![]() ![]() While “targeted” in the most absolute sense, the first Obama-era drone strike-three days into his presidency- didn’t even hit its intended Taliban target and instead hit an unrelated home, maiming a child and killing three of his family members. But the actual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq hadn’t involved the indiscriminate bombing or deliberate targeting of civilians that had been a routine part of even “good” wars like World War II and with glaring exceptions like Abu Ghraib, our troops in theater had displayed a remarkable level of discipline and professionalism.” “I considered the invasion itself to be as big a strategic blunder as the slide into Vietnam had been decades earlier. When Obama takes a moment to condemn the invasion of Iraq, for example, he also defends it as comparatively humane. In other spots, Obama tries to spin the United States’ role or downplay it all together. drone strikes against al-Qaeda targets in the had been generating increasing opposition from the Pakistani public.” Obama and Gates were deeply skeptical of that, Obama writing that “U.S. Near the end of a Situation Room meeting where Obama and senior administration officials are trying to plan a raid on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound, William McRaven (then-commander of Joint Special Operations Command) shares that his plans were premised on avoiding a firefight with Pakistani authorities and if confronted, would likely “hold in place” until diplomatic authorities could negotiate safe passage. couldn’t negotiate with Pakistani officials on the ground during the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. In fact, it’s one reason why he felt the U.S. ![]() In a rare moment approaching something like critical self-reflection near the book’s end, Obama seems to acknowledge that his drone program cost America hearts and minds rather early on in his presidency. Didn’t know that would be a strong suite of mine.” After the extrajudicial drone strike killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011, Obama reportedly said, “Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Obama claims he “took no joy in any of this,” saying “it didn’t make me feel powerful,” but those sentiments don’t exactly match his comments in the book and elsewhere. As the article reveals, however, Obama began to classify "all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants" and thus "embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in.” Any male over the age of 18 was considered “military-age.” In fact, a 2012 article by two Bureau of Investigative Journalism researchers would later put the civilian death toll between 282 and 535 civilians for those three years, with over 60 children killed. In May 2012, the New York Times reported on a secret drone "Kill List" (which Obama's memoir reveals chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel was "obsessed" with) that Obama seemed to have constructed to avoid civilian casualties. In another reference, Obama recalls balking at the assertion from Vice President Dick Cheney that "my administration wasn’t treating al-Qaeda as a military threat.” He scoffs at how that “was hard to square with the additional battalions I’d deployed to Afghanistan or the scores of al-Qaeda operatives we were targeting with drone strikes."ĭata from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism makes it clear that “scores” of civilians were also targeted in Obama’s strikes.Ģ57 drone strikes took place from January 2009 to January 2012, with a minimum of 241 civilians killed. He proceeds to say that this reality necessitated “operating an arsenal of lethal drones to take out al-Qaeda operatives” and lauds the NSA for “ new supercomputers and decryption technology worth billions of dollars to comb cyberspace in search of terrorist communications and potential threats.” The revelation that the NSA was spying on American citizens on a massive scale was, of course, one of the defining scandals and legacies of Obama’s presidency. ![]() And yet the world they were a part of, and the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead." I wanted somehow to save them-send them to school, give them a trade, drain them of the hate that had been filling their heads. "In places like Yemen and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the lives of millions of young men like those three dead Somalis (some of them boys, really, since the oldest pirate was believed to be nineteen) had been warped and stunted by desperation, ignorance, dreams of religious glory, the violence of their surroundings, or the schemes of older men. ![]()
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