Penalty For Early Celebration

To recap, less than a month after the Paris Charlie Hebdo attacks and the US has zapped another AQAP terrorist leader in Yemen. Tom Joscelyn over at Long War Journal:

A US drone strike in southern Yemen on Jan. 31 killed Harith bin Ghazi al Nadhari, a senior al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) sharia official. Nadhari's death was confirmed in a "martyrdom" statement issued by the group via Twitter and other web sites earlier today. 

Nadhari praised the attack on Charlie Hebdo's offices just days after the massacre on Jan. 9. He did not claim responsibility for the operation, but another senior AQAP official subsequently did. 

The AQAP statement announcing Nadhari's death was translated by the SITE Intelligence Group. AQAP confirms that Nadhari worked for its sharia committee, and says that three other fighters were killed in the drone strike. 

AQAP portrays the bombing that killed Nadhari as being part of a working agreement between the US and the Shia Houthis rebels who overran Yemeni government positions in recent weeks. The drone strike "came a few hours after the completion of the deal for the Houthis to take control of the administration of the country with an American and regional collusion," the statement reads, according to SITE's translation. "The Houthis have become a loyal partner to America in preserving its interests and executing its plans in the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula." 

The Houthis receive at least some support from Iran. And AQAP frequently claims that they are part of an alleged US-Iranian axis that is opposing Sunni Muslims throughout the region.

So again, this is the guy who was basically taking credit for the Paris attacks, and Obama just erased the guy in less than 30 days.  But of course, nobody seems to care here in the states, and the ones that do think he's a war criminal (or in the case of our loyal opposition party, a "tyrant" who is somehow "weak on terrorism" and is "a Muslim agent".)

Optics, I guess.