(Fred Weinberg) – Like most Americans, I was saddened to see the deaths of USAID Contractor Dr. Warren Weinstein and Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto who were being held hostage by al Qaeda when our CIA went after some high value targets with drones, likely controlled at Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada.
The mainstream media spent all of last Thursday wringing its collective hands at how terrible the news is.
Folks.
We are at war. Weinstein and Lo Porto were both experienced people who knew damn well what the risks were and went anyway. They were both true humanitarians, without whom this world would be a much worse place.
But the fact is that in war, people get killed. There is collateral damage and bad things happen. Bad things like hijackers flying two planes into the World Trade Center and killing about 3,000 innocent people who did not intentionally place themselves in harm’s way.
Now, is it right that people should get killed in a war zone. Of course not. But does being there make it more likely? Of course it does.
What’s worse about the little hissy fit being thrown by the media is that in the same time frame, we killed two “Americans” who had volunteered for duty with al Qaeda, one of whom was the infamous Adam Gadahn who has been charged with treason and had no right to call himself an American citizen. If anyone in the world deserved to get killed by an American drone strike it would be Gadahn. If those boys in the control trailer at Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas knew they got Gadahn, they should have gone to dinner at the Venetian to celebrate.
To listen to geniuses like Charlie Rose, Gale King and Nora O’Donnell on CBS, you’d think the world is coming to an end. Raised eyebrows, clucking, the whole thing you expect from people like them. Like it’s somehow wrong to kill your enemies in a war. Apparently, CBS wants a kinder, gentler form of war. A war where nobody is hurt or killed.
Regular readers of this space know full well that we have a fair amount of disdain for the Obama administration. But, here, they’re apologizing for an unavoidable accident that occurred while the President was actually doing something which made sense. And, also, for killing people which, like they used to say in Texas, needed killing.
I would agree with the libertarian wing of both parties that in ordinary circumstances, an American citizen is entitled to a trial by jury before he or she is executed. But, in neither the case of Gadahn nor Ahmed Farouq were the circumstances ordinary. Gadahn was born Adam Pearlman in Oregon in 1978 and raised a Christian. He appeared in videos as “Azzam the American,” declaring “the streets of America shall run red with blood.”
He became the only American charged with treason since the World War II era. There was a $1 million reward for his capture. Farouq didn’t have the same fame but was the deputy emir of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent.
If you commit acts of war against America, you lose your rights. As they would say on ESPN, Booyah!
Not only should the drone crew who got these clowns have dinner at the Venetian but they should be comped at the Garth Brooks show at the Wynn where Brooks should have them take a bow on stage.
I’ve got no sympathy for the position of even Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox who insists on a strict construction of the Constitution in these cases. You take up arms against your country, it is no longer your country. The Judge is wrong in this limited case—in my opinion.
The Obama administration has done a generally poor job of engaging radical Islam—in many cases refusing to even call it radical Islam.
But, in this case, I cannot find any fault for doing what they actually set out to do which was to kill a bunch of really bad guys.
It was unfortunate that some good guys got killed as well, but we are at war.
Mr. Weinberg is publisher of the Penny Press. Get to know more about him by visiting www.PennyPressNV.com.
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