The Obama administration has a doctrine. It’s called the doctrine of silence. A radical shift from President Bush’s war on terror, it has never been set out to the American people. There has seldom been so big a change in approach to US strategic policy with so little explanation.
I approve of the shift even as it makes me uneasy. One day, I suspect, there may be payback for this policy and this silence. President Obama has gone undercover.
You have to figure that one day somebody sitting in Tehran or Islamabad or Sana is going to wake up and say: “Hey, this guy Obama, he went to war in our country but just forgot to mention the fact. Should we perhaps go to war in his?”
In Iran, a big explosion at a military base near Tehran recently killed General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, a central figure in the country’s long-range missile programme. Nuclear scientists have perished in the streets of Tehran. The Stuxnet computer worm has wreaked havoc on the Iranian nuclear facilities.
It would take tremendous naïveté to believe these events are not the result of a covert American-Israeli drive to sabotage Iran’s efforts to develop a military nuclear capacity. An intense, well-funded cyberwar against Tehran is ongoing.
Simmering Pakistani anger over a wave of drone attacks authorised by Obama has erupted into outright rage with the death of at least 25 Pakistani soldiers in a Nato attack on two military outposts near the Afghan border.
The Pakistani government has ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to end drone operations it runs from a base in western Pakistan within 15 days. Drone attacks have become the coin of Obama’s realm. They have killed twice as many suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda members as were ever imprisoned in Guantánamo.
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One such drone attack, of course, killed an American citizen, the Al Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, in Yemen a few weeks ago.
The US government says precious little about these new ways of fighting enemies. But the strategic volte-face is clear: America has decided that conventional wars of uncertain outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan that may, according to a Brown University study, end up costing at least $3.7 trillion are a bad way to fight terrorists and that far cheaper, more precise tools for eliminating enemies are preferable — even if the legality of those killings is debatable.
The American case for legality rests on the 2001 Authorisation for Use of Military Force Act, which allows the president to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against persons, organisation or nations linked to the 9/11 attack, and on various interpretations of the right to self-defence under international law.
But killing an American citizen raises particular constitutional concerns; just how legal the drone attacks are remains a vexed question. And Iran had no part in 9/11.
In general, it’s hard to resist the impression of a tilt towards the extrajudicial in US foreign policy — a kind of “Likudisation” of the approach to dealing with enemies. Israel has never hesitated to kill foes with blood on their hands wherever they are.
This is a development about which no American can feel entirely comfortable.
Political choices often have to be made between two unappealing options. Obama has done just that.
He has gone covert — and made the right call.
So why am I uneasy? Because these legally borderline, undercover options – cyberwar, drone killings, executions and strange explosions at military bases – invite repayment in kind, undermine the American commitment to the rule of law, and make allies uneasy.
Obama could have done more in the realm of explanation. Of course he does not want to say much about secret operations. Still, as the US military prepares to depart from Iraq (leaving a handful of embassy guards), and the war in Afghanistan enters its last act, he owes the American people, US allies and the world a speech that sets out why America will not again embark on this kind of inconclusive war and has instead adopted a new doctrine that has replaced fighting terror with killing terrorists. (He might also explain why Guantánamo is still open.)
Just because it’s impossible to talk about some operations undertaken within this doctrine does not mean the entire doctrine can remain cloaked in silence.
Foreign policy has been Obama’s strongest suit. He deserves great credit for killing Osama bin Laden, acting for the liberation of Libya, getting behind the Arab quest for freedom, winding down the war in Iraq, dealing repeated blows to Al Qaeda and restoring America’s battered image.
But the doctrine of silence is a failing with links to his overarching failure on the economy: it betrays a presidential reticence, coolness and aloofness that leave Americans uncomfortable.
©2011 The New York Times News Service