"The Lethal Presidency" - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast - 0 views
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The conflation of the issues above - Gitmo, GWOT, drones, waterboarding, etc - is part of the problem. Obama tried to close Gitmo but the Congress wouldn't let him. He never proposed or even hinted that he would end the war on Jihadist terror; in fact, one of his defining moments as a candidate was to defend war as necessary at times in countering evil. He gave a Nobel Peace Prize speech which was centered on Christian realism, not pacifism, as a basis for deciding issues of war and peace. Liberals who had a problem with this presumably still have a problem, but Obama has done nothing that he didn't explicitly say he'd do.
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The difference between him and Bush, moreover, is stark. First and foremost, there is an end to the torture program. For many of us, that was the first non-negotiable deal-breaker from the Bush administration. To bungle two wars, as Bush and Cheney did, is one thing. To throw away the invaluable tradition of decency in wartime was unforgivable. Torture is not, as Bunch would have it, a "difficult issue". It is an easy one. We don't do it or condone it and we bring to justice anyone caught doing it. Obama's failing is in the latter part - but it pales in comparison with Cheney's lawless barbarism.
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Obama has waged the war he promised (against al Qaeda) with minimalist but lethal means (drones). He has been far more successful in killing Jihadists before they kill us than Bush, with Osama the most conspicuous example. He has ended torture; he has withdrawn every soldier from Iraq; and is winding down the Afghanistan campaign. If you are a utopian liberal who projected onto Obama peacenik pretensions he never claimed himself, you can, I guess, be outraged. And the danger of precedent and blowback is real and deserves airing. But the idea that a more moral, more lethal and less casualty-laden fight against al Qaeda is some kind of betrayal of Obama's promise just baffles me. It is not a betrayal. It is a promise kept.