I'm right again dot comAn Unincorporated Division of
The Anonymous Anything Society 5/1/2013
Two developments must be affecting the morale of terrorists, who wish to do more harm to us.
It doesn't matter what may become known concerning the subversive training received by the Tsarnaev Brothers, for the incredible speed with which they were identified, then killed and or captured, has to give pause to every jihadist, foreign and domestic.
The other factor is the increase in kill rates being racked-up by missile-firing Predator and Reaper Drone aircraft. Since Ayman al Zawahiri became the maxim leader of al-Qaeda, militants hiding in northwest Pakistan have been badly weakened by Raptor attacks. In the weeks preceding this writing, five Tehrik-e-Taliban militants were killed in northern Waziristan Province, Pakistan by Raptor missiles. It was reported that the UAVs had lurked over their hideouts for days until strikes were made.
Other senior al-Qaeda operational leaders have been taken out recently include Abu Yahya al Libi, second in command to Zawahiri. Prior that that, Anwar al Awlaki, a regional commander in Yemen, and Ilyas Kashmiri, mastermind of the Mombai, India massacre and a number of attacks on combined forces in Afghanistan - have been executed by remote control.
April 17, 2013, two drone strikes killed five al-Qaeda militants in Yemen.
The latest drone kill was that of al-Qaeda Intelligence Chief Abu Ubaidah Abdullah al Adam in Pakistan.
Though the al-Qaeda core group in Pakistan has dwindled, there has been the emergence of new multifarious groups - in Somalia, Northern Nigeria, in Algeria, and the one causing great anxiety to western powers, the Jabhat al Nusra, reportedly fielding over 7,000 foreign fighters in the Syrian conflict. This disaggregate threat is far more difficult to combat than that posed by the remnants of al-Qaeda hiding out in Pakistan.
One cannot help but be discomforted by a moral issue: despite all efforts to confine execution-by-Drone to combatants, there are inevitable killings of non-combatants. According to a study done by the Ralph Bourne Institute, an anti-war group, claims that as many as 3,000 civilians have been killed by drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A study by Stanford University Law School of 130 interviews with victims, witnesses and experts bears out the fact that this "collateral damage" creates lifelong bitter hatred among survivors.
My life and the lives of millions were probably spared by the incineration of thousands of Japanese by atomic bombs in 1945. The cost of subduing the Japanese home islands would have been far more horrific for both sides than any prior battlefield slaughter.
Still, I cannot escape a certain sadness, even while attempting to rationalize the use of the new technology. Will there ever come a day when we "study war no more?"
73,
Phil Richardson, Observer and Storyteller
Phil's current post can be read at: http://www.imrightagain.com
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