Bin Abdul Rehman Al-Hussainan and Billy Graham

Dear Mr. President,

Last Thursday, “[a] senior commander for Al Qaeda [was] killed in an American drone strike in North Waziristan…” (New York Times, December 10.) A small article buried at the bottom of page A8, it also mentioned speculation that this senior commander, Sheikh Khalid Bin Abdul Rehman Al-Hussainan, aka Abu-Zaid al Kuwaiti, had replaced the recently assassinated Yahya al-Libi, and that he, Al-Hussainan, was “a likely successor to Al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.” But then the article goes on to say that “his name did not appear on the State Department’s list of most wanted militants and his role and stature inside Al Qaeda was not clear.” Curious, I googled the guy and found nothing that confirmed he was a military commander; rather, he was a religious scholar who wrote many books, pamphlets and sermons and was in charge of the religious training of jihadists, the equivalent, I guess, of a military chaplain. From a January 2012 interview with him, it’s obvious he was militantly religious but not a ‘militant’, all of which makes me once again question how someone gets on your Kill List. Isn’t killing Al-Hussainan like killing, say, Billy Graham or a military chaplain who’s a rabid fundamentalist and believes the world was created in 6 days, is 6,000 years old and only bornagain Christians are going to heaven? Really, a militant religious scholar in North Waziristan is an imminent threat to the U.S.? This is seriously twisted, Mr. President. And there’s also the credibility gap. Why is every person assassinated a ‘senior’ Al Qaeda or Taliban leader? And why does every report obediently repeat the official mantra that Al Qaeda’s (or the Taliban’s) leadership has been decimated, and yet, one after another, each assassinated ‘militant’ is a ‘senior’ leader. How many ‘senior’ leaders does Al Qaeda (and the Taliban) have, anyway? But even more disturbing is that the drone fired several missiles into a house while he was eating Suhoor (pre-dawn) breakfast and Al-Hussainan’s wife and daughter were wounded in the attack. His wife died from her wounds the following day, Friday, which also brings up the issue of authorizing a strike against an ‘enemy combatant’ when it’s clear civilians will also be killed. This is a war crime, Mr. President, so is violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, and so is assassinating someone who is not clearly a combatant. Every drone strike and every person killed on your orders is a crime against humanity and that’s evil.