War in the shadows

Fine article in the NYT this morning about clandestine military and CIA operations being carried out by the Obama administration. I think the takeaway is supposed to be twofold: for the left, gasp! that a leftist president would actually defend the United States; and for the right, reassurance that Mr. Obama isn't quite the doofus that he sometimes seems. (Is it entirely a coincidence that this long article about our covert warrior-president follows hard upon his Friday defense of the Ground Zero mosque?)

I found the article both reassuring and comical, as when the authors fret that using soldiers in clandestine ops might deprive the U.S. military of its Geneva Convention rights. Yeah, sure: when was the last time were American soldiers in enemy hands treated according to Geneva? Most of you aren't old enough to remember, so I'll answer the question: April 1945, and even then only if you were fighting against German forces, didn't fall first into the hands of the Gestapo, weren't a Jew, and best of all qualified for a Luftwaffe camp. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford