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A Reaper "hunter-killer" unmanned aerial vehicle or drone.In 1989, President George H.W. Bush vowed to apply traditional American values to make the United States "a kinder and gentler nation" -- using our strength as "a force for good." Twenty years later, that strength has been weakened by a faltering economy and the challenges of fighting two wars.
But Mr. Bush recognized that "kinder and gentler" did not always apply, particularly in dealing with Saddam Hussein. Yet, today, in the face of our greatest challenge -- Islamic extremism -- we choose to take a "kinder and gentler" approach toward fighting a brutal enemy's ideology. This is underscored by the House Intelligence Committee's June 17 announcement that it has launched a probe into the CIA's handling of its al Qaeda leadership assassination program.
The investigation is to focus on whether the agency improperly withheld information from lawmakers.
The secret program -- to use assassins to kill or capture senior terrorist leaders -- was initiated eight years ago in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks but never got beyond the discussion phase. Upon first learning of the program a month ago, CIA Director Leon Panetta immediately terminated it and briefed Congress.
Almost two decades ago, as I interrogated a senior Iraqi military officer captured during Desert Storm, he made an astute observation about Saddam Hussein. Comparing his brutal leader to a serpent, he said one cannot kill a snake without severing its head -- a concept well understood within the Muslim world. It also should be well understood within the Western world in dealing with Islamic extremist leaders.
During the 20th century, the West confronted two kinds of leaders in the conduct of warfare.
There were civilian leaders who, as heads of state, were not involved in war-fighting decisions, which were left to their military. For this reason, leaders such as Japan's Emperor Hirohito were never personally targeted during hostilities.
But there also were heads of state who, by their personal actions in taking a direct role in planning and implementing military and/or terrorist operations, catapulted themselves onto the battlefield, becoming "fair game." Such targets have included Adolf Hitler during World War II, Saddam Hussein during Desert Storm and Moammar Gadhafi during his terrorist campaign of the 1980s.
There should be no doubt al Qaeda's leadership falls into the latter category. Its terrorist leaders represent the head of the snake and, as such, will continue to strike unless the head is severed.
Precisely for this reason, the leadership of both al Qaeda and the Taliban have been targeted for attack by U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere. These attacks, authorized during President George W. Bush's watch, have been continued on President Obama's watch because they have killed at least a dozen leaders.
