Republicans don't want anything to do with progressive thinking in any area of American life -- except in the case of military hardware. Then and only then are they willing to embrace the future. That's how we got that weird, mechanical over-land death mule and it's how we got the unmanned drone. We can now visit death upon our enemies without having to show up in person, look them in the eye and have an actual fight. It just feels wrong -- like breaking up with a girl via text message. If you're going to vanquish your enemy, shouldn't you have to confront them? How does a warrior willing to die for his cause in the Takhar Province fight a guy operating a joystick in Tallahassee?
Which brings me to this: Earlier this month we were flying one of our unmanned drones near Iranian airspace -- you know, the ones we use for surveillance and to provide the "something blew" to Muslim weddings -- and the Iranians took some shots at it. The incident was described as "unprecedented" and, as such, we really didn't know how to respond. I mean, it was an unmanned drone, not a plane with an American pilot in it, and they didn't shoot it down; they just shot at it. It's like catching the neighbor you hate throwing a beer bottle at your parked car and missing. We had no idea what level of outrage to feign.
I didn't go to West Point or anything but I’m guessing if one of our planes came upon an unmanned Iranian death-copter off the coast of Jersey the order wouldn’t be to "get a nice picture of it."
We utilize the best means at our disposal to go into foreign lands and blow up the people we consider the bad guys even if that means collateral damage in the form of civilian casualties. When someone does that exact same thing to us, don’t we call it "terrorism"?
