I support the drone program that is bringing the fight to Al Qaeda and the Taliban within Pakistan, but I do find it interesting how quiet the American left has been as President Obama has executed his “kill list” that he believes is necessary to protect America. These drone strikes have reportedly killed hundreds of civilians as well. However, former President Bush for authorizing enhanced interrogation, which he thought was necessary to protect America is vilified by the same people:
It was not a theoretical question: Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.
Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation. [New York Times]
You can read the whole article at the link, it is an interesting read.
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1:39 am on May 31st, 2012 1
Move over, Clinton Body Count! Here comes the Obama Body Count!
3:55 pm on May 31st, 2012 2
” I do find it interesting how quiet the American left has been as President Obama has executed his “kill list” that he believes is necessary to protect America.”
People have been desensitized after having seen hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Who’s to blame for that?
4:05 am on June 1st, 2012 3
What exactly is the criteria you use for determining that the American left is quiet about this?
3:39 pm on June 18th, 2012 4
A Google search finds shockingly little criticism of the “kill list”. Here’s TomDispatch, and here’s Glenn Greenwald at Salon. But if your idea of the left is the Democrats, don’t expect to find many of them criticizing Obama over this.
3:58 pm on June 18th, 2012 5
And JFK is still lionized by the left and the media (redundant).
4:27 pm on June 18th, 2012 6
So, USinKorea, are you OK with the president having a kill list?
4:33 pm on June 18th, 2012 7
This is not a contradiction from what he said he would do. Remember how much he was criticized in his election campaign for saying THIS?
Anyone who claims to be surprised now just has selective memory.
His use of the term “actionable intelligence” is significant. It came up often in the debate over whether Clinton did enough to go after Bin Laden. The Clinton people claim they gave clear direction that he could be killed if he were found. Some, inside the intelligence community claim they had opportunities to kill him but didn’t have the clearance. The hangup seems to have been at the head of the CIA, George Tenet. Remember, he of the quotable “Slam Dunk” assurance. Well, maybe during the Bush administration he started to over-compensate for his gun shyness during the Clinton administration, because back then none of the reported Bin Laden sightings were good enough for him, so he would report that he didn’t have “actionable intelligence.”
So maybe the lesson Obama picked up, even before he was elected, was to be more hands on and involved in “the process.”
According to the reports, when Bin Laden was finally taken out, there were many who advised against it, including in the DoD and CIA because they didn’t have confidence in the reliability of the intel. The President took it upon himself to decide it was good enough (actionable) and he “called the shot.”
4:48 pm on June 18th, 2012 8
Since USinKorea brought John F Kennedy into the thread, we might ask if Kennedy was a liberal. Conservapedia says this:
“Kennedy was basically a conservative, but he had to appeal to a primarily liberal base, so he offered symbols for the liberals while following a conservative course in foreign and domestic policy. After his death Kennedy’s legacy was picked up by liberals, and there is a vague notion to the effect that Kennedy was a liberal. He was actually more of a conservative..”
and in a footnote says:
“The best studies of Kennedy’s relations with liberalism are William E. Leuchtenburg, In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan (2001) pp 63-120 … ; Alonzo Hamby, Liberalism and Its Challengers: From F.D.R. to Bush (1992)”
The footnote concludes with an overt opinion:
“Leuchtenburg is a liberal and Hamby is a conservative; both are excellent historians.”
7:27 pm on June 18th, 2012 9
6 – When a nation(s) (Pakistan) is unwilling or unable to police its territory to prevent something like global terrorism, then it has to be dealt with.
Since I don’t see the “global community” lining up to use conventional military force against such nations, something else has to be done.
I’m not happy with a “kill list.” I believe heavy oversight needs to be done on such things. But, given the nature of the threat, I am willing to accept such things.
If the “United” Nations were a real democracy, formed by democratic nations, all willing and capable of living and enforcing a global rule of law, then an Obama hitlist would mean the US should arrest and hand him over to a International Criminal Court.
But, we don’t live in Nirvana…We live in the world we live in…
So, yes, I’m currently OK with even a liberal Democrat American president having a kill list in our contemporary government….
7:33 pm on June 18th, 2012 10
#8 Kennedy was a Cold War warrior. Beginning to actually read about his life when I was in high school was a big eye opener into —- just how full of sh@t human society is…
The man had been (and continues to be) made into a saint by the left – which, of course, means the media and entertainment industries and academia – and so many of the teenagers around me idolized him, though they really knew next to nothing about him beyond the fact pop culture icons idolized him.
But what I read him say and do sure didn’t sound like what I’d heard the left of my own time say and do…
It helped me understand the world is chunked full of poop…
10:18 pm on June 18th, 2012 11
USinKorea, what is this left of which you speak? Perhaps the non-existent liberals who had nothing to do with the death of the Chicken Man?
Or perhaps guys like Garry Wills and Roberto Mangabeira Unger, whom Obama disgusts?
11:24 pm on June 18th, 2012 12
Well, gosh, Glans, I guess since you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. I’ve been so blind so much of my life — seeing such a non-existent thing…
11:46 pm on June 18th, 2012 13
First, if there is someone out there with Americans (or our allies) on THEIR kill lists, I’m certainly ok with them being on OUR kill list.
Second, arguing left and right, race etc has become a moot point. There is only one color that counts in American politics – GREEN.
As far as policy, the conservatives want to limit our freedoms and thoughts with religion and the liberals want to do so with bureaucracy. What difference does it make?
1:35 am on June 19th, 2012 14
USinKorea, there is no significant left in Roswell, GA, the Atlanta suburb where the Chicken Man died. Across the country, there is a tiny, feeble left. It despises Obama, and it doesn’t lionize Kennedy.
2:15 am on June 19th, 2012 15
Basically, Americans are baby killers. Countless innocent people including babies were killed by Americans vent on revenge. If Americans weren’t so pro-jew, then Arabs wouldn’t be so mad at Americans. Quit killing babies and get out of Afghanistan.
6:24 pm on October 1st, 2012 16
Drones are now in the arsenals of over seventy countries. The USA has led the way, and others are determined to catch up. Some day soon, drug cartels may have them. Law-abiding individuals, too. Surely the right to keep and bear arms includes drones. Peter Bergen of CNN says we’re in a dangerous new world.
1:30 pm on November 9th, 2012 17
Information, satellites, and drones figure in President Obama’s national security plans for the twenty-first century. Alfred W McCoy explains at TomDispatch.