"Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to. "
The question is, whose playing the part of Col Jessep?

That includes pirates and terrorists. The so called intelligence provided by members of terrorist organizations is worthless. They operate in small cells with little to no knowledge of what is going on outside their immediate circle. They give false information to their captures, wasting valuable time and energy of our armed forces. And, once captured, they cause havoc in our democracy by bringing issues like torture and habeaus corpus into the spotlight...undermining our system of government.

I've got news for you. The utterly insignificant number of (attempted) attacks on US soil does not equal the cost of detaining these security nightmares. They cost too much to detain, and other terrorists will actively commit other terrorist acts to seek their release. Killing them is the most cost efficient and intelligent thing to do.

I think it's unfair to say that drone strikes are to Obama what Cruise Missiles were to Clinton. Clinton was primarily unsuccessful in his use of cruise missles, which became a political catastrophe. Additionally, when the CIA did come up with actionable intelligence, rife with support for an attack, either by elite forces or cruise missile (e.g., Tarnak Farm), the political climate was so tainted by both the threat of impeachment (Monica Lewinsky) and the previous failure of cruise missile strikes, that Clinton was too politically restricted to act. So while I agree that human intelligence is quintessential to winning this war on terror, I think it's an over-generalization to compare those two presidential plans of attack.

Also, if you want to throw in the women and children article and debate the moral high ground, then what you should be writing about is a repeal of Jimmy Carter's ban on assassination. Because if we did have actionable intelligence regarding targets who were believed to an indisputable degree of certainty to be planning and executing attacks on the United States, then why shouldn't we be allowed to pick them off from a mile away with a highly trained sniper rifle. That is the most moral solution. If capture/interrogation is politically or strategically infeasible or obstinate, then assassination affords us the opportunity to protect ourselves without punishing anyone for being the wife or child of a terrorist. I recognize fully that this notion is susceptible to a slippery slope argument, but I doubt if anyone would contest the argument that we wish that someone had taken Osama Bin Laden out when we had the chance, instead of spening countless hours litigating and arguing over completely implausible plans for his capture.

This is amazing. First the vile trash said Obama was weak on terror, now they say he is too strong. You trash have declared war not just on our economy, but on civilization itself.

I will confess up front that I am not a fan of Mr. Thiessen's, but I try to never dismiss any argument out of hand--especially when I myself have been arguing against the loss of potential intelligence value from dead terrorists since before Zarqawi was killed.

However, if the author wants his "argument" to be taken seriously, he really needs to do better than simply to assert repeatedly that Obama is no longer even trying to capture terrorists. Which programs have been discontinued? What funding has been cut? Which opportunities for capture have been missed? (the, shall we say, complexities of operating in Pakistan have been laid out ably above).

We really need some evidence for this to be anything more than a desperate partisan attempt to come up with some new spin to smear the President. If the evidence for this argument is contained in the book, and this is really nothing more than a shameless plug for that, then at least say so. I'm still most likely not going to read it.

Look dumbass, if we sent into Pakistan the number of troops necessary to take these people into custody, it would amount to an allout invasion. This guy should have his 1st amendment rights revoked. by the way, "al qaeda" is not longer the same organization as it was pre-9/11 precisely because so many of their members were incapacitated (mostly killed). They don't have an organizational structure that allows the free flow of information about future attacks. Beyond these hardcore terrorists, there are billions of muslims in the world. it only takes 1 going over the edge in their reaction to your idiocy to cause a terrorist attack. you people have generated exponentially more terrorists than you have eliminated with your ridiculous "enhanced interrogation"--possibly the most fascistic euphemism implemented by an administration in this country. take a look at how the iranians interrogated people: they break their will MENTALLY. FP even had an article written by some Vietnam interrogator who is disgusted by your stupidity. not only that, we now find out that the CIA operative trumpeted by Krauthammer, et al, as the definitive proof that these techniques worked was based on apocryphal sources. why cant you just retire rather than pushing your neomarxist agenda of transforming the world through brutality.

...because he knows there's a market for it. He knows that he's the preeminent pro-"enhanced interrogations" guy. He's building a niche for himself for the remainder of the Obama presidency, and perhaps beyond. It's a wise career move, clearly, if he can sell this piece to FP.

At any rate, never thought I'd see "Obama is too good at killing terrorists" as a right-wing meme.

Between an offensive action and a defensive one there is a decision. Accepting and rejecting choices must often be based on short-term efficacy. The long view, IE, capturing and interrogating suspects to procure intel, would arguably sacrifice the need or desire for immediacy. When Obama gave the Seals the command to rescue the captain from the Somali pirates his decision reflected his understanding that time was of the essence. Penetrating hostile territory to physically capture a Taliban or al-Qaeda operative would takes months of planning and superhuman coordination with no guarantee of a successful outcome. Though I've read that there are special teams in Afghanistan preparing to go-in and take-out some leaders in the border regions. The drone have become and probably will continue to be the weapon of choice in this war against terrorists.

Oh, that's really brilliant.

Do you seroiusly propose the Marines just march in to a terrorist camp and arrest these terrorists, read them their Miranda rights, and issue them lawyers? Suppose we fought WW-II that way--we'd have lost on day one!

Even more obvious, we'll never be able to march into their terror camps and expect to find anyone there once we arrive!!! We use drones to go where no soldiers can penetrate. And drones have an element of surprise so we can catch these nuts

Reality check: Guantanamo is closing, and certainly all the effective interrogation techniques have been halted. Possibly the only tactic left is promising ice cream and cable movie channels if they talk!

Kill them, and prevent those terrorists from acting again. Repeat.

"Obama has now dramatically escalated drone strikes while eliminating what is arguably the most important and successful intelligence programs in the war on terror. "

What are these most important and successful intelligence programs?

Someone asked this above and it is definately the most important part of the argument.

Because if the author means the "torture program" then he's pretty mistaken because Bush stopped all that in 2004 I'm pretty sure.

1. Capture Osama bin Laden and make him spill the beans. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?
2. Well, maybe if we can't catch #1, we can get Ayman al-Zawahiri. After all, he's #2 and, no doubt, just full of important information. If only we had started this "Capture and question them" strategy sooner. What were we thinking?
3. I have a hot tip that Maulana Masood Azhar might know some good stuff. Maybe someone should go poke around Kashmir and slap some handcuffs on him. Even if he has done some smarty-pants disguise thing like style his beard or trim his eyebrows, we could probably just ask his neighbors or put his picture on America Most Wanted.

This will be so easy. Mr Thiessen, I hope you're not holding back any other game-changer ideas. Seriously, don't hold back.

Mr Thiessen is part and parcel of a set of pudgy asshats that infested / ran the last Administration and couldn't stop from being wrong if they tried. This manly man, whose illustrious past includes working for a PR firm that glorified murderous dictators in southern Africa, acting as a mouthpiece for Jesse Helms, working for discredited Rumsfeld, and finally as a junior speechwriter for the hapless Bush, is now spouting thougths that make no more sense than any of his previous thnk pieces.

Let's go through some of his winner ideas: This "intellectual" (who claims to be a born-again and who the good Lord must be horrified by his claimed acquaintance):
* declared that torturing prisoners does them a favor because they are then allowed to confess under some unwritten rules of Allah he manufactured. Torture good! It's actually a favor to Arab prisoners! Right-o!
* He wrote repeatedly from the front lines on his coddled visits to Iraq how splendidly his boss, Rumsfeld, managed that two trillion dollar catastrophe and how well that war went.
* Now, he varies his "think pieces" between "Obama is weak" and now, apparently, "Obama is too strong". Give me a break.

The fact is he is mortified that Obama won the election, has yet to get over it, and can't believe that Obama is actually successfully calling the shots in Iraq (yep, pulling out on schedule), running civilian interrogations and trials with no problems, and fighting the war in Afghanistan like it SHOULD have been fought before Rumsfeld and Bush decided to divert their attention to Iraq.

Thiessen's legitimacy stems exactly from what? His association with illustrious losers like Rumsfeld and Bush? Speech-writing? Deciding that torture is great and makes him super-manly?

The only worthtwhile thing that Thiessen ever wrote, and this grants him far more than he is worth, was a piece on the dignity of how Pope John Paul II passed away. There's no doubt what that Pope, a true man of peace, would say in regards to the morals and rigtheousness of a fool like this. No amount of penance will save this nave from where he rightfully belongs.

There's a lot of debate about whether we should kill terrorists, or torture terrorists, or give terrorists rights, etc. These are all debates about how we should fight the war on terror. Where is the debate about how to end the war on terror? Killing or torturing terrorists seems to be only a short-term tactic which has debatable effects. Does anyone really think that any of this will actually reduce terrorism in the long run? Terrorism exists for a reason. It is a tactic used by people who are disturbed. We should find out why they are disturbed and address that. Indeed, many people already hold differing beliefs and opinions about why terrorists are disturbed, but at least that seems to be a more productive debate.

Largely relying on kinetic effects to deal with terrorists stems from a series of policy and political decisions that directly effect the people who interrogate and hold these kinds of targets.

Changes in the law and the willingness of groups to go after the personnel performing interrogations have rendered interrogation as we currently perform it useless for the most part. It also results in the people performing the interrogation to be leery of stepping outside a very narrow range of techniques. The terrorists know this and have well established ROI to deal with the few effective techniques that can be employed.

Second, capturing and holding terrorists is now, thanks to the same factors, a high risk endeavor to the people conducting these kinds of missions. If you personnaly could be called into civillian court over the capture of a terrorist, would you be inclined to capture him at all?

The proposed closure of Guantanamo raises even more issues regarding retaining these folks in custody for long periods of time.

Finally, it is important to remember that if you endanger the ability of the people who quietly perform these services to remain anonymous you endanger the very feasibility of the operations proper. Unfortunately, special interest groups have taken exactly this posture with disastrous effects upon our ability as a nation to engage in these efforts.

The people who decry things like enhanced interrogation have essentially created an environment where the battlefield operator is forced into killing, or letting go, someone that they cannot hold or evaluate for intelligence.

I think a more mature approach to this problem would be to look at issues like interrogation and targeted killings from the standpoint of restraint in use versus the emotionally charged approach of "we shouldn't be doing this."

Marc Theissen is the clown who went on Morning Joe this morning and either didn't know what he was talking about or purposefully LIED. Marc, we got the info about LA ONE YEAR AFTER the plot was foiled. Either you didn't know that or you were lying. What a hack.

To the Foreign Policy Editors: Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush helmed what historians will likely call the biggest foreign policy in US history (Iraq, but more importantly taking our eye off Bin Laden b/c of the growing Iraq preparations). How is it that somebody who worked for Rumsfeld deserves the mouthpiece of your (once) august publication?

And just one post, because I couldn't resist: memo to Marc. If YOUR former boss Rummie had FINISHED THE JOB and gotten Bin Laden, we'd be in a whole lot better shape now. But Rummie CUT and RAN from Tora Bora. That you write anything about that corner of the world now is a joke. A joke. By the way, this comment comes from a lifelong Republican.

This piece is absolutely, positively absurd. I take on Thiessen's preposterous logic and bald assertions in greater detail here:

http://www.good.is/post/thiessen-s-strike-on-obama-misses-by-a-mile/

Thiessen would do well to issue a retraction.

Mike

Theissen, a graduate of the Naval War College, seemingly has never actually served, nor manned anything more hazardous than a desk.

Speechwriter for Bush II
Speechwriter for Rumsfeld
Congressional aide for Vin Weber (R MN - now a lobbyist)
Spokeman for Jesse Helms
Member in good standing of empoweramerica.org (right wing site devoted to everything not Obama)

Essentially a foreign policy equivalent of a talk show radio host, now he wants to send troops up close and personal to Taliban insurgents? Like that's just another day at the office for the troops?

Just two words: Chicken. Hawk.

But that's just my opinion. Readers should be aware, however, of the author's party affiliation (rather than someone with either national security or foreign policy experience or expertise) pedigree. Foreign Policy (the mag), you've got bloggers here with lots more game than Thiessen.

Well there is balance between public view,and what really happens here.
Obama just listened to his advisors,and started killing terrorists,because public likes bombastic headlines with lots of dead terrorists.
No one cares if someone captured 10 high ranking terrorists,but if they killed them...well that's news,and we all know that they are easiest points one can gain.
And do you really know how is hard to catch someone who's desperate and full of explosives??
Jane

Agree with above points re retraction. Or wait, maybe Thiessen's sharp jabs forced Obama's hand! Yeah right. Thiessen obviously doesn't, and never did, have a clue what he's talking about....

Foreign Policy editors, there are many better and informed writers (lacking in distortive agendas) to choose from. This guy's a hack on a swiftboating mission.

I presume this author criticized Bush every time a terrorist was killed.
And I presume if our forces were NOT killing terrorists, this author would claim that Obama is soft on terrorism.

This author isn't capable of objectivity.

The argument presented is interesting but seems to lack substance. How would the author explain the capture of Baradar in Pakistan? He certainly is connected to al-Qaeda and may know the location of senior terror leaders. Therefore, according to the author's argument, a Predator drone should have assassinated Baradar. So why didn’t we? If CIA’s capability is being drawn down so much, why were they included in the operation to capture of Baradar and al-Eidan in Oman? Just my thoughts…

High distinctive and exquisite quality Gucci Products like Gucci Handbags, Gucci Shoes and satisfied customers always come first. We have huge quantity of Gucci Purses, Gucci Belts, Gucci Loafers and Gucci Sneakers for sale! You can find the exact gucci whether Gucci Men's Shoes or Gucci Women's Shoes you want at a price that's right for you.Moreover,We are professional brand shoes.