The New York Times ruined everybody's Tuesday with a thorough article on the evolution of Obama's counterterrorism measures, ranging from Obama's bungled non-closing of Guatanamo Bay to his legal maneuverings around the ending of rendition to his personal approval process over what's being called a "kill list," a collection of names of terrorists (we think/hope) for elimination via drone strikes.
The portrait that emerges is one of a fast-learning, hands-on President, who rapidly changed course from his detached mismanagement of the Guantanamo Bay fiasco to preside personally over the details of counterterrorism decisions. It also shows Obama the cold pragmatist, using his legal skills to widen the scope of rendition even as he appeared publicly to prohibit the practice, and negotiating harsher practices for terrorists overseas to shore up civil rights for terrorists caught stateside. And last, it shows a president comfortable with the use of force on behalf of the United States, one who understands the moral weight of assassination but who nonetheless employs the practice with little regret.
The meat of the article covers the controversial drone strikes, which allow the U.S. to target terrorists (we think/hope) without endangering American soldiers. Obama comes across as overly cognizant of the human toll extracted in drone strikes, as he demanded that their increased use be accompanied by more considered application with an express aim of lowering civilian casualties. Those casualties did drop—to zero, a number many in the intelligence community find suspiciously low. Indeed, the Obama administration has spearheaded a method of counting casualties that makes everyone killed an enemy combatant, under the theory that Al Qaeda is so select and secretive an organization that anybody within an arm's reach of them must be complicit in their actions. (HuffPo headline: "U.S. Drone Policy: Standing Near Terrorists Makes You A Terrorist.") The result is that we kill first and categorize later.
This practice is complemented by the weekly meetings between Obama and intelligence officials in which they pore over biographies of suspected terrorists and decide who goes on the "kill list," a collection of potential targets for drones, resulting in what one official called "baseball cards" of assassination targets. Obama personally approves the more squeamish names, including targets who might be children, attempting, along with right-hand man and former Bush CIA official John Brennan, "to apply the 'just war' theories of Christian philosophers to a brutal modern conflict."
The drone strikes are considered successful by the standards of modern warfare, having eviscerated the ranks of Al Qaeda while reducing civilian casualties (ahem) without endangering American lives. But the use of drones is highly controversial, especially to the extent that their ease and efficiency makes killing too tempting of an option. This is an accusation now being leveled at the Obama administration, which some say may be killing suspects to avoid the legal and moral complications of capturing them. Here's the money paragraph from the Times article:
Yet the administration’s very success at killing terrorism suspects has been shadowed by a suspicion: that Mr. Obama has avoided the complications of detention by deciding, in effect, to take no prisoners alive. While scores of suspects have been killed under Mr. Obama, only one has been taken into American custody, and the president has balked at adding new prisoners to Guantánamo.
Many, including Hillary Clinton, have also chided the administration for becoming reliant upon drone strikes to the point of playing "Whack-A-Mole" (their words, not mine) with terrorists rather than rooting out the causes of terrorism. In fact, the practice of drones has become so widespread that it is now a new recruiting tool for terrorist organzations, potentially increasing the terrorist ranks on one end as it decreases them on the other.
Time and again, Obama is shown as learning from the mistakes of his early actions to tailor a more specific and effective counterterrorism policy. After a sloppy attack in Yemen angered Yemeni civilians, Obama tightened the reins on his counterterrorism operation, something he is seen as doing many times throughout his tenure. The takeaway from the article shows a president committed to the use of force but sensitive to its moral implications and expecting his staff to be equally so.
But the moral seriousness with which he takes drone strikes and similar actions may have convinced Obama that his imprimatur is enough to justify the actions to the broader pubic. Obama, after campaigning on transparency and releasing Bush DoJ memos early in his administration, declined to release the memo justifying the killing of American citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki without a trial. While the decision may have been taken as gravely as possible within the administration, the secrecy of its legal justification is to no one more unacceptable than to those who saw abuses of such power under the George W Bush administration. Michael Hayden, Bush's CIA director, counseled Obama against secrecy in government counterterrorist actions, pulling this nugget from his too-little-too-late file:
This program rests on the personal legitimacy of the president, and that’s not sustainable. I have lived the life of someone taking action on the basis of secret O.L.C. memos, and it ain’t a good life. Democracies do not make war on the basis of legal memos locked in a D.O.J. safe.
For all this, Obama's counterterrorism record is considered one of his main successes, a rarity for a Democrat. Obama has two high profile kills that eluded the more openly pugnacious Bush administration, and has largely realized the leaner, more efficient counterterrorism strategies on which Donald Rumsfeld sold us upon entering the Iraq War. But the Times article demonstrates how much of this perception of Obama as a strong and judicious commander of counterterrorism is an illusion made up of rhetorical and statistical feints, political negotiations and secretively devised moral and legal logic.
The portrait raises the long range question of what happens to all these mechanisms when Obama and his staff is no longer in charge. While Obama is described as alert to the gravity of kills lists and drone strikes, and Brennan is praised for his "moral rectitude," these are ultimately men making decisions to end the lives of others with almost no oversight or legal repercussions. Are we to trust those around them, who assure us, don't worry, these guys are taking it seriously? What happens if or when they don't? And what happens if it's Mitt Romney and a cabal or war-happy neoconservatives in there?
Sure enough, no sooner was Al-Alwaki was between the crosshairs than Obama abandoned the limitations he set upon his own policies, approving a strike that killed Al-Alwaki's family along with him. If the killing of one American citizen is all it takes for the author of these counterterrorist policies to reform their principles, do they count as principles at all?
The worst problem of all may be that Obama's perceived liberalism—the article makes pointed note that Obama was "a realist who, unlike some of his fervent supporters, was never carried away by his own rhetoric"—has allowed him to escape much of the criticism directed at Bush for roughly the same practices. Without direct and sustained scrutiny, Obama's practices threaten to become the norm, if they haven't already. Via Glenn Greenwald at Salon, Obama has "converted what were just recently divisive and controversial right-wing assaults on our values into fully entrenched bipartisan consensus." Which means regardless of whether it's Obama or Romney in the White House at this time next year, the practices described by the Times article will most certainy be continuing.
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