Up In The Air

U.S. officials said Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric linked to al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing, was killed in a CIA drone strike last Friday. These same U.S. officials hailed the developments as successes for Washington and its partners in the fight against Islamic militancy. You remember drones, right? The little unmanned flying machines that bring death from the sky via remote control. Why put a pilot in danger? It can all be done with a twist of a joystick and the push of a button. And with that, yet another senior U.S. defense official said. "A very bad man just had a very bad day."
Meanwhile, across a vast ocean, a twenty-six-year-old man from a Boston suburb was arrested last Wednesday and accused of plotting to attack the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol with remote-controlled model planes packed with explosives. Rezwan Ferdaus hoped to use military-jet replicas, five feet to seven and a half feet long, guided by GPS devices and capable of speeds over one hundred miles per hour. "The idea of pushing a button and this thing diving into the Pentagon is kind of a joke, actually," said Greg Hahn, technical director of the Academy of Model Aeronautics. How ridiculous would that be? Flying an unmanned flying machine to bring death from the sky via remote control. Don't make me laugh.
Really.