Uncommon Commentary #143: Doesn't He Feel Guilty Putting His Fellow Drones to Work?

Of all the things that Emperor Nerobama has done, the one that might conceivably be regarded as a credit to him is his permitting drone attacks against militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan; even this, however, is not really a reason for commendation, although the strikes themselves are laudable.  It's not as if our current president came up with the idea for this campaign, which is a CIA operation, and which was ongoing when his predecessor occupied the Oval Office; the number of these assaults has increased under Obombast, but that increase can be attributed merely to the worsening of the situation on the Afghan border since the changing of the guard in the White House, and to the fact that the Bush administration's ultimate success in the counter-insurgency in Iraq has freed intelligence operatives (who identify the drones' targets) to concentrate on the Afghanistan-Pakistan theatre of the struggle versus terrorists.  Besides this, why should presidential authorization even be required for the launching of missiles from a drone?  The US Army Air Force didn't need Franklin Roosevelt's signature on every order for the bombing of Axis countries during World War II, and, as has repeatedly been said, we are now in a war on terror.  A more capable commander-in-chief than either Bush or Obombast would not micro-manage this war from the District of Columbia, but instead delegate power to his commanders in the field.

Uncommon Commentary #142

Irving Berlin (a Jew) evidently didn't object to calling a certain holiday by its name, for he used that name in his most popular song: White Christmas.  If, seven decades ago (when there was considerably more emphasis on the first syllable of "Christmas" than there is now), it wasn't necessary to pander to the benighted in order to be "inclusive," why should it be now? (The Political-Correctness Police would probably say that people have become more "sensitive" since then, but we haven't; we've simply become afraid to be labeled as insensitive.)

Miscellaneous Musing #27

We ought to think about death much more often than the average person does, not to be morbid but to remind ourselves of why not to commit sins that will lose for us the real immortality: that of our souls.

Miscellaneous Musing #26

Why the Hades is our base where all those terrorists are kept nicknamed "Gitmo?"  I can understand the "G," the "t," and the "mo," but what of the "i," which, according to leading experts in orthography, doesn't occur anywhere in "Guantanamo Bay?"  If the place really needs a juvenile colloquial name, I suggest "GBay."

Disservice to the Service

(The revised edition of this uncommon commentary was posted on 24 February '11.)