A Tale
of Two Presidents: The One We Voted For – and Obama:
Recent leaks reveal a frightening reality: In fighting terrorism, we have resorted to engaging in terrorism
By David Sirota
This is a tale of two presidents – the one we hope we have and the one we actually have. It is also a tale of two kinds of violence – the surgical and the indiscriminate – and how the latter blurs the distinction between self-defense and something far more sinister.
Recent leaks reveal a frightening reality: In fighting terrorism, we have resorted to engaging in terrorism
By David Sirota
This is a tale of two presidents – the one we hope we have and the one we actually have. It is also a tale of two kinds of violence – the surgical and the indiscriminate – and how the latter blurs the distinction between self-defense and something far more sinister.
This story
began last year, when the White House told the New York Times
that President Obama was personally overseeing a “kill list” and
an ongoing drone bombing campaign against alleged terrorists,
including American citizens. Back then, much of the public
language was carefully crafted to reassure us that our country’s
military power was not being abused.
In the
Times’ report – which was carefully sculpted by Obama
administration leaks – the paper characterized the bombing
program as “targeted killing” with “precision weapons.” It
additionally described “the care that Mr. Obama and his
counterterrorism chief take in choosing targets” and claimed
that as “a student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas
Aquinas, the president believes that he should take moral
responsibility” for making sure such strikes are as precise as
possible.
The
unstated deal being offered to America was simple: Accept a
president claiming unprecedented despotic authority in exchange
for that president promising to comport himself as an
enlightened despot – one who seeks to limit the scope of
America’s ongoing violence.
Many of
the president’s partisan supporters would never have agreed to
such a bargain if the executive in question were a Republican.
They would have expressed outrage at news that, according to the
Times, the president was “count(ing) all military-age males in a
strike zone as combatants” even when those males happen to be
innocent civilians. But because it was a Democratic commander in
chief, many liberals tacitly agreed to the deal, reassuring
themselves that this was a president who would only use violence
in the most narrow ways.
That,
though, brings us to the second part of this parable – the part
that unfolded earlier this month when blood-soaked reality
crashed the myth. In this latter chapter, we learned that the
president isn’t personally overseeing “targeted” killing – he is
evidently overseeing indiscriminate killing.
David
Sirota is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, magazine
journalist and the best-selling author of the books "Hostile
Takeover," "The Uprising" and "Back to Our Future." E-mail him
at ds@davidsirota.com,
follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.
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