“The president of the United States is not the Godfather”

Official White House photo by Pete Souza.

It’s odd, you know, when I first read in the NY Times of President Obama’s personal culpability in selecting targets for death by drone, I was stunned.  I believed this would effectively end Obama’s hopes for a second term. Americans simply would not stand for this. 

After all, Obama was originally elected on the basis of his anti-war speech as an Illinois state representative. Recall also that shortly after his inauguration, he received a Nobel peace prize for his lofty vision. We had a right, I thought, to expect this man to lead the nation toward a more ethical and just role in the world.

So then I began to read accusations from Republicans that the Administration intentionally leaked the story to the Times to bolster Obama’s image as a tough, macho leader who had no qualms about dealing death to alleged enemies and any noncombatants who happened to be within range of his drone-fired missiles.

Could this be true?

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen writes:

What is remarkable about the recent leaks is the coincidence -- it can only be that -- that they all made the president look good, heroic, decisive, strong, and even a touch cruel -- born, as the birthers long suspected, not in Hawaii but possibly on the lost planet Krypton. The leak that displayed all these Obamian attributes was the one that said the president personally approves the assassinations of terrorists abroad. He gives his OK and the bad guys are dispatched via missiles from drones.

Cohen continues:

The leak that troubles me concerns the killing of suspected or actual terrorists. The triumphalist tone of the leaks -- the Tarzan-like chest-beating of various leakers -- not only is in poor taste but shreds a long-standing convention that, in these matters, the president has deniability. The president of the United States is not The Godfather.

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Another Al Quaeda leader murdered in America’s permanent robotic global war

Anwar Al-Awlaki

The Obama Administration is celebrating this morning the murder of yet another Al Quaeda leader, U.S. born Anwar Al-Awlaki, who had been operating from Yemen. 

Although it took a crew of Navy Seals to execute Osama bin Laden, American forces reportedly took out Al-Awlaki with a drone attack on a convoy in which he was traveling. 

But hold on: the AP reports that civil liberties groups are questioning our government’s authority to kill an American without trial.

We have to ask ourselves, where and when will the violence come to an end. In a post here several years ago, I quoted Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh, who, in his book, Calming the Fearful Mind: a Zen Response to Terrorism, wrote:

Many of us claim to be disciples of the Buddha, of Jesus Christ, of Mohammed, but we don’t listen to their teachings. Hatred cannot overcome hatred. Violence cannot overcome violence. The bible, the Koran, the Torah, and the Sutras teach us that. But we don’t always believe in our spiritual path. We must think that our spiritual teachings are not realistic, because we have put so much faith in military and financial power. We think that money and weapons can make us strong. But our country has a lot of weapons and a lot of money and we are still very afraid and insecure.

America’s love affair with drones as our weapon of choice in the so-called war on terror, both abroad and possibly here at home, is evidence of our escalating fear and insecurity. 

Tom Engelhardt offers a chilling post on the latest in guarding the empire:

In the world of weaponry, they are the sexiest things around.  Others countries are desperate to have them.  Almost anyone who writes about them becomes a groupie.  Reporters exploring their onrushing future swoon at their potentially wondrous techno-talents.  They are, of course, the pilotless drones, our grimly named Predators and Reapers

As CIA Director, Leon Panetta called them “the only game in town.”  As Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates pushed hard to up their numbers and increase their funding drastically.  The U.S. Air Force is already training more personnel to become drone “pilots” than to pilot actual planes.  You don’t need it in skywriting to know that, as icons of American-style war, they are clearly in our future -- and they’re even heading for the homeland as police departments clamor for them. 

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Al Qaeda tongue-tied in the face of uprisings in the Arab world

New challenges to bin Ladenism

NY Times foreign affairs correspondent Tom Friedman raises some good questions about U.S. involvement in the Middle East and the Arab world.

In this morning's op-ed, Friedman asks:

When one looks across the Arab world today at the stunning spontaneous democracy uprisings, it is impossible to not ask: What are we doing spending $110 billion this year supporting corrupt and unpopular regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan that are almost identical to the governments we’re applauding the Arab people for overthrowing?

He continues:

Ever since 9/11, the West has hoped for a war of ideas within the Muslim world that would feature an internal challenge to the violent radical Islamic ideology of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. That contest, though, never really materialized because the regimes we counted on to promote it found violent Muslim extremism a convenient foil, so they allowed it to persist. Moreover, these corrupt, crony capitalist Arab regimes were hardly the ideal carriers for an alternative to bin Ladenism. To the contrary, it was their abusive behavior and vicious suffocation of any kind of independent moderate centrist parties that fueled the extremism even more. 

Now the people themselves have taken down those regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and they’re rattling the ones in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman and Iran. They are not doing it for us, or to answer bin Laden. They are doing it by themselves for themselves — because they want their freedom and to control their own destinies. But in doing so they have created a hugely powerful, modernizing challenge to bin Ladenism, which is why Al Qaeda today is tongue-tied. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.

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Pulitzer prize-winning Friedman’s educational background gives him additional credibility on today’s topic: he received a B.A. degree in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University in 1975 and in 1978 he received a Master of Philosophy degree in Modern Middle East studies from Oxford.

The Far-Reaching Effects of the Quagmire in Iraq

Brent Budowsky’s hard-hitting op-ed in Tuesday’s edition of the Hill begins:

Democrats in 2008 have an issue more powerful than Kennedy’s campaign against Nixon and the missile gap in 1960, and Reagan’s campaign against Carter championing military strength in 1980.President Bush is so obsessed with Iraq that he damages the war in Afghanistan, contributes to destabilizing Pakistan, fails to kill Osama bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda, and does grave harm to our military and troops.

There’s no let up from Budowsky:

The quagmire in Iraq and grave damage to our mission in Afghanistan continues. The escape of Osama bin Laden and resurgence of al Qaeda continues. The ability of Iran to exploit the Bush blunders in Iraq continues. The damage to our military, the ugly divisions in our nation, and the global loathing of our president are escalating.

There’s more:

Of course, the real war to kill bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda is failing because the obsession with Iraq has stolen manpower, money and unity that is necessary to win this war, and this is the one television ad Democrats should run throughout America.

Budowsky’s piece seems intended to light a fire under the Democrats, but in fact, it should ignite the entire country in preparation for the coming presidential election. This is one op-ed that deserves to be read in its entirety.