This week the New York Times ran a fascinating, detailed study of the drone war being fought by Barack Obama as he decides which alleged terrorists will be targeted by the American military:
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…
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…
Nothing else in Mr. Obama’s first term has baffled liberal supporters and confounded conservative critics alike as his aggressive counterterrorism record. His actions have often remained inscrutable, obscured by awkward secrecy rules, polarized political commentary and the president’s own deep reserve.
You can read the piece in full here, which reminded me of Lynne Featherstone’s comments on Obama before his election:
Barack Obama: George W Bush Mark 2?
I’ve always been slightly sceptical of (now) Democrat Presidential candidate Barack Obama…Now I’m worried even more – because he’s arguing the case for unilateral military action – in this case saying the possibility of bombing Pakistan without any discussion with Pakistan, the UN or anyone else would be OK.
* Mark Pack is Party President and is the editor of Liberal Democrat Newswire.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
From Norman settlement to a civic square
Northern Ireland debates the future of its railways in 1957
Church Green video
Thinking of standing for election or re-election next year? Helpful questions to consider
Chloe
Peter Martin
expats
Alison C
David Raw
6 Comments
We worry on the UK about the government snooping our emails, rightly so. But the use of drones to assassinate alleged terrorists is a far bigger violation of civil liberties. It means deciding the guilt of someone without recourse of legal proceedings. It puts the lives of others at risk, including innocent people. Liberals should be up in arms about this.
Jeremey Browne is the Foreign Office minister in charge of human rights. Is he making representations to the US government asking them to stop doing this? Is he trying to get NATO to agree not to use these tactics? What about the British government?
A very interesting article.
Al-Qaeda kllled over 3000 people in 9/11, without any kind of fair trial. This is war, it happens all the time and throughout history, and war really is about incapacitating the enemy’s resources – including by killing combatants. It is perhaps better that the president has the final say, rather than some anonymous military officer – if the electorate know this, then they can choose someone they feel will say right.
For years populations in democracies have lived with Presidents and Prime Ministers having the last say in a nuclear war that can kill millions, even destroy the planet. Should these relatively small numbers of executions be more questionable?
Suspending an enemy’s human rights is normal in war. Rather, the problem seems to be that the decision-making process is not open to inspection and debate. and so is less likely to be effective and more easily corruptible than it would otherwise be. One part of the debate could be whether the actions might be counter-productive – creating more new terrorists as well as antagonising whole nations.
I’m afraid there is no moral high ground to be had from this article.
When it comes to the middle east we (UK), are as complicit as any, in the wrongdoing. Let’s not forget that Bae Systems have an £85billion industrial contract with Saudi Arabia. And the Kingdom of SA, is a country that not only, has no intention of giving its own people democracy, but is quite happy to send its troops to quash dissent in Bahrain, with the blessing of UK and USA.
Remember that when dodgy dealings and bribes to Saudi Arabia, were all the rage a few years ago, Tony Blair, shut down the FSO investigations, so that the truth would never come out. A £286 million deal sealed the fate of any further attempts to delve into the truth.
Again I make the point, we have no moral high ground, move along, nothing to see here.
@Richard we are not at war against Pakistan or Yeman. Of course we are at war with al Qaeda but they are not a nation state. Until recently we were at war with the IRA, but we did not support a policy of bombing West Belfast or Londonderry. Indeed the US would have been very critical of us if we had done that. So I do not think your point is a fair one.
We are at war with Al-Qaeda but we can’t kill their combatants because Al-Qaeda is not a nation state? Perhaps then this is a new kind of war which needs new international norms?
What rules of international law, or what international conventions, might apply for war with a non-nation-state that bases itself in one or more nation-states? What if those nation-states are failed or corrupted states? What if the failure or corruption has been brought about in part by the actions of the non-nation-state? And who is to judge?
It is indeed peculiar that the US feels itself free to enter and execute people in Pakistan, perhaps less peculiar in Yemen where the state seems less competent. But entering and killing is what the Al-Qaeda enemy seem to do all the time.
The thing about Obama is that although he campaigned as a liberal on a platform of change, once in government he has behaved as a tool of the biggest of vested interests – Wall Street, medical insurers etc.
More narrowly, the proper action against terrorism is policing, and we should not fall for the framing of it as ‘war’ nor the snake oil ‘solutions’ that this suggests. There is a word for extra-judicial killings – ‘murder’ and we should not forget this. Adam Curtis has an excellent post on just how wrong counter insurgency typically goes in practice.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/06/how_to_kill_a_rational_peasant.html
@ Richard Dean. It is perhaps better that the president has the final say, rather than some anonymous military officer Do you suppose that the President checks for himself? Or does he perhaps take a recommendation from, ahm, some anonymous military officer. Military intelligence is frequently faulty (remember those phantom WMD which were the excuse for the Iraq War?) which in the case of drone strikes is reportedly being finessed by deeming that all casualties must have been terrorists. Great! ‘Colateral damage’ (itself a dodgy bit of NewSpeak) is eliminated by definition.