Google+ drone questioner calls Obama response 'disturbing'

By Jeremy Herb - 02/01/12 02:56 PM ET

The Brooklyn man who asked President Obama via YouTube and Google+ about drone strikes Monday — sparking Obama’s public disclosure that the United States was using such strikes in Pakistan — released a response video where he said Obama’s answer was “disturbing.”

Evan Engel, a Brooklyn filmmaker, asked a question during Obama’s online interview hosted by YouTube and Google+ about civilian deaths in drone strikes. Obama responded that the United States was using drone strikes in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas near the Afghanistan border.

The answer prompted headlines overseas that Obama had “admitted” and “confirmed” the drone program, and a Pakistani official called the strikes, which Pakistan has long known about, “unlawful, counterproductive and hence unacceptable.”

As for Engel, who said a Google employee stopped him on the street to ask the question, he said that Obama’s answer on civilian casualties was an example “of the callousness and carelessness that kind of provokes anti-Americanism in the first place, which is one of the causes of terrorism.”

“Mr. Obama said that there are civilian casualties but it’s not a lot. By conservative estimates these drone attacks have killed hundreds of people,” Engel said in a video posted to YouTube. “That’s a lot of people by anyone’s standards, and I would hope by President Obama’s.”

Obama defended the use of drones on Monday, calling them precise, targeted strikes on terrorists who are actively plotting to carry out attacks against the United States.

Engel, who describes himself as politically independent, said in an email that he wasn’t an Obama supporter in 2008 because of his position on expanding the war in Afghanistan. Of course, he didn’t support the GOP nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, either — he voted for a third candidate.

The Brooklyn-ite, who has previously worked for Al Gore’s Current TV, said he had a pre-planned trip to the Middle East this week, and now he’s going to expand his trip to look at the issue of drone strikes.