The real scandal of Obama's second term
How Barack Obama went from nuclear freeze advocate to leader of a global squad of flying death robots.
The real scandal of Obama's second term
He was just a skinny 22-year-old seemingly no different from so many college kids back in 1983 – writing ponderous pieces for a student newspaper about the nuclear freeze movement and railing against “the military-industrial interests” with their “billion-dollar erector sets” -- under the headline “Breaking the War Mentality.”
But this one kid at Columbia University actually was different. Three decades later, Barack Obama is now in his second term as president – commander-in-chief of the U.S. military, with broad executive power over the American way of war.
And the signature piece of his Obama’s national security policy, increasingly, is something that not only would have shocked his beer buddies in back in Morningside Heights. It has also surprised and dismayed some of his most ardent political supporters in the 2010s who voted for a rollback of the militarism and imperial overreach of the Bush-Cheney years:
It is a full-throated embrace of flying billion-dollar “erector sets” – drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, that can rain down death and destruction on targets halfway across the globe with zero immediate risk to American life.
Obama’s expanded, top-secret drone war has allowed the U.S. to kill high-level members of al-Qaeda without the risks that ground troops have faced in Iraq or Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have been fighting more than 11 years.
But in doing so, a president who promised “the most open and transparent administration in history” has gone to Nixonian lengths to hide its actions from the American people and from Congress. He’s ordered missile attacks on countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia with which the nation is not at war – drone strikes that in addition to its targets have killed as many as 1,000 innocent civilians, including women and children.
And according to a White House white paper obtained by NBC News, Obama has claimed a power never even envisioned during the waterboarding-drenched years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney – the ability to order the assassination of an American citizen believed to be engaged with al-Qaeda at a high level, even if that citizen is not currently plotting against the U.S.
Just two weeks after a triumphant second inauguration, the Obama administration was in a rare defensive posture on Thursday, releasing to Congress its once-secret rationale for its ability to kill American al-Qaeda members, as Obama’s pick to run the CIA -- counterterrorism chief John Brennan -- defended the drone policies. His hearing was interrupted by protests that harkened back to the Bush era – such as a woman holding aloft a sign, “Drones Fly Children Die.”
The irony boggles the mind. After a long barrage from the right flank accusing the 44th president of everything from Kenyan citizenship to plotting a socialist takeover, will this become the scandal of Barack Obama second term…the betrayal of his liberal ideals?
"As successor to George W. Bush, Obama is continuing Bush's wars by other means,” Andrew Bacevich, the retired Army colonel who’s now a Boston University professor of international relations and frequent critic of U.S. militarism, told me. “Rather than invading and occupying countries, he relies on alternative methods, with missile-firing drones his preferred weapon of war."
In doing so, Obama’s also sparked a new civil war – among the American left. On Twitter and other venues, liberals who just weeks ago seemed united in joy over the president’s re-election have been at each other’s virtual throats, in a war of words pitting old-school anti-war activists against Obama partisans inclined to support the president -- even for policies they surely would have excoriated if pursued under Bush and Cheney.
How did we get to this strange place?
Steve Clemons, a foreign policy expert affiliated with the centrist New America Foundation, said the drone campaign started as a way for Obama to prove as toughness toward terrorism while he ended the Iraq War and strived – not successfully yet – to wind down the conflict in Afghanistan. But over time, the power to kill alleged terrorists at no cost to American life has lured Obama, the Pentagon, and the CIA to expand the campaign to new lands and to lower-level operatives.
“There’s an ease of doing it that has become too habitual – and I think there’s a risk of major mistakes,” Clemons said.
I agree. It seems that a tipping point was crossed a long time ago, in a world where flying U.S. death robots are now whipping up more anti-Americanism than can – or should -- be zapped with Hellfire missiles. And I worry that Obama and his ambitions have been sucked into an even more powerful vortex, where every international problem looks like a nail that can only be hammered down by our “billion-dollar erector sets.”
And here’s the scariest part. If the author of “Breaking the War Mentality” is helpless to stop this out-of-control spiral…can anyone?
Does anyone believe that Romney would have ended the drone attacks?— Archimedes- Does anybody believe Dianne Feinstein saying that the number of civilian drone victims is in the single digits?— Mr. Smith
- Do you actually care about civilian drone victims? Or do you just find the phrase "civilian drone victims" to be politically expedient?
Never mind. Those of us subjected to daily your brain farts already know the answer.— wokmaster - I care very little about some al-Qaida hangers-on getting whacked by the BDES. I'm also not troubled by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad being kept in a cold cell, having his nerves rattled a bit, or having his ace kicked in Romania for a while.
I support things that the US government is doing on behalf of and to the benefit of the American People.
Sadly, as the US Government grows larger and larger, it does things less and less to the benefit of the American people, and more and more to the benefit of the US government and the friends of those in power.— Mr. Smith - Feinstein is right, if you interpret her statement as saying that there are few victims of civilian drones. The problem is that there are many victims of military drones. Take anything this woman says with a grain of salt. — DonQ
- I guess if I could be convinced that there was a plausible scenario where the countries would STOP hating the USA if we stopped using drones, I'd be on board with Will's point. But that's not reality. These countries hate (or select groups of their people that their government refuses to prosecute out of fear or incapacity) for the sake of hating, and there is virtually nothing the USA can do that will ever satisfy them, short of a mass enforced conversion to Islam coupled with a declaration of war against Israel.
So that leaves the relevant questions: regardless of any (additional) foreign ill-will the program inspires, is it effective? Should an American soldier's life be worth more to the US government than foreigners targeted by drones?— evolutionary - The "American" who was killed by a drone attack was waging jihad against the United States. In a video posted to the internet on November 8, 2010, al-Aulaqi called for Muslims around the world to kill Americans "without hesitation", and overthrow Arab leaders. He said that no fatwa is required to kill Americans: "Don't consult with anyone in fighting the Americans, fighting the devil doesn't require consultation or prayers or seeking divine guidance. They are the party of the devils."
All the noisy Senators from both parties at these hearings are "playing to their base", and would be the first ones yelling and screaming if one of these terrorists managed to bring down an American airliner and we knew about the plans before hand.
Of course, McCain and company would want us to invade some country to go after the terrorists.— wokmaster - Since when does the US Govt have the right to arbitrarily abandon the Bill of Rights simply b/c the accused happens to be on foreign soil?
Woky - U R A disgrace.— Professor1982 - Waterboarding is torture but killing people at random is okay. Lol, at least you're still alive after being waterboarded! You guys elected the Imperialist. Deal with it.— keapitreal
- As much as it's fun to call Obama a hypocrite on this issue, it will hardly be his biggest scandal in his second term. If the media ever decides to stop kissing his back side, they have enough scandals to keep them busy for the next 4 years.— Phillies2008WSChamps
- This comment has been deleted. — Mr. Smith
- Oh, the irony! Mr. Smith lecturing me on "Or, you can continue growing older and angrier, muttering to Attytood commenters...". You must be one of those guys who told his kids to "do what I say, not what I do". — wokmaster
- This comment has been deleted. — Mr. Smith
- Speaking of misapplication of quotation marks... — wokmaster
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