A Drone against Jane Fonda?

American politics is getting even more bizarre. We are entering into the territory of conspiracy theorists, those who believe in flying saucers and are sure that the World Trade Center towers were not the target of an attack on September 11, 2001. Rand Paul’s filibuster is one of the most bizarre episodes in recent years; God knows if the bizarre and strange were to meet up in Washington while the tea party is at work, like in this sad story which, in addition, has caused serious harm in the ranks of the Republican Party.

Rand Paul, ultra-conservative senator from Kentucky, and close to the tea party, blocked the nomination of John Brennan as head of the CIA this week for a simple question: Could the president of the United States use a drone against an American citizen on U.S. soil? For example, Rand Paul explained that, as it was not as interested in the well-being of militants on the left, could Jane Fonda, who opposed the war in Vietnam during the Richard Nixon era, have been killed by a drone strike ordered by the White House?

The question of the tea party and Rand Paul — which we did not hear during the Bush administration — was based on the fact that an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, an important member of al-Qaida, had been killed by a drone firing in Yemen. Rand Paul ended his filibuster after Attorney General Eric Holder wrote him a note to reassure him: “Does the president have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil? The answer to that question is no.”

But Rand Paul’s filibuster caused harm in the ranks of his own party. John McCain, who we cannot assume is not a dove, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, equally conservative, ridiculed Rand Paul. “So we’ve done, I think, a disservice to a lot Americans by making them believe that somehow they’re in danger from their government,” Rand Paul scolded. “They’re not. But we are in danger. We are in danger from a dedicated, longstanding, easily replaceable leadership enemy that is hell-bent on our destruction.”

A little later, John McCain added, “To somehow think that under present circumstances, we would have killed Jane Fonda, that’s so ridiculous there’s no way to respond to it. It’s just an insult to your intelligence.”

Lindsay Graham, who was present during the vote with a placard that compared the number of Americans killed by al-Qaida (2,958) to that of Americans killed by a drone (0), added, “I am going to vote for Brennan now because it’s become a referendum on the drone program. Where were all these people during the Bush administration?” Elsewhere, 28 Republican senators voted against Rand Paul to end the filibuster; 13 among them approved the nomination of John Brennan. Once more, the tea party is the drone that decimated the ranks of conservatives.