Kicking Off a New Term, Drone Style
Oaths, poems, 472 evening balls---color me unimpressed.
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Oaths, poems, 472 evening balls---color me unimpressed. This is the proper way to do an inauguration, courtesy of the leading source for national-security news and analysis, The Onion:
Obama Begins Inauguration Festivities With Ceremonial Drone Flyover NEWS IN BRIEF • Politics • ISSUE 49•04 • Jan 21, 2013WASHINGTON---Taking the oath of office for his second term today, President Barack Obama joined thousands of supporters in the nation’s capital for traditional inauguration festivities that included a prayer invocation, a parade along Pennsylvania Avenue, and a ceremonial flyover of three combat drones. “When Obama was being sworn in on the Capitol steps, we could hear the drones screeching by overhead and everyone got really excited,” spectator Andrew Meyers, 34, said as he eagerly trained his eyes on the unmanned aerial vehicles that have taken out several hundred innocent civilians during presidentially authorized strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. “They go by super fast, but luckily there are Jumbotrons all over the National Mall, so nobody missed out. Wait, they’re coming back!” At press time, sources confirmed that inaugural celebrants were enjoying the Jumbotron’s live closed-circuit feed of the still-open prison facility at Guantánamo Bay.
Alan Z. Rozenshtein is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, Research Director and Senior Editor at Lawfare, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he served as an Attorney Advisor with the Office of Law and Policy in the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland.
