There is an interesting article from the New Yorker in the news section that was linked to by Artappraiser. For the purposes of this rant I will only refer to the introduction and not the document the article presents.

Most people in this country have taken a side in the controversy surrounding the arguably "legal" shooting of Trevon Martin. Everyone I have read here believes that his killing was an appalling injustice, and if the killers actions are protected by law then it is bad law which should be changed. Significantly, we are all speaking out, all venting our outrage, all feeling righteous in our conviction that this is the sort of wrong towards a specific human being which is brought about by the feelings of some, too many, against a class of human beings. The Americans who justify such action are heartless, twisted, racists. So, most everyone here can comfortably blame the other side in our national politics for their attitudes that created the situation which ended in tragic death of a human being who had as much right to walk the planet eating skittles as do any of us. We can blame the other political side because we see the error in their thinking, in their attitudes, and in their solutions. We know better, and we wouldn't allow those things if it was up to us, if it was in our ability to stop or prevent them. Yes, but we, we must speak up, we must demonstrate our outrage. There are lives in the balance. We must make our conscience a comfortable place to rest.

We can call heartless, twisted, racist, and stupid, the Americans who justify the law involved and the resulting action. They can defend the law and the action, and do so on the grounds that we have a right to protect ourselves. They believe that they can identify a threat by the looks of a person, by where they come from, by where they grew up, by whatever the worst thing anyone who looks like them ever did, and justify acting on the possibility that they might do something bad. They justify the use of lethal force to protect themselves from any threat which they can say made them fear and say it made the fear for their lives, and they are easily scared. Some do this honestly within their own belief system. Some just use rhetoric to mask their hate. And most of them, like most of us, will sometimes lie, most often to ourselves.  For almost everyone, this legal crime happened far away and is a passing news item which mostly drives reaction against those who judge it differently. If those who defend it have any qualms about the incident they might  call it "collateral damage" in the war for peace, justice, and the American way.

If Trevar Martin's death was a mistake, one political side can easily live with it, like we all live with so much death around the world done under our laws and done by our representatives who twist and stretch laws.

From the article, which is worth a read for itself even if no connection is made to current domestic events. [Emphasis mine in all cases]

“I think it’s important for us to get it right,” President Obama said on Tuesday of the American relationship with Pakistan. Lately, though, we haven’t.

Three years later, those ambitions are in tatters, undone by the Raymond Davis affair, the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and continuing drone strikes, which most Pakistanis regard as acts of war.

The essay declares that Pakistan’s total casualties—dead and wounded—since 2001 in the “fight against terrorism” number about forty thousand.

Administration has signalled to Pakistan’s military leadership that it is willing to try again, but has urged the Pakistanis to accept that the U.S. reserves the right to attack any target that threatens American lives or other important interests.

Pakistan’s generals believe that one chronic problem is America’s drone-targeting policy. Many lethal drone strikes are not directed against a specific terrorist whose name is known and whose real-time location has been pinpointed.

There are a few cases like that, but often the American drones strike more adaptively at what are known as “force protection” and “signature” targets.

A force-protection target can be a truck full of bearded men wearing turbans and holding rifles, driving toward the Afghan border. There are, as it happens, more than a few of these.

A signature target can be a house in North Waziristan where many bearded men wearing turbans and carrying arms gather for dinner, chatting on their phones. The U.S. drone operators may listen in and watch over such a suspicious-looking dinner party, and, back at Drone Central, officers on duty may conclude there is sufficient cause to fire missiles at the house—but they could have little or no idea about the names of all the guests. The Americans insist that signature drone strikes of this kind are necessary because that is how the United States has regularly, semi-accidentally killed Al Qaeda leaders along the Pakistani border in recent years, resulting in a reduction of Al Qaeda’s global capability. But they have also semi-accidentally killed Pakistanis who are not tied to Al Qaeda.

That document is classified "secret" and presumably some of us, if we are to be even a little bit consistent, believe that Steve Coll, the management and editors of "The New Yorker," and whoever leaked the document belong in jail for leaking it and alleging how much our foreign policy and our national attitude resemble  Zimmerman's. It could possibly instigate a little criticism of our country's current leadership by those on his side in everything he does and ironically on the one subject where his hate full opponents support him. But that is another subject.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/03/classified-documen...