AFTER he first took office in 2009, US President Barack Obama avoided the use of the phrase “global war on terror,” preferring instead “overseas contingency operation.” Did it change the lawless nature of the war his predecessor George W. Bush launched in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks? The record of the last four years shows that Obama has embraced and employed every one of his predecessor's tools and methods, some with more vigor. For example, drone strikes, one of the most brutal features of the war on terror, have grown eightfold under a president who is a Nobel Peace laureate. More to the point, Obama has not found anything wrong with continuing extraordinary acts like indefinite detention without charges and the targeting of citizens of other countries. And Guantanamo which the president says has become “the symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law” is still open only because Obama, despite his campaign promises, has shied away from a confrontation with Congress. This is the background against which we should assess Obama's address to the National Defense University on Thursday in which he tried to redefine the war on terror. The most important point in the speech was Obama's statement that he would work with Congress to “refine, and ultimately repeal” the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force that has served as the legal authority for far-flung attacks on suspected terrorists. On Guantanamo, the president said that he would lift an executive branch hold on the repatriation of 59 prisoners from Yemen and indicated that he would press Congress anew to lift other restrictions that have made it impossible to close the facility. Will Congress side with the president? We should remember that Obama and his predecessor have followed their policies with the wholehearted approval of lawmakers in both parties. If anything, some of the lawmakers have been more hawkish than President Bush. Nobody wants to be seen to be “soft” on national security. This places many constraints on a president even if he is a pacifist. So we should not expect an end to targeted killings, but only a willingness to establish more rigorous standards for the targeted killing of suspected terrorists away from a battlefield. In his speech, Obama mentioned that he had signed a document on Wednesday that would allow targeted killings only if a suspect posed a “continuing, imminent threat to Americans” and could not otherwise be captured. Obama did not say he would stop drone strikes. All he would say that is such strikes would henceforth be limited to scenarios in which there was virtually no risk of civilian casualties. Here again we see a reluctance to grapple with the moral and legal issues associated with the drone war, indefinite detention and other harsh and brutal measures that have become integral parts of the war on terror. In essence, Bush's war will continue but under a different name. Insanity, they say, is doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result. The war on terror has only created more and more enemies in more and more places for America without eliminating the threat of terrorism. Doing the same thing again and again under a different label is not going to produce a different result.
