Obama’s Drone Wars strain the liberal principles he espoused in 2008

Obama's drone wars have threatened diplomacy with strategically important countries such as Pakistan // Credit Getty Images

The recent New York Times article on Obama’s use of drones has reverberated across the internet. The fractured lives and fractured diplomacy these attacks have left in their wake has become the subject of articles, blogs and television segments. While drone warfare is nothing new, the article revealed that the technology has become increasingly advanced and drones are now the go-to weapon for Obama’s ‘War on Terror’. Indeed, this lurch towards more hawkish right-wing policiess has some suggesting that the President has become “George W. Bush on steroids”. I believe Obama’s drone strategy is a betrayal of all who supported him. In turn, the silence of all those who voted for “hope” and “change” is worrying; it suggests that the US liberal electorate would rather support Obama, who they perceive as a lesser political evil than his Republican adversaries, than actually questioning the political hypocrisy his foreign policy entails.

The New York Times’ article is disturbing because it explains how Obama has instituted a command structure in which he authorises each drone strike. The now infamous ‘Kill list’ demonstrates Obama’s dramatic political shift. Indeed, he has adopted policies that, as Jack Goldsmith (Bush’s Assistant Attorney General) highlighted in 2009, have “copied most of the Bush programme” and have even “expanded some of it”.

It is understandable that some are finding it hard to reconcile this ‘Call of Duty’ strategy with the poetic election campaigner of 2008. Prior to being elected, Obama was consistently wary of how the ‘War on Terror’ was being conducted. He notably proclaimed in a 2002 speech : “What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war”. And though he did take cover by stating that he does not oppose all forms of war, arguably engaging in drone warfare is “dumb” and “rash”.

The fallout from Obama’s warfaring is especially embarrassing in the light of his Nobel Peace Prize award in 2009 for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”. By awarding the honour to Obama, more on the basis of his anticipated achievements than actual evidence, an uncomfortable contradiction has developed: here is a man who is noted for talking peace while becoming ever more embroiled in the brutality of war.

Obama’s use of drones is only one element in his transformation from liberal to quasi-conservative. And there are commentators who believe he has always been a pragmatist and that his political record has shown him to be less idealistic than his rhetoric suggests. But even for the less cynically inclined, Obama’s continuation and extension of neo-conservative policy should be a numbing disappointment for liberals.

No doubt, US government officials will argue that Obama is engaging in the reality of modern warfare and that drones are a safer way of executing terrorists than employing ground troops. White House Counter Terrorism advisor John Brennan stated that civilian causalities are “exceedingly rare”. Well yes, they are “exceedingly rare”, but only because the CIA’s definition of a “combatant” is so broad that it effectively means anyone killed in a drone strike, as long as they are “military-age males” can be classified as a “combatant”. Such callousness damns not only those who were enamoured by Obama’s rhetoric of “hope” and “change”, but also anyone who believes civil liberties should not be eroded out of fear of the unknown.

This military policy also inadvertently undermines the US’s relations with countries crucial to its ‘War on Terror’. Diplomacy, particularly with Pakistan, has become increasingly strained following recent attacks, while Sudarsan Raghavan in The Washington Post suggested the use of drones is actually doing more damage than good to the US’s war effort.

Will such evidence against drone warfare impact on Obama’s re-election hopes? Anti-war sentiment was a large factor in catalysing the Republican Party’s electoral demise in 2008. Will it do the same for Obama? Perhaps not; Obama’s poll ratings were highest in the days following Osama bin Laden’s assassination, possibly indicating that an aggressive foreign policy is not always unwelcome. Yet a more probable explanation lies in the transitory upsurge of US patriotism following Osama bin Laden’s death. Tellingly, Obama’s poll figures quickly trailed off suggesting the latter, and indicating that a continuation of this foreign policy may not be a fast track to electoral success.

There has been a disconcerting lack of demonstrations opposing the use of drones. A few dedicated anti-war stalwarts in the Occupy movement spoke out, but they have had scant impact on public opinion.  Young progressives, who were so pivotal in getting Obama elected, so fuelled by the optimism of the 2008 election campaign and so vocal in their disapproval of Bush’s war policies have all but disappeared; their voices are silent at a time when the Obama Administration is not just continuing similar policies but actually extending them. Any debate about the morality of drone warfare has not been undertaken en masse but has remained confined to academic discussions and broadsheet column inches. However, it is clear that America’s optimism has faded, and Obama’s failure to deliver on much of his inspiring rhetoric has intensified a climate of apathy. Actor Matt Damon, summed this up on CNN’s Piers Morgan Show when he stated scathingly: “I no longer hope for audacity”.

Drone strikes symbolise Obama’s transformation from a candidate who espoused change to an Imperial president very much in the mould of his predecessor. As Penn and Teller have said, the Obama Administration is “spending money America doesn’t have, to kill people they don’t know, for reasons no one understands”. His use of drone warfare is yet another test of principle for those who ever had the audacity to hope.

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• silver749

  Easy, Those Poor unknowing small and maybe pathetic people mean nothing to Americans. Could easily be coronation street, people eating their dinner and blown up with legs, eyes gone if they live.. Watch them on Youtube and see. Lives of non americans especially muslims to people like oBama, zero significance. Maybe worse is the Pakistan PM who accepts money to allow it. 

• grey_rage

  I agree. That is why is is sickening to hear about “cowardly roadside bomb” attacks. The people fighting in their country are fighting invaders in the only way they can. Americans launching death from the safety of their secure remote sites are the true cowards.

• DancingMice

  Productive test has a lot to answer fore ..

• grey_rage

  So there should be. They have worked hard to be despised by the rest of the world, now they are reaping the benefits. 

• http://www.facebook.com/people/No-Hassles/1256485118 No Hassles

  Absolute BS. Obama was very clear about his stand on Pakistan and AQ even during the pre-election days. He said in 2007 that if elected he was going into Pakistan to get OBL. He said that Iraq was a dumb war but Afghanistan was a war that had to be prosecuted because of what happened on 9/11. He repeatedly said he was going to go after AQ whereever they were.

   
  O’samas Nobel lecture was clear on his thoughts about Just War and Peace. He cannot be a full-on peacenik and be the president. His actions and inactions have consequences on the life of people here.

  If you thought that Obama’s statements pre-election and post-election were liberal, then that is a problem with your analysis.

• http://www.facebook.com/people/No-Hassles/1256485118 No Hassles

  One more of those self-serving arguments. Here are some points that you have to consider if that may not tax your brain too much

  – the drone strikes are meant to limit the collateral damage. If you do not care about all those little people, you use the method the pakistani govt uses – bomb them or use F-16s. Read up on articles on IDPs in pak aftr the pak govt has gone into the tribal areas. Which one would you prefer – the drone approach or the pak govt approach?

  – the true responsibility of people who live in pak tribal areas belong to pak government. Responsibility includes their safety and also how they behave towards the rest of the world. If (some) people who live there are attacking the neighbors, it is the responsibility of pak govt to make sure that they stop doing so. If Pak govt is serious about stopping all damage due to drone strikes, they have to clean up this s**t hole. Otherwise, somebody else will have to keep the lid on to spread the stench from spreading.

• http://www.facebook.com/people/No-Hassles/1256485118 No Hassles

  More BS. It is not Meet the new boss, same as old boss” at all. If you care to analyze, Obama’s nuanced but tough approach could not have been more different than GWB’s bravado and stupidity.

• loftytom

   So Obama’s drones are nuanced when they murder children?

  Change and hope? No change, hopeless.

• No_Key

  “He said in 2007 that if elected he was going into Pakistan to get OBL. ”
  Really?! So he knew way back in 2007 OBL was in Pakistan?
  Obama really must be a prescient fellow to have known that 4 years before the CIA.

  “O’samas Nobel lecture was clear on his thoughts about Just War and Peace.”

  OSAMA received a nobel peace prize???!
  Good heavens.
  What a fox news howler!

  “If you thought that Obama’s statements pre-election and post-election were liberal, then that is a problem with your analysis.”

  And with Nobel peace commission too, it seems, who awarded Obama a Nobel Peace prize NOT for anything he had done but on the promises he had made as a presidential candidate to close guantanamo etc etc.

  Also, as this and other articles have pointed out, the cyberattacks on nuclear installations and bombings of civilians would be an act of war by any other nation.

  Just imagine if the RAF had sent over Harriers to bomb IRA funerals.
  I wonder how that would have sat with those Irish US senators, governors and congressmen?

  I also wonder if the Nobel peace prize can be stripped (?) because if there’s anyone who should be struck off the peace prize register, it’s him.

• ricardo lion

  “Killing”: What the Arabs do to each other all the time, what they did to the 300,000 black Christians in Darfur.
  “Occupation”: Of Mesopotamia, 80% of Palestine, North Africa (but not Iberia anymore), by the Muslim Arabs from Arabia. Ask the original inhabitants if they are happy as minorities in their own land. Ask the Copts, the original Egyptians, the Kurds, etc.
  “Settlements”: Arab towns in those regions.
  Israel is the Jewish (the religion of Jesus), democratic (rights for all) and civilised (no civil war, hanging of gays, women stoning, “honour” killing of girls, etc.) country in that dark corner of the world.
  “American Jewish vote”: Idiot. Jews are 2% of the population and have the right to only one vote, like everyone. And they don`t vote for the same candidate.
  “Oppressed people in Palestine (don`t you Arabs have a name for that region?”: Only in the judenrein parts of Palestine, in the autocratic Muslim Arab kingdom of Jordan, in Gaza and the most of Judea and Samaria given to terrorist Arafat and his corrupt PLO.