Ta-Nehisi Coates, at That Atlanic, waxes passing eloquent as is his wont on the topic of torture vs the drone-war:
… The president is anti-torture — which is to say he thinks the water-boarding of actual confirmed terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was wrong. He thinks it was wrong, no matter the goal — which is to say the president would not countenance the torture of an actual terrorist to foil a plot against the country he's sworn to protect. But the president would countenance the collateral killing of innocent men, women and children by drone in pursuit of an actual terrorist. What is the morality that holds the body of a captured enemy inviolable, but not the body of those who happen to be in the way?
I present the quote above not entirely in full context – there are other things Coates said that I don't agree with as much. But this paragraph struck to the core of my discomfort with the obvious – to me – fundamental bushcheneyism of Obama's national security policies. Since the main reason I supported Obama in 2008 was his repudiation of Bush's post-ninelevenism, my disappointment, at this point, is complete.