It wasn't long ago that when a Republican heard the name Leon Panetta, especially within the context of a conversation about him joining a presidential administration, there was enough respect for him that his nomination, whether to be Barack Obama's CIA director in 2009, or the Defense Secretary a couple years later, passed on a voice vote. 

Very few people on the GOP side of the aisle agreed with Panetta's domestic politics at all. And there were plenty of disagreements to be had with Panetta on foreign policy as well, but Panetta was seen as a seasoned hand, a serious thinker on geopolitics and national security, and above all, he was widely-regarded as a normal Democrat, not a flaming left-wing crazy. Well, 2024 being 2024 and all, Panetta has apparently now been absorbed by the Israel-hating mob on the far left. Panetta appeared on CBS News Sunday Morning with Lee Cowan, and was asked about the spectacularly successful 1-2 punch against Hezbollah operatives by Israel last week, first by blowing up terrorists' pagers, and then taking out another large chunk of those Israel missed by detonating the hand-held radios and walkie-talkies they most assuredly would pick up as a backup communications device, knowing that the pagers were compromised. Here's what Panetta had to say.

To understand the mind-numbing hypocrisy in this clip, one would need to go back to the first term of Barack Obama, which was only 15 years ago. The United States was around the halfway point of what would become the 20-year War On Terror, chiefly consisting of Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists both in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

In the early years of the war, the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan was not only fuzzy for al Qaeda fighters, it was essentially non-existent. Terrorists often crossed over into Pakistan, often times with the knowledge and silent permission of Pakistani officials, thinking that would provide an umbrella of protection against U.S. drone strikes. Enter Leon Panetta. 

In 2009, as the Obama administration was rolling out, then-CIA Director Panetta began ramping up the use of drone strikes at targets not just in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan, too. Remember that Barack Obama authorized the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, to confront and kill Osama bin Laden once and for all. Panetta's wet work, though, was achieved mostly through the use of missile-laden unmanned drones. 

Leon E. Panetta, the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said Wednesday that the agency’s campaign against militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas was the “most effective weapon” the Obama administration had to combat Al Qaeda’s top leadership.

The C.I.A. in recent months has intensified its covert campaign of missile attacks in the tribal areas, carrying out more than 30 strikes against Qaeda and Taliban leaders from drone aircraft. Mr. Panetta stopped short of directly acknowledging the missile strikes, but he said that “operational efforts” focusing on Qaeda leaders had been successful.

“It is for that reason that the president and the vice president and everyone else supports continuing that effort,” he said.

Mr. Panetta’s comments were the most candid to date about the Obama administration’s decision to continue and in some cases expand on the Bush administration’s covert operations against Al Qaeda. Privately, American officials have said that the C.I.A. missile strikes have killed a large cadre of Qaeda leaders since last summer, although Pakistani intelligence officials say they fear the drone strikes are further destabilizing their already fragile country.

By May of 2009, it is believed that north of 50 bad guys had their ticket punched with Panetta hitting a joystick button from Washington. Mind you, it's a policy with which I'm totally supportive. Dead terrorists make the best terrorists, I always say, and if it can be done remotely without risking American personnel, icing on the cake. But now that the Israelis have upped the technology game to a ridiculously impressive level with Operation Grim Beeper and Radio Boom-Boom, Leon Panetta, Mr. Drone, has a problem with it? 

In 2009, drone warfare was the most precise method of counterterrorism in the history of mankind, but there still were civilian casualties, including children. According to the Watson Institute, over the course of the entire War on Terror, Afghanistan and Pakistan phase, there were roughly 70,000 civilian casualties through early 2023. That's all forms of warfare - air, sea-based strikes, and ground forces.

By contrast, in Afghanistan alone from early 2004 through early 2020, drone strikes had a much lower ratio of combatant-to-civilian casualties. Worst-case estimates were 900 civilians, 180 of them children, were killed compared to 10,000 bad guys dispatched off this rock to go find their 72 virgins. That's about a 10-1 ratio, far better than conventional warfare. Now compare that to what the Israelis pulled off last week.

Initial reports are that two children were casualties from the twin electronic device explosive attacks against Hezbollah terrorists, and possibly a few other victims who were in close proximity of where the devices detonated. But those numbers, compared to the killed or maimed Hezbollah operatives by the thousands, takes the once-accepted drone casualty percentages to a tiny level never before seen in warfare. Panetta should be celebrating the advance in technology and the precision that the Israelis just demonstrated in their intel and execution. 

Instead, he calls it an act of terrorism. If we had an ounce of journalism being conducted in this country in regime media outside of Fox News, you would have had Lee Cowan ask the most obvious follow-up question in the world - If you think what Israel did was an act of terrorism, were your drone strikes, especially in Pakistan, also an act of terrorism? I would personally add a second follow-up question - Isn't an act of terrorism against the terrorists a good thing, because it tends to reestablish deterrence?

I have no idea whether Secretary Panetta's answer now is based on how this will affect anti-Israel Democratic voters this fall, and it's forcing him to dial down the military adventurism he once had, or if his sudden clutching at anti-Israel pearls is due to the fact that Donald Trump is on the other side of the equation this November, causing him to take leave of anything for which he once stood and supported. 

Nevertheless, consider that 80 years ago, acceptable losses were measured in hundreds of thousands, both immediate deaths from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and the long-term deaths from exposure to radiation, because it potentially saved exponentially more lives by ending the war. By 2010, technology and innovation made counterrorism much more precise while still being just as lethal. The Israelis just set a new bar last week by which all future raids will be measured. I would like to think that Leon Panetta, before his party started playing Footsie with anti-Semites for votes,  would have welcomed this advancement. Unfortunately, what sadly seems to be the case is that there are no reasonable, serious Democrats left on the Israel issue, maybe with the exception of Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman. And he wears hoodies. God help the Republic.