft.


Omitted from the story were: 1) at least 14 civilians were killed, including 5 women and 5 children; 2) the U.S. has NOT accepted ANY responsibility for this (apparently somewhat successful) attack; 3) this attack probably constitutes a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty.

It also calls into question the METHOD that we're using to take out suspected al-Quaeda members. It seems pretty obvious to me that the use of conventional bombs dropped from drone aircraft is a fairly imprecise way to do it as it involves the death of nameless peasants in the mountains of Pakistan, but it carries the advantage of risking no US personnel in the short term. However, it also results in formenting a great deal of unrest/ill will. Why not drop in a team of commandos and attempt to capture these so-called inner-circle guys? I'll give you one reason: Our little CIA rendition adventure in Italy....

So I guess that for now our policy of hunting down al-Quaeda is going to continue to be a combination of implausible deniability and collateral damage.