[Peace-discuss] Obama's war record

[Carl G. Estabrook]

Obama’s War Record Should Appall Progressives
by Sheldon Richman, December 1, 2011

“Why are liberals so desperately unhappy with the Obama presidency?”  
asks New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, a self-proclaimed “Obama  
apologist.”

He answers his own question: “ Liberals are dissatisfied with Obama  
because liberals, on the whole, are incapable of feeling satisfied  
with a Democratic president.”

See? It isn’t Obama’s fault. It’s something in the so-called liberal,  
or progressive, psyche. (“Liberalism” originally meant a philosophy of  
maximum individual freedom, free markets, and minimum government, not  
today’s support for intrusive, comprehensive bureaucratic management.)

One wades through the 5,000-word essay hoping to witness Chait at  
least acknowledge that Obama has let his supporters down with his “war  
on terror” policies. But all we get is this:

Obama … has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes—expanding  
targeted strikes against Al Qaeda (including one that killed Osama bin  
Laden), ending the war in Iraq, and helping to orchestrate an  
apparently successful international campaign to rescue Libyan  
dissidents and then topple a brutal kleptocratic regime.

Excuse me? Progressives — who properly savaged George W. Bush for his  
autocratic presidency, civil-liberties flouting PATRIOT Act,  
undeclared war on Iraq, use of detention and torture at Guantanamo and  
elsewhere, and warrantless surveillance — are supposed to be happy  
with Barack Obama, who has essentially carried on most Bush policies,  
even kicking them up a few notches?

If we listen to Chait, there is nothing at all disappointing about  
Obama’s expansion of drone attacks in Pakistan and Somalia, with their  
routine “collateral damage” to innocents; his flagrant violation of  
the War Powers Resolution (not to mention the Constitution and his  
campaign promise) with his intervention in Libya; his intensification  
of the war in Afghanistan; his sanctions (an act of war) against Iran;  
his broken pledge to close Guantanamo; his support of indefinite  
detention without charge; his policy of assassinating even American  
citizens abroad without due process; his renewal of the PATRIOT Act;  
his placement of Marines in Australia with the words, “The United  
States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay”; his failed  
attempt to lift the UN ban on cluster bombs; or his invocation of  
state secrets to keep torture victims out of court.

Chait thinks Obama should get credit for “ending the war in Iraq” —  
but hold on. The December 31, 2011, withdrawal date is set in the  
Status of Forces Agreement negotiated between the Iraqi government and  
the Bush administration. Obama tried — but failed — to persuade Prime  
Minister Nouri al-Maliki to let U.S. troops stay longer. As it is,  
they will simply be moved down the road to Kuwait, and a large  
contract mercenary force will likely be left behind at the humongous  
embassy in Baghdad.

For Chait and his ilk, these all must count as “foreign policy  
successes.”

And what about torture? Nothing upset Progressives more during the  
Bush years. Toward the end of the administration, the criminal policy  
was abandoned and was forsworn by Obama. Yet the detention center at  
Bagram airbase in Afghanistan has been called “worse than Guantanamo”  
by Daphne Eviatar, an attorney for Human Rights First. Adds John  
Glaser of Antiwar.com,

There are now 3,000 detainees in Bagram, up from 1,700 since June (!)  
and five times the amount there when Barack Obama took office. Many of  
them have not been charged, have seen no evidence against them and do  
not have the right to be represented by a lawyer, aren’t given fair  
trials, and the U.S. claims it is not even obligated to explain why  
these people are caged.

A U.S. special operations “black site” at Bagram features “sleep  
deprivation, holding detainees in cold cells, forced nudity, physical  
abuse, detaining individuals in isolation cells for longer than 30  
days, and restricting the access of the International Committee of the  
Red Cross,” according to Jonathan Horowitz’s investigation for the  
Open Society Institute.

Finally, in a move that bodes ill for the future, Obama refuses to  
criminally or civilly investigate Bush administration officials for  
illegal torture of prisoners. He won’t even empanel a “truth  
commission” to bring the facts before the American people. Future  
administrations will thus have little to fear when they break the law.

Most progressives are silent about Obama’s shameful record. But it may  
explain the disappointment Chait can’t understand.

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation  
in Fairfax, Va., author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the  
Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine. Visit his blog Free  
Association at www.sheldonrichman.com. Send him email.

*	*	*

Casualties in Afghanistan Soar in Last Two Years

Most of the American and Afghan killed wounded have occurred after  
Obama's surge strategy, with little to show for it

by John Glaser, December 03, 2011
| Print This | Share This | Antiwar Forum
In over a decade of war in Afghanistan, about half of all Americans  
killed in action and two thirds of those wounded have done so in 2010  
and 2011, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

At the time the report was published on November 16, 1,723 Americans  
had died for the war in Afghanistan and 14,837 had been wounded. In  
just the past two years, 890 have been killed and 10,060 have been  
wounded.



The figures serve as a stark illustration that President Barack  
Obama’s decision to surge troops and double down on the war in 2009  
has not been a success. Assurances from administration officials and  
military leaders that the war effort is seeing positive results seem  
to be belied by the dramatic rise in American casualties for elusive  
gains.

The report also offers figures of civilian casualties in Afghanistan,  
which it says should be thought of as “guideposts rather than as  
statements of fact” given the unreliability of estimates. Attempts to  
measure Afghan civilian casualties did not even begin until 2007, but  
since then the number killed and wounded as a result of the war – at  
least those that have been reported –  is approximately 21,844,  
according to the report (11,007 killed and 10, 837 wounded).







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