Drones and strange bedfellows: Why neocons are showing Obama some love
And why liberals are starting to turn a cold shoulder. As John Brennan heads into his confirmation hearing, it's apparently opposite day in Washington
Finally, President Obama's ramped-up drone war is big news, says Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic. With "kill list overseer John Brennan" facing his CIA directorship confirmation hearing Thursday, and threatened resistance from some senators, the White House leaked a white paper outlining its justification for drone strikes against al Qaeda leaders — even U.S. citizens — and agreed to show its secret legal rationale to the congressional intelligence committees. So, "how is everyone reacting to the unprecedented attention being paid to drone strikes?"
That isn't all that surprising, says The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. "The white paper is naturally being denounced on the anti-antiterror left, which only shows how out of this world these critics are." (Watch Jon Stewart lay out the liberal case below.) And if national security hawks are defending Obama on this issue, it's because the white paper shows that "Obama has embraced the unilateral, even pre-emptive powers that George W. Bush used in prosecuting the war against al Qaeda."
Well, the really striking — and disturbing — part of the white paper isn't the Obama team's legal rationale for extrajudicially blowing terrorists to smithereens at will, including U.S. citizens, says Tom Junod at Esquire. That's been "remarkably consistent" throughout the Obama presidency. What's new and important here is the inkling we get "of what the king's ministers are whispering in the king's ear."
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The white paper is "certainly not something that makes the breast swell with pride," says Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast. But the "question of whether an American forfeits his due process rights when he joins an enemy army is a complicated one," and I'm not sure anyone in Obama's shoes would act very differently.
Of course, there's been a lot of soul-searching and pontificating about Obama's drone war, says Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post. But there's a reason Congress hasn't made much of a stink about the issue over the past four years. "Put simply: Americans love drones." A series of polls shows that Americans' support for drone strikes "is not only wide but also bipartisan," and if conservatives are more forgiving of Obama now, perhaps it's because more Republicans than Democrats approve of the strikes. How about killing American terrorist suspects — "the question that stands at the heart of the recent flare-up in Congress"? In a Washington Post/CBS News poll a year ago, two-thirds approved.
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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