Trump vastly expands drone program compared to Obama

Former president, Barrack Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, earned the ire of anti-war activists by expanding on President George Bush's use of drones.

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During his term, Obama ordered ten times more drone strikes than Bush. By one reckoning up to 90 percent of drone casualties were not the intended targets. No doubt they could still be described as suspected terrorists. President Trump campaigned on a policy of less intervention, often complaining of failed attempts at nation-building and invasions that were misguided. Yet Trump has himself vastly expanded the drone program.

Michael Zenko an analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations summarised the situation:During President Obama’s two terms in office, he approved 542 such targeted strikes in 2,920 days—one every 5.4 days. From his inauguration through today, President Trump had approved at least 36 drone strikes or raids in 45 days—one every 1.25 days.The increase is well over 400 percent. The January 28 Navy Seal attack was included. There is a recent acount of that attack in the Intercept based on a visit to the village atttacked. The article brings the official description of the attack as a success into question.

Zenko points out that there were 3 drone attacks in Yemen on January 20, 21, and 22. There were more than thirty strikes in Yemen on March 2 and 3, and another on March 6. There was also a rare strike in Pakistan on March 1st.

Trump appears to take no notice of the casualties in such strikes unless they involve Americans. In his speech to Congress, Trump praised the dead Navy Seal, Owens, but failed to mention the civilians including women and children also killed. As the Intercept notes:THE RAID IN Yemen that cost Owens his life also killed 30 other people, including “many civilians,” at least nine of whom were children. None of them were mentioned by Trump in last night’s speech, let alone honored with applause and the presence of grieving relatives. That’s because they were Yemenis, not Americans; therefore, their deaths, and lives, must be ignored (the only exception was some fleeting media mention of the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, but only because she was a U.S. citizen and because of the irony that Obama killed her 16-year-old American brother with a drone strike).

While seen by some as a peace candidate no doubt in contrast to Clinton, his support for the military was also evident during the campaign as he openly and often advocated increasing the size of the military. He promised to act more aggressively to defeat the Islamic State. His rhetoric against intervention was obviously just a campaign tactic to woo some anti-war voters.

Trump actually made false claims about his position. He said he opposed the 2003 Iraq war when he supported it. He also claims to have opposed the Libya intervention, but strongly supported it. Trump has even suggested that he might favor US ground troops entering Syria. There already appear to be ground troops there. Zenko notes that Trump is continuing policies that he formally criticized himself policies that spawn the creation of more terrorists.

Former, National Security Advisor for Trump General, Michael Flynn, said: "When you drop a bomb from a drone… you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good." However, Flynn is gone and Trump is not likely to face much internal opposition to his intensification of the drone and other military progams.

Extension of drone program and executive powers part of Obama's heritage

Journalists Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald claim that the Obama administration has left a "deadly legacy" in its employment of presidential power for targeted killing using drones.

The two award-winning journalists argue that Democratic president Obama has been able to perpetrate crimes and repressive policies that liberals would never allow a Republican carry out. The Democratic president, they say, has gotten away with crimes and repressive policies that liberals never would have let a Republican carry out, certainly not with the support of many liberals. Scahill said in an interview on Democracy Now: “The most significant aspect of what President Obama has done, regarding drones and regarding the so-called targeted killing program around the world, is that Obama has codified assassination as a central official component of American foreign policy.”

Just over last year, the U.S. dropped over 23,000 bombs on six countries with Muslim majorities. Scahill believes that liberals and liberal pundits will not maintain the same supportive position about such operations as many do now if a Republican wins the presidency and carries on with the same policies. During his 2007 campaign, Obama had lambasted the destructive policies of the Bush administration, but as president, Obama has not only adopted the same policies but has increased and strengthened them. He has continued indefinite detention in Guantanamo and other places and greatly expanded the drone program from what it was under Bush.

Greenwald says that Obama not only imprisons suspected terrorists without charge or due process or eavesdrop on them as many Democrats had criticized Bush for doing, Obama also targets them for execution. He points out that Democrats have long opposed the death penalty even when criminals are sentenced to death after a full trial, yet Obama claims that he can "target people for death anywhere in the world that he wants, including places where we are not at war, including even American citizens."

Scahill has written a new book called "The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program". The book was a joint project of the staff of the Intercept, the news outlet formed by Scahill and Greenwald along with filmmakers Laura Poitras. Edward Snowden wrote an introduction to the book with can be read on The Intercept. The Assassination Complex is based upon leaked government documents showing how destructive the program has been. Some of the documents were released last October as the Drone Papers.

Among many damaging revelations, one is that during a five-month period, Operation Haymaker, a US program in northeastern Afghanistan, ninety percent of those killed in the attacks were not the intended targets. Investigative journalists and researchers place the number of civilians killed by drone attacks in the hundreds at the least but the program remains secret with little information released. Only recently has the Obama administration promised to release the number of people it has killed.

Obama has insisted that though some innocent people are killed the rate of civilian casualties is far less than those that would be killed by a pilot in conventional war. Experts at the Council on Foreign Relations claim the opposite is true. Scahill thinks that the statistics Obama will release will drastically underestimate the number of civilians killed.

The government considers any male of military age as an enemy unless there is verified evidence to the contrary. As Scahill notes, the system of counting virtually ensures the often zero civilians will be killed: Virtually anyone who is killed in a U.S. drone strike is labeled an “enemy killed in action,” or EKIA, ...until they are posthumously proven to not have been a militant. It is the polar inversion of the basic principle of the justice system: you are innocent until proven guilty.

Scahill along with many others argues that through the drone program the US encourages terrorism, providing terror organizations with recruiting material. Policies that were once publicly opposed during the Bush administration became acceptable The Obama administration has now made the drone program and targeted assassination a key official component of US policy and an important part of his legacy.

US to release numbers killed in drone attacks in 2009

A senior White House aide, Lisa Monaco, Obama's counter-terrorism and homeland security adviser promised to reveal how many civilian casualties and terrorism suspects have been killed since 2009 by the U.S. drone program.

This is the first ever disclosure of such numbers associated with the U.S. controversial drone program. Monaco said the expanded transparency would boost support for drone strikes and other counter-terrorism programs. She said the drone strike program would last "for years to come."

The disclosure will cover not only theaters of actual war such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria but strikes in areas where the U.S. does not have troops such as Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia. In Libya the U.S. is already reported by some to have Special Forces. Monaco did not set any specific date for the release but did say it would be in the coming weeks. Monaco said to the Council on Foreign Relations: “Not only is greater transparency the right thing to do, it is the best way to maintain the legitimacy of our counter-terrorism actions and the broad support of our allies.” The same day that Monaco made the announcement, the Pentagon claimed 150 militants had been killed in a drone strike together with manned aircraft in Somalia.

Monaco said the administration intended to report on casualties annually. However, the Obama administration has only a year left in office. It remains to be seen whether the next administration will deliver yearly reports.

Cori Crider, a lawyer for drone victims, said the move was a step in the right direction but more needed to be done:“In every region where we have pursued an aggressive, secret drone policy, militancy has gotten stronger. It’s not enough to tally up the drones’ body count – we need a thorough reassessment of the program itself.”

Back in February of 2013, Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the armed services committee. claimed drone strikes had killed approximately 4,700 people. Officials have never made it clear whether the CIA and the US military have compiled data on the strikes. Dianne Feinstein of the intelligence committee said in 2013 that CIA drone strikes killed civilians at a single digit rate each year. The same claim was made by John Brennan the director of the CIA. One serious problem is that the US defines any military age male in the area struck as a combatant. Given that the some strikes are "signature strikes" that are made on the basis of the behavior of those being observed rather than knowledge of the identities of those being targeted it is likely that more civilians are being killed. In some instances there have been double tap attacks in which those who come to the rescue of those wounded are also attacked. Many of these people could be civilians. Accounts of casualties vary widely depending on the source. The group Reprieve in 2014 claimed that in Pakistan in targeting just 41 men the US killed 1,147 people.

The US Justice department just recently agreed to disclose more information about how the US carries out drone strikes. The move was in response to a transparency suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Preet Bharara a US attorney and another official agreed to release “a much more detailed explanation of the standards and procedures employed in both capture and lethal targeting counter-terrorism operations.” The promise was made in a letter to US federal judge Coleen McMahon. However, there first needs to be a review to remove classified information.

The ACLU claimed the decision was a victory which would go beyond a 2013 overview of the program provided to the US Congress. Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU's deputy legal director said:“We hope that the administration’s decision to release this critical document reflects a broader commitment to make the lethal drone program more transparent. In that spirit, the administration should also release the legal memos that are the foundation for the program, basic information about those killed in past drone strikes, and detailed investigative files relating to strikes that killed bystanders”,Representatives such as Adam Smith of the House Intelligence Committee sees the casualty assessment as a means of combating propaganda about the casualties caused by drone strikes. He wants Congress to pass a law to require the disclosure.

Obama's drone wars continue with no end in sight

In spite of the fact that recently President Obama announced that a drone strike in Pakistan killed two innocent hostages being held by Al Qaeda, there is no sign of the drone program ending any time soon or that it will even be altered.

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Last Thursday, Obama said he took full responsibility for drone strikes that killed two Al Qaeda hostages in Pakistan. The strikes killed an American, Warren Weinstein,and Giovani Lo Porto, an Italian, along with two American Al Qaeda members. Weinstein was a 73-year-old economic advisor, and Lo Porto a 39-year-old aid worker. Obama gave few details of the operation but officials said that it took place in January after hundreds of hours of surveillance. If there was so much surveillance, how is it that there was so little intelligence about who was with the Al Qaeda operatives?

As Jeremy Scahill points out, the public only finds out about mishaps when journalists investigate. He claims there is very little transparency as to who the intended targets of the strikes were or what the aftermath is like. There appears to be renewed interest in drone attacks once a foreign citizen, especially an American, is a victim, but when civilians of the country targeted are victims there is often only limited press attention usually accompanied by US authorities denying reports of any civilians being killed. Everyone killed is almost always described as a suspected terrorist. While many anti-war and civil rights organizations have criticized the drone program, except for Pakistan, few countries, particularly U.S. allies, have criticized the program.

The UN, however, has been critical a number of times, including reports claiming the strikes were against international law and some of the practices, such as returning to an attacked site or attacking a funeral, being "war crimes." But as Professor Philip Alston, the former special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, points out this has not resulted in much criticism of the program by countries:‘Instead, most states are remaining relatively silent in the face of the evolution of US policies that are entirely inconsistent with international law and deeply problematic from a human rights and international law perspective.’

There is oversight of the program but it is limited. About once every month staff members of the intelligence committees of Congress go to CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia to watch videos of drone attacks. At the headquarters they get to view selected videos and selected intelligence reports supporting strikes. No doubt the intelligence presented and the videos seen are carefully vetted by the CIA before being presented to the staff. This macabre ritual is then presented as evidence that the drone program is rigorously reviewed.

A key official in developing the "targeted killing" drone operations was Michael D'Andrea. Earlier, D'Andrea was head of operations during the development of the CIA detention and interrogation program. In spite of the backlash against rendition and black sites, D'Andrea became head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center where he was a chief architect of the targeted killing operations. Just last month however, D'Andrea was shifted to another position. It is not clear why.

D'Andrea was a strong and persuasive advocate of the drone program and gained supporters in both parties for the program. In particular he gained the support of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who was chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee until January when Republicans took control of the Senate. CIA officials assured her that the program results in hardly any civilian deaths, but different sources come up with wildly different figures on civilian casualties:

Organizations that track drone strikes, like the New America Foundation, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Long War Journal, estimate that drones have killed some 4,000 people, about 500 of them civilians. But these numbers, based on news accounts and some on-the-ground interviews, are considered very rough.Feinstein gave a much lower figure in 2013: "The figures we have obtained from the executive branch, which we have done our utmost to verify, confirm that the number of civilian casualties that have resulted from such strikes each year has typically been in the single digits,”These figures have been shown to be far too low by many investigations. Even though the CIA drone program and the program to capture and question Al Qaeda suspects were run by many of the same CIA agents, the drone program continues to have wide support while the other program was severely criticized and rejected. In March 2013 a Gallup poll showed 65 percent of Americans favoured drone strikes against foreign terrorists in foreign countries. There was much less support if the targets were American citizens. Given the degree of U.S. public support for the drone attacks, there is little incentive to criticize the program as a means of garnering votes.

US drone strike in Yemen kills suspected Al Qaeda militants

 In Yemen's southern Shabwa province local residents reported that a drone strike killed 2 suspected Al Qaeda militants associated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula(AQAP). The two were traveling in a vehicle that was struck in the Rikhwa region of the province. Although the government of US ally Mansour Hadi has been replaced in a coup by Houthi rebels,  drone attacks by the US have continued.

    Already in 2015 there have been at least six US drone strikes. They have killed at least 20 people. In an earlier strike last week reports claim that four suspected AQAP militants were killed in Shabwa. AQAP long fought against the US-supported Yemeni government, but the group is even more opposed to the Houthi rebels and in some local Sunni groups have joined with AQAP to resist Houthi attempts to move into the southern areas of Yemen. The Houthis along with many others in Yemen oppose the US drone strikes. The strikes have often killed civilians as well as militants. While the US acknowledges it launches drone attacks against AQAP in Yemen, it refuses to comment publicly on the attacks. Since 2011 the US has carried out more than one hundred drone strikes in Yemen. Even though the US closed its embassy in February after Houthi rebels took control of the capital and government, it has managed to continue anti-terror operations.

   Another report on the recent attack claims that there were three suspected member of AQAP killed and that the victims had been riding in a pick-up truck according to a military source: "The U.S. attack destroyed a small pick-up vehicle loaded with weapons and explosives in Khora area in Shabwa province late on Sunday night, killing three people inside the car. The al-Qaida gunmen were attempting to move weapons which they looted in the 19th Infantry Brigade last month." 

 A Saudi diplomat who had been held for three years as an AQAP hostage is back in Saudi Arabia after being released yesterday. Abdullah al-Khalidi was the Saudi consul in the southern port of Aden. The Saudi Interior Ministry gave no details of his release except to say that it was the result of "intensive efforts" by the Saudi intelligence agency.

Obama drone campaign drones on during 2014 in several countries

The U.S. drone attack program continued in several different countries during 2014. Although the number of attacks have decreased in countries such as Pakistan, the 400th victim in the country was counted last October.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism claims that 2,379 people were killed by the strikes. The Bureau also says that only 12 percent of the victims actually identified have been linked to any militant organizations. The victims are routinely described as suspected militants. In October of last year Rafiq ur Rehman, a school teacher and his two young children testified before the US Congress about the death of his 67 year old mother as she gathered okra in her garden a year earlier when she was killed by a drone strike. Only five members of Congress bothered to show up.

Drone strikes in Pakistan have declined sharply in recent years from their peak of 128 strikes in 2010 but there were still 22 strikes with 104 people killed in 2014. For the first five months of 2014 there were no drone strikes in Pakistan but the total number killed during the rest of the year was more than in all of 2013. While Pakistani politicians constantly object to the strikes, they continue, and the Pakistani military appears to provide the US with intelligence to help targeting. In Yemen, strikes have sharply increased in number with 116 in total so far, all but one under the Obama administration. The estimated number killed is between around 800 to over one thousand with over 80 of them civilians.In Somalia, 2014 saw the highest number of casualties of any year.

 The U.S. government itself does not release figures on how many they kill through the drone program. The government insists that the drones target only confirmed terrorists. In May of 2013 John Kerry said: “The only people we fire at are confirmed terror targets, at the highest level. We don’t just fire a drone at somebody we think is a terrorist.” However, the administration considers any military-age males in a strike zone as a combatant.

 In 2014, as part of the intelligence authorization bill, a provision was inserted that would have required the administration to report how many civilians and combatants had been killed in US drone attacks. However, the provision was removed at the request of James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence. The provision was removed by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Clapper lied before Congress: Media observers have described Clapper as having lied under oath, having obstructed justice, and having given false testimony. As a person who has even lied to defend American citizen's right not to know Congress was eager to follow his advice. Another bill, the Drone Strike Transparency Act introduced in early 2014 never gained sufficient support to go forward.

The U.S. is now using drones in Syria as part of the war against the Islamic State. Elsewhere, Obama has set out restrictions on drone use that are supposed to ensure there are strikes only where there is "near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured". The administration admits that it will not apply this criterion in air strikes in Syria or Iraq. The Obama limitation on strikes applies only to areas where there is no active conflict. National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden noted that the restriction had always only applied to "direct action" outside areas of active hostilities' as we noted at the time."

 In spite of the fact that the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan supposedly ended the end of 2014, U.S. drone strikes continue:   A U.S. drone strike killed at least three people in Afghanistan's eastern province of Logar Wednesday, according to local reports. Similar attacks as part of a U.S.-led campaign in the central Asian country killed another seven Sunday in the eastern Khost Province. A detailed account of the number of attacks in different countries and other statistics can be found here. Given increased U.S. involvement in Syria and Iraq the number of attacks will probably begin to increase again in 2015.

Press provides selective coverage of Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai has recently received her Nobel Peace prize, an award she deserves much more than people such as Barack Obama or Henry Kissinger who have at times promoted war but who were also awarded the prize.

Malala has spent her life promoting education for children, certainly a noble cause and worth supporting. The western media applauds and publicizes statements such as the one she made to the UN: "..let us pick up our books and our pens, they are the most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen, can change the world. Education is the only solution.” Emphasis upon education alone however, as Ben Norton points out, fails to call attention to the fact that most citizens in underdeveloped countries suffer also from grinding poverty. Malala herself in her statements has not ignored this factor. In the same speech in which she emphasized the role of education, she also emphasized what she called " a glorious struggle against illiteracy poverty, and terrorism." The western media can well applaud her fight for education and against terrorism but there has been little emphasis on her fight against a poverty which helps produce some of the reactionary ideologies against which she is struggling.
  One quarter of the global population live on less than $1.25 per day. UNICEF estimates that 24,000 children under the age of five die every day due to poverty. There are other aspects of Malala's message which are little emphasized in most press accounts among them being her opposition to Obama's drone program. While praising Malala's non-violent approach to change, at the same time many of her supporters may also defend strongly the use of violence in the war on terror including Obama's extensive drone program.

 When Malala met with Obama and his family on October 11 2013 the White House statement stressed Malala's work to promote education of girls: "The United States joins with the Pakistani people and so many around the world to celebrate Malala's courage and her determination to promote the right of all girls to attend school and realize their dreams." In a statement published by the Associated Press on the meeting, Malala said: "I thanked President Obama for the United States' work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees, I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact." There was silence from the White House on the drone remarks.

Not long afterwards, Nabila Rehman, an eight-year-old Pakistani girl was out picking okra in a field when her grandmother was "eviscerated right before her eyes by a US drone strike." She testified before Congress as did her 13-year-old brother who was injured in the blast. While there was some limited coverage in the press of the testimony, there was no praise of that testimony coming from the White House. Only five out of 430 Congressional members bothered to turn up for the hearing. While the Rehmans were testifying, Obama could not attend because he was busy meeting with the CEO of Lockheed Martin that among other activities manufactures weapons for the US military.

An aspect of Malala's views that is even less covered is her opposition to capitalism. In July of 2012 she had taken part in the national Marxist Summer School in Swat. In March of 2013 she sent a message to the congress of the International Marxist Tendency(IMT) indicating her support for socialism: “First of all I’d like to thank The Struggle and the IMT for giving me a chance to speak last year at their Summer Marxist School in Swat and also for introducing me to Marxism and Socialism. I just want to say that in terms of education, as well as other problems in Pakistan, it is high time that we did something to tackle them ourselves. It’s important to take the initiative. We cannot wait around for any one else to come and do it. Why are we waiting for someone else to come and fix things? Why aren’t we doing it ourselves? I would like to send my heartfelt greetings to the congress. I am convinced Socialism is the only answer and I urge all comrades to take this struggle to a victorious conclusion. Only this will free us from the chains of bigotry and exploitation.” Only selected aspects of Malala's world view our allowed to filter through to be emphasized by the media.

Yemen government pays more than $1 million U.S. as compensation to relatives of victims of US drone strike.

The Yemeni government has paid out more than $1 million U.S. to relatives of victims of a U.S. drone strike. Documents verifying the payments show that there was evidence that many casualties were civilians with no Al Qaeda connections.

The documents are signed both by Yemeni court officials as well as relatives of the victims. The payouts all deal with one particular drone strike that hit vehicles in a convoy of vehicles that was part of a wedding party. Fifteen people were killed in the attack with five more reported injured. The attack had been carried out under the auspices of the Joint Special Operations Command(JSOC). The New York Times reported:" ... the Yemen government banned military drone operations after a series of botched drone strikes by JSOC, the last of which was a December 2013 drone strike that killed numerous civilians at a wedding ceremony. Despite a ban on military drone operations the Yemen government allowed CIA drone operations to continue.[3]"  

The documents include many details including the identities of those killed. Among the victims were a father and son who belonged to a Yemeni organization devoted to curbing Islamist militants. While the father survived, the son was killed in the attack. The amounts paid out are many times larger than Yemeni officials earlier reported. The total is more than the US military paid out over an entire year in Afghanistan. US officials have declined to comment either on the strike or any possible role the US might have in the payments. 

Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the National Security Council at the White House, said: “Although we will not comment on specific cases, were non-combatants killed or injured in a U.S. strike, condolence or other ex gratia payments, such as solatia, may be available,” A Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen claimed that it was unlikely that the Yemen government, which is quite short of cash, would make the payments to the families on its own. The payments in this case are far greater than is usual: The U.S. military has in recent years made hundreds of “solatia” payments to compensate victims for errant strikes in war zones, but the payments rarely exceed $5,000 per recipient. 

A 2013 report by ProPublica cited information from the Pentagon indicating that U.S. forces made 219 payments totaling $891,000 in 2012 in Afghanistan. In a speech in May 2013 Obama set out strict guidelines for drone strikes that required that no strikes should be made unless there was “near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured."

Philip Giraldi: The Rogue Nation

Philip Giraldi was a former CIA officer and also was foreign policy advisor to Ron Paul.

This is a searing indictment of US military adventurism, use of drones, torture, and targeted assassination. This is from antiwar.com.

The Rogue Nation
by Philip Giraldi, March 11, 2010

In spite of the fact that the United States faces no enemy anywhere in the world capable of opposing it on a battlefield, the Defense budget for 2011 will go up 7.1 percent from current levels. A lot of the new spending will be on drones, America’s latest contribution to western civilization, capable of surveilling large areas on the ground and delivering death from the skies. It is a peculiarly American vision of warfare, with a "pilot" sitting at a desk half a world away and pressing a button that can kill a target far below. Hygienic and mechanical, it is a bit like a video game with no messy cleanup afterwards. The recently released United States Quadrennial Defense Review reports how the Pentagon will be developing a new generation of super drones that can stay airborne for long periods of time and can strike anywhere in the world and at any time to kill America’s enemies. The super drones will include some that can fly at supersonic speeds and others that will be large enough to carry nuclear weapons. Some of the new drones will be designed for the navy, able to take off from aircraft carriers and project US power to even more distant hot spots. Drones are particularly esteemed by policymakers because as they are unmanned and can fly low to the ground they can violate someone’s airspace "accidentally" without necessarily resulting in a diplomatic incident.

Washington’s embrace of drones as the weapon of choice for international assassination is one major reason why the United States has become the evil empire. Drones are the extended fist of what used to be referred to as the Bush Doctrine. Under the Bush Doctrine Washington asserted that it had a right to use its military force preemptively against anyone in the world at any time if the White House were to determine that such action might be construed as defending the United States. Vice President Dick Cheney defined the policy in percentage terms, asserting that if there was a 1% chance that any development anywhere in the world could endanger Americans, the United States government was obligated to act. It should be noted that President Barack Obama has not repudiated either the Bush doctrine or the 1% solution of Dick Cheney and has actually gone so far as to assert that America is fighting Christianity-approved "just wars," a position disputed by Pope Benedict XVI among others. Far from eschewing war and killing, the number and intensity of drone attacks has increased under Obama, as has the number of civilian casualties, referred to by the splendid bloodless euphemism "collateral damage."


Drones are currently killing people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. It should be noted that the United States is not at war with any of those countries, which should mean in a sane world that the killing is illegal under both international law and the US Constitution. America’s Founding Fathers used constitutional restraints to make it difficult for Americans to go to war, requiring an act of war by Congress. Unfortunately it has not worked out that way. The US has been involved in almost constant warfare since the Second World War but the most recent actual declaration of war was on December 8, 1941. And then there are the special and clandestine operations that span the globe. Apart from Israel, no other country in the world has an openly declared policy of going around and killing people. One would think that the international community would consequently regard both Tel Aviv and Washington as pariahs, but fear of offending the world’s only super power and its principal client state has aborted most criticism. Most nations are resigned to letting assassination teams and hellfire armed drones operate as they please. If Iran were operating the drones and bumping off its enemies in places like Dubai you can be sure the reaction would be quite different.

And it doesn’t stop there. Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder has effectively blocked any inquiry into the use of torture by US government officials, mostly from the CIA. The Administration claims to have stopped the practice but has declared that no one will be punished for obeying orders to waterboard prisoners, an argument that was not acceptable at the Nuremberg trials in 1946 and should not be acceptable now. The United States is a signatory to the international agreement on torture and there are also both federal and state laws that prohibit either carrying out or enabling the practice, so the ruling by Holder is essentially a decision to ignore serious crimes that were committed against individuals who, in many cases, were both helpless and completely innocent. It also ignores the participation of Justice Department lawyers and CIA doctors in the process, involvement that most would consider both immoral and unethical. Worst of all, it lets off the hook the real war criminals, people like George Tenet and those in the White House who approved the practice. Tenet, one recalls, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a $4 million book deal. He still teaches at Georgetown University. Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who made the legal arguments for torture are now respectively a tenured professor at Berkeley and a federal appeals court justice. One assumes that the actual CIA torturers continue to be employed by the federal government or are enjoying a comfortable retirement. So much for accountability for war crimes under President Obama.

Finally there is assassination. On February 3rd Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair commented during a congressional briefing that the United States reserves the right to kill American citizens overseas who are actively "involved" with groups regarded as terrorist. Involvement is, of course, a very slippery expression providing maximum latitude for those seeking to make a case for summary execution. The death list involves a due process of sorts in that a government official makes the decision who shall be on it based on guidelines but it does not allow the accused to challenge or dispute evidence. It should also be noted that no one in Congress objected to the Blair statement and the media hardly reported the story, suggesting that tolerance of illegal and immoral activity now pervades the system. As former Reagan Deputy Attorney General Bruce Fein has commented, the claimed authority to suspend one’s constitutional rights overseas can be extended to anyone in the United States by declaring one an enemy combatant under the terms of the Military Commissions Act. Jose Padilla was denied his constitutional rights to a fair trial even though he was an American citizen and was arrested in Chicago, not overseas. Can we anticipate extrajudicial killing of American citizens in America as part of the war on terror? Of course we can.

Three strikes and you’re out, Mr. Obama. Your government stands for preemptive killing and missile strikes on people living in countries with which America is not at war, lets torturers and torture enablers go free, and has asserted the right to assassinate its own citizens anywhere in the world based on secret evidence. Ronald Reagan once described his vision of America as a shining city on a hill. Over the past ten years the shining city has become the ultimate rogue nation, pumped up with power and hubris in spite of the clearly visible signs of decline and moving inexorably towards a catastrophic fall.