Obama Orders Drone Assassinations
* What: Obama’s practice of using drones or guided missiles to assassinate terrorism suspects without trial in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. The program was begun under GW Bush but greatly expanded under Obama, in part to make loss of pilots’ lives less likely. Many or perhaps almost all of those killed are not suspects but civilians.
* The Body Count: 1800-3521 dead, from 11-98% of them innocent civilians. The enemy combatant death rate is very suspect, and the higher estimate is more likely true. The US military counts as “combatants” any male of military age in the area. For those killed who actually were Al Qaeda or Taliban, most estimates are that all but a few dozen of them were not leaders but low ranking foot soldiers.
* Who Also Gets the Blame:
* The Bush administration began drone assassination in 2002 in Yemen and in Pakistan in 2007, though the Obama administration carried out at least five times as many drone attacks as Bush's and expanded them to Somalia in 2011. Both Bush and Obama also used drone assassinations in Colombia and Mexico. (See Section Five.)
* The US Congress, which was informed of the attacks from the beginning. To Congress's credit, a number of them have strongly protested the killings under both presidents.
* Democratic Party supporters, who do not condemn what Obama does when they would condemn exactly the same actions were they carried out by GW Bush.
* Some supporters of drone assassinations blame Al Qaeda and Taliban for often living among civilians. This points to the contradictions of war on terrorists. If they are soldiers in a war, then by law the war against them is bound by the articles of war. If they are criminals, they are criminal suspects with rights to civilian trials. Either way, there is no justification for targeting that leads to likely a very high number of civilian deaths.
* The CIA carries out the attacks, rather than the US military, in part because they are not bound by the rules of war. National security rules make it far more difficult for drone operations to be held accountable.
* By the Obama administration's own account, once a week he and his top military, national security, and foreign policy advisers sit and discuss which persons will be targeted for assassination. They have a series of flash cards with names and information for possible execution victims. Each person sifts through the cards and then deal out which persons they believe should be executed, though obviously the President has the final say.
* How did Obama come to this? Many believe he was elected on promises to be entirely different from GW Bush or any Republican successor. In fact, from the beginning Obama's wartime differences with GW Bush were far more cosmetic than real. On domestic issues, especially social ones, the two were very different men. But on foreign relations, Obama always promised merely to be a more efficient version of Bush. Both men are empire builders.
* For the Iraq War, Obama had long criticized it as “the wrong war.” Not because it was unjust, inhumane, or morally wrong, but on grounds of expediency. To Obama, Iraq was the wrong war because the right war was in Afghanistan. True to his words, Obama greatly expanded the number of US troops in Afghanistan while reducing troops in Iraq as much as conditions and public pressure from conservatives allowed him to. Indeed, US troops (except a contingent at the embassy and military advisers) finally left Iraq not because of American pressure, but because an Iraqi government had enough and ordered them out. (See Section Eight.)
* The drone program marks another dramatic difference between Bush and Obama. Where Bush ordered torture that led to over 100 deaths (See Section Five), some of which may be homicides, Obama ordered a program of targeted assassinations by drones that led to possibly over 3,000 deaths. Thus by any reasonable standard, Obama has caused far more murders than Bush, by a factor of dozens more. The situation becomes more bizarre when seeing that Obama’s conservative critics rarely denounce him for drone assassinations. They largely prefer to attack him for saving poor people from a lack of healthcare. Kill innocents in the Mideast, no problem. Save poor Americans from dying, they will fight for years and proclaim healthcare to be “tyranny.”
* Drone killings began in Yemen in 2002, but they were relatively rare for the first seven years of GW Bush’s presidency. He finally started using them widely in his last year in office. But the high point for the number of drone strikes, deaths, and civilian casualties caused by drones is in 2010, under and ordered by Obama.
* This expanded use of government assassinations includes two Americans, one a teenager, the other accused merely of speaking in support of Al Qaeda. In March 2013, Senator Rand Paul filibustered Congress to protest drone assassinations. Paul is rightly thought of as blindly ideological and a flake by most other congressmen and most Americans, and his libertarian views are typically viciously callous with regards to human life most of the time. But this filibuster, and Paul's reasons for doing it, were enormously popular.
* Yet only a month later, Paul reversed himself and supported drone strikes. Paul's earlier speeches showed a concern that, hypothetically, drones could be used to kill Americans on American soil, and not just for terrorism but for dissident views. Actually, Paul's early concern was true. Two Americans were already been murdered by drones, and one of them for his speech, not terrorism.
* That this murder program could be carried out so systematically, in spite of eight tenths of the public opposing it, and not get opposition from more than a few congressmen, is appalling but not surprising. Presidents from both parties ordered it, and thus both parties worked to cover their leaders in office. American protests against the assassinations are largely limited to activists such as Code Pink, Iraqi Veterans Against the War, and Quaker and Catholic groups.
* Overseas is quite different. Pakistani protests against drones involve many thousands, and the strikes turned a public already strongly anti-US even more angry. Pakistani courts declared the drone strikes illegal, against both Pakistani and international law. The Pakistani government demanded the strikes be done from Pakistani soil and military bases, where they could be limited by the Pakistani government. The Obama administration refused for obvious reasons: If it were up to Pakistani leaders, few or none of the strikes would happen.
* In Yemen, the strikes had an even worse outcome. A US drone killed the deputy governor of a province by mistake. In response, some Yemenis launched an attack against the government, and two attacks on an oil pipeline.
* There is no question that drone assassinations anger other nations, making them even more hostile to the US. There is also no doubt they kill many innocents. Every study released by the government claiming success or a low rate of killing civilians has been met with skepticism, since the evidence presented is dubious. So why does the assassination program continue?
* There seems little doubt Obama thought drones a better option than trying to kill by bombing runs. Reagan and both Bushes tried killing opponents overseas during their presidencies. Reagan tried to assassinate Libyan dictator Qaddafi Both Bushes tried to assassinate Saddam Hussein. Clinton considered killing Bin Laden. He declined only since Bin Laden was meeting with members of the Pakistani Parliament and the attack would have created a huge incident.
* Technically, assassinations of foreign leaders were banned since a presidential order by Gerald Ford in the 1976, after a CIA scandal exposed just how often the agency tried to kill other government leaders. For official enemies though, presidents, Congress, and the public often just ignored that order. Reagan did so when he tried to kill Qaddafi, and Bush Sr. did so for Saddam Hussein. An order signed in 2004 by GW Bush allowed for assassination of terrorists. But nowhere does the order allow for killing any male in an area, as is done with drone assassinations, or killing based on political views.
* Obama and his advisers were blinded by the promise that drones could be “surgical,” killing only their intended targets and no one else. As covered elsewhere, this is a common but unrealistic fantasy that presidents keep talking themselves into. (See Section Three.) Presidents from FDR to LBJ to Reagan to now Obama have shown themselves to ultimately defer to military leaders when questions of civilian casualties come up. Military leaders by their very nature worry most of all about winning a war. They too in turn try to convince themselves of the most optimistic claims of weapons makers and researchers about how a weapon's precision.
* Obama finally did realize just how ineffective drone attacks are. The moral issue seemed to bother him also. The first drone strike was only three days after he became president. Told the strike was aimed at a high level Al Qaeda leader, he approved it. When told the strike not only failed to kill its target, it killed innocents, Obama seemed visibly disturbed. Yet he continued to order more attacks.
* Finally, in a speech at National Defense University, Code Pink protester Medea Benjamin shouted at Obama over the drone issue. Obama interrupted his speech to respond, saying, “The voice of that woman is worth listening to.” After the speech, drone attacks dropped. Some analysts noted the drop in attacks fit with the withdrawal of US troops in Afghanistan, that attacks supposedly once used to kill terrorists were actually being used as artillery against targets in Pakistan, targets that US planes could not have bombed without an international incident.
* Such distinctions matter little to many in international law. Jurists in several nations still call for Obama to be arrested. Likely, much like Bush and his administration of torturers, Obama and all who took part in ordering drone assassination may be unable to travel to most nations outside the US once he is out of office, not without facing arrest and trial.
* And that is as it should be. Drone assassination and the widespread killing of civilians are the most serious mark against Obama that keep him from being an otherwise good humanitarian president. He can point with pride to the many saved by healthcare, fewer lives ruined by racist drug laws, ending the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars (even if he had to be pushed out), and a treaty with Iran that may be as landmark as Nixon's opening to to China.
* But such accomplishments understandably mean little to the families of many dead civilians in five nations. Nor, for that matter, does the fact of Obama's conscience being bothered by the death of innocents matter, except to point out the man is not innately evil. The fact remains, he still ordered the strikes, knowing many innocents would die. Much like FDR, LBJ, and Reagan, his guilt remains, no matter what his other good qualities or accomplishments, no matter whether his supporters find him charming or agree with him ideologically. As of this writing, Obama agreed to end most strikes in Pakistan due to pressure from the Pakistani government. Future editions will update this entry.