Dear Barack: Don't drop bombs

I've been feeling like a kid at Christmas who got all the presents she asked for and then some since Obama stepped into office. I've been awestruck by the scope and breadth of the orders he's signed so far. But he disappointed me greatly with this airstrike in Pakistan.

It's unclear how many people died, but it's indisputable that some innocents were mixed in with the terrorists we might have killed with bombs dropped from unmanned drones. Even worse, to my knowledge, there has been no official statement on it from the White House.

This is wrong on so many levels, but Cernig sums up one of the most important reasons.

And I simply don't believe the possible death of a "possible terrorist leader" is worth three children's lives under any circumstances. There's no point to reclaiming the moral high ground by closing prisons and banning torture if you're going to hand it away again with indiscriminate airstrikes - and airstrikes are by their nature indiscriminate despite what the PR brochures on "precision" bombs might say.

Exactly. Anonymous airstrikes like this don't eliminate the power structure of the terrorists and for every innocent that dies, a thousand potential terrorists are born. Bad strategy. It's simply not worth it.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News.]