{"id":131092,"date":"2012-06-11T10:21:23","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T14:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?p=131092"},"modified":"2012-12-26T16:04:05","modified_gmt":"2012-12-26T21:04:05","slug":"obama-drone-doctrine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/06\/11\/obama-drone-doctrine\/","title":{"rendered":"No “Change” In Obama’s Drone Doctrine"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Article:<\/strong> Don’t Look For “Change” In Obama’s Drone Doctrine<\/a> by Savannah Cox in The Speckled Axe.<\/p>\n

The Text:<\/strong> We see it in the headlines every day: Obama will be on the right side of history. In the social stratosphere, he righted himself recently via \u201ccoming out\u201d of his own moderate and pragmatic closet in favor of gay marriage (albeit at the state level). To justly associate himself with the \u201c99%\u201d majority, Obama aligned himself with aging plutocratic dissenter Warren Buffett while his wife Michelle sat next to Buffett\u2019s now-famous secretary at the State of the Union Address. Meanwhile, his fumbling attempt at affordable healthcare\u2014one whose roots can easily be traced to the work of none other than presidential hopeful Mitt Romney\u2014awaits its fate this June. This is the hope and change that Shepard Fairey so colorfully promised back in 2008, right?<\/p>\n

Not necessarily. Amid the flurry of Obama\u2019s so-called \u201cnovel\u201d policies and plays on the political chess board, many of the same strategies of fact manipulation, deceit and political posturing spring eternal. No, he\u2019s not Bush\u2014and thank God for that. But in terms of counter-terrorism, when the Obama administration\u2019s strategies employ the same disregard for dehumanized civilians via drone strikes and the simultaneous generation of misleading nomenclature to soften the political blowback that would occur if, God forbid, Americans really knew how their tax dollars were being spent in the name of \u201cfreedom,\u201d one has to wonder how different the two presidents actually are. Yes, we\u2019re scheduled to exit Afghanistan and Iraq for good in the coming years, but when the administration\u2019s drone war only emblazons the cause of the same groups against whom American troops fought extensively and expensively for nearly a decade, what have we really accomplished?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Recently, the New York Times released a troubling story regarding Obama\u2019s seemingly above-the-law approach to counter-terrorism throughout the Middle East. While Obama counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan lauds the alleged sensibility and precision of drone strikes against \u201cspecific individuals,\u201d the facts belie the false praise. In Yemen, where the US has recently steeped its drone strikes, the Times reports that the Defense Department can actually target suspects whose names they don\u2019t even know.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just as bad in Pakistan. There, \u201cMr. Obama had approved not only \u201cpersonality\u201d strikes aimed at named, high-value terrorists, but \u201csignature\u201d strikes that targeted training camps and suspicious compounds in areas controlled by militants.\u201d By the way, these are the same \u201cmilitants\u201d that the Obama administration defines not by their illustrated and imposing threat to national security but rather by their mere appearance as military age males unfortunate enough to be located within a strike zone.<\/p>\n

Thus the administration substitutes hard intelligence for indefensible hunches: if a guy looks like he\u2019s up to no good, he probably isn\u2019t and should be dealt with accordingly. It is curious, though, that the stereotyping the Obama administration came out so vehemently against regarding the death of Trayvon Martin doesn\u2019t really apply outside of US soil\u2014or at least when they\u2019re the ones doing it. In this case, then, it seems that the only \u201cchange\u201d the Obama administration actually provides lies within its ever-shifting moral code.<\/p>\n

Naturally, the populations affected by the drone strikes are responding accordingly. Only six months into 2012, there have already been a staggering 21 US drone strikes in Yemen, which is 7 more than the number of similar US-led strikes in 2010 and 2011 combined. And while it is true that the drones have been effective in eliminating what the Obama administration deemed al Qaeda militants in a \u201clow-cost\u201d manner, murder is still murder and the potential consequences are just as damning. Even for those fortunate enough not to fall within the line of fire, the experience remains equally traumatic. Says David Rhode, a New York Times reporter once held hostage in Pakistan, \u201cit\u2019s terrifying for everyone\u2026you have no idea when this missile is going to come and kill you. There\u2019s a sense that your sovereignty is being violated.\u201d<\/p>\n

As such, the deaths of these US targets have also demonstrated the strikes\u2019 uncanny ability to curry civilian sympathies toward the fallen al Qaeda members and by extension the al Qaeda cause. Since 2009, when Obama initially authorized drone strikes in Yemen, the number of al Qaeda members in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) hasn\u2019t decreased; rather, it has more than doubled. Unfortunately for Obama as well as the rest of us currently financing these fruitless air strikes, AQAP\u2019s own ambitions have increased as well. Just last week, a suicide bombing rocked the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and resulted in the deaths of over 100 people. Now, some of the more angered Yemeni \u201cmilitants\u201d are calling for the one thing that makes the DC doves wince and the hawks screech: jihad against the United States. Wasn\u2019t that the platform that led a few men to orchestrate the single largest loss of life from a foreign attack on US soil a little over a decade ago? For that matter, if an administration truly considers itself a dissident of familiar strategical flops and the font of political progress, isn\u2019t repetition something they\u2019d try to avoid?<\/p>\n

Regardless, it\u2019s election season and we\u2019re in the midst of a miserable global recession. And for once, Obama should be thankful for it. The incumbent\u2019s counter-terrorism policy will be a secondary issue and the hypocrisies manifest within his draconian doctrine will serve as mere two-minute talking points for the Romney campaign this fall. But if left unaccountable for his counterproductive and frankly lawless counter-terrorism strategies in the Middle East and South Asia, this \u201clow-cost\u201d solution will only perpetuate the problems that defined the quagmire that was the Bush presidency. Where\u2019s the change in that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Article: Don’t Look For “Change” In Obama’s Drone Doctrine by Savannah Cox in The Speckled Axe. The Text: We see it in the headlines every day: Obama will be on the right side of history. In the social stratosphere, he righted himself recently via \u201ccoming out\u201d of his own moderate and pragmatic closet in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nNo "Change" In Obama's Drone Doctrine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Obama-authorized drone strikes are ineffective and lawless; when will he be called on it?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/06\/11\/obama-drone-doctrine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No "Change" In Obama's Drone Doctrine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Obama-authorized drone strikes are ineffective and lawless; 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