President Barack Obama has presented himself as the ender of wars. Moreover, where the preceding administration went heavy with its military power, the Obama administration goes laparoscopically light. And as if to culminate a quarter-century trend of U.S. military interventions that have all somehow devolved into manhunts of some sort, America now simply skips the intervention and gets straight to hunting down and killing bad guys. We stand our ground, as it were, on a global scale. Give us the wrong gesture, look, attitude or perceived intention, and wham! One of ours might kill one of yours -- in a heartbeat. You just never know.
Read the entire column at World Politics Review.
Monday, March 26, 2012 at 8:50AM 
Reader Comments (2)
And where do all these "cool toys" lead to?
When the US finally succeeds in destabilising Pakistan, then it will think beyond its "cool toys". Great, Gaddafi is now gone, but his heavily armed Taureg brigades are heading south and destabilising much of the Sahel region in their wake.
What are you going to do in that situation? More cool toys?
I always loved the part in "Wizard of Oz" when the wicked witch sends out her "Flying Monkeys" to capture Dorothy. Hollywood was ahead of it's time. Now the Commander in Chief,whether Democrat or Republican, can look into his crystal ball for our enemies and then dispatch our Flying Monkeys, the Drones. Pickup trucks and mud walled huts explode in in balls of fire. High fives in Nevada and another great video to show at the next meeting.
Maybe we should replace that torch in the Statue of Liberty's hand with a lightning bolt. That is what a lot of folks in other countries think. We are wielders of death. The worst of the "B" movie plots come true. The government is evil and will kill you.
Remember the Oklahoma City Federal Building? Blown up by an American angry at the United States Government. He thought the government had killed American citizens.
The Drones are new. We have not had time yet to understand them or their use. What laws, if any, apply? It's very sterile, this kind of killing. We don't even hear the boom. It just plays out quietly on a flickering screen sometimes with detached voices uttering the cryptic jargon of the game. "Clear to engage" the voice says...and bang...someone is dead.