

Judge, Jury and Drone Master

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Judge, Jury and Drone Master by http://www.clarioncallnews.com/tag/barack-obama/





Talk about starting your military career at the top, with guns blazing. On point, Obama's leaked, instantly notorious drone war represents the next costly surge against stealthy insurgents, perhaps a few genuine terrorists. But thanks to his high moral intentions, confirmed by the NY Times, these still qualify as "devoutly non-ideological" strikes.

Otherwise, we might equate Obama with full-fledged GOP crusaders who broke international rules and went badly rogue in Iraq. Nevertheless, this warrior campaigner follows the Queen's Rules of Roguery: never retreat, just reload when gunning down home-grown, though unindicted, citizen evil-doers. Yet should we not worry that Obama's military legacy (pace G. Wallace) will blaze into history as "drones today, drones tomorrow, drones forever?"

The rousing campaigner who once critiqued "dumb" militarism and Bush rights violations finishes his "Full Romney," flip-flopping on rights violations his campaign assailed by charging ahead as hands-on Drone Master. I tell you, change is getting painfully hard to believe in. Unprecedented White House Hit Squads, however, fuel the Obama bio-pic to come, chock-a-block with bin Laden contracts, rendition, tribunals, secret prisons, even cyber attacks on saber-rattlers.

Think of the high drama, the biting irony of the Nobel Peace Prizer who embraces the Bush-McCain's Violence-First brigade, with musical motifs of "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran." Alas, the poignant tragedy of "The Unbearable Heaviness of Being Obama." Democratic hands on the drone console displace nightmares of other secretive hawks running virtual cockpits, one V.P. Richard Cheney.

Oh no, not another war criminal

In retrospect, Bush's "Mission Accomplished" mock-up glimmers darkly as bad theatre, displaced by Obama's self-appointed deployment as top gunner for real-time, real-world action. No one will again question this neo-liberal's lack of military grit, nor the obvious appeal: the commander-in-chief brooks no opposition when Drone Master, a chilling Decider. That contrasts starkly to his squirrelly Congressional jawboning, pathetic administration narratives, or compliance to GOP hysterics. Instead of redirecting America's worship of militarism with an alternative heroism, Obama drones turn terrorist thugs (per PBS' Frontline) into martyrs and dead civilians into recruiting champs, enhanced by the Great Satan's juggernaut.

While haphazard terminations don't win local hearts or minds, they confirm Obama's commitment to this nation's worst, most outmoded ideological failure since WWII: the delusion that war resolves cultural-political-religious strife, that scattered violence grants peace, stability and good will. Au contraire, across Vietnam, Korea, Africa and the ever-contentious Middle East. How many counterproductive invasions must fail before we abandon this twisted national mania?

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