Wednesday's Daily Brief: Drone Debate Upends DC's Right/Left Divide, Obama Doesn't Have High Hopes For Budget Deal

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

The Drone Debate Upends DC's Right/Left Divide

Arianna Huffington: It's become accepted wisdom that Washington has become pathologically polarized and partisan, with every new debate inevitably breaking down along party lines. That's why it was so remarkable last week when Rand Paul's old-fashioned talking filibuster scrambled the even more old-fashioned right-vs.-left way of looking at the world. The Paul-provoked debate on the confirmation of John Brennan to head the CIA in turn provoked a wider and critical debate about the use of drones -- a debate that needs to continue well beyond Brennan's confirmation. Since 2004, only 2 percent of those killed have been confirmed as militant leaders. From mid-2004 to mid-2012, between 474 and 881 civilians were killed in Pakistan. This includes 176 children. Last week's debate allowed Americans to put themselves in the position of those living under drones overseas -- imagining, even hypothetically, life under drones. And, not surprisingly, most of us didn't like it.

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