President Personally Oversees Terrorist ‘Kill List’

President Obama in the Oval Office with, on the left, Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, and John O. Brennan, his top counterterrorism adviser. (Pete Souza/The White House)

A NATO airstrike killed al-Qaida’s second-in-command in Afghanistan on Sunday and a story in the New York Times Tuesday suggests who ordered the strike.

New York Times: Secret ‘Kill List’ Tests Obama’s Principles

According to Scott Shane’s reporting, President Obama has put himself at the head of a secret process to choose whether terrorists should be killed or captured, “of which the capture part has become largely theoretical,” he reports.

When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises … it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.

“He is determined that he will make these decisions about how far and wide these operations will go,” said Thomas E. Donilon, his national security adviser. “His view is that he’s responsible for the position of the United States in the world.” He added, “He’s determined to keep the tether pretty short.”

Shane and his colleague Jo Becker interviewed dozens of former and current advisers who say the president “personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda” is unprecedented.

Guest:

Scott Shane, New York Times reporter

We welcome comments from all of our listeners. Post below. Please stay on topic and be civil. Comments may be moderated by us, but you are solely responsible for the content of your comments.

ghoffman

I think that targeted strikes on known terrorists is far more preferable to invading a country or bombing a whole village, or sending our troops in to be wounded or killed just to get one or two terrorists. If you have to fight your enemies with force this is the way to do it.
J Frog

Wondering about the significance (or insignificance) of international borders when it comes to drones. Are we able to ignore borders simply because we have the technology to ignore borders? What are the ramifications? Are we violating any international laws? Or are we within our rights because these countries are “harboring” these terrorists. Seems rather unilateral and politically messy.
Info

This reporting fits in well with various efforts to portray the president as “tough on terror”, which is important in an election year, as “tough 0n crime” or “tough on drugs” have been in the past. The public opinion creation will continue with the release of “Zero Dark Thirty” around the time of the November election. I know the movie has been moved to December, but the trailers and promotion will be underway before the election.

Shane is doing a good job passing along the tidbits laid out for him. I don’t know what’s worse, the propaganda, or the fact that the President can openly admit to sentencing people (including Americans) to death on the mere suspicion of terrorism, to the praise of his “liberal” followers.
- maryann
  
  Don’t you just love that left wing hypocrisy. If this was a republican president, they would be going crazy and this would be the first topic on the news. What a bunch of cowards.
cv

President Obama is going after members of a terrorist group that was responsible for the attacks of 9/11. He is using technology, and not sending in our sons and daughters. I would imagine that most of the critics of the drone strikes are those without family members in harms way.
- Info
  
  Nope, that “you must hate the troops” trope doesn’t fly. He’s going after “accused” and “suspected” terrorists, some who are not even known by name, and some who are American citizens. That kind of due-process-free killing would have had Democrats up in arms during the previous regime.
  
  Your “troops” trope is even more irrelevant here, since the objection is not over the method of killing used. You know what, some of us who oppose this actually HAVE served in the military, so take your jingoistic BS and sit on it. And if you’re inclined to call ‘em terrorists cuz the big man in chief said so, perhaps you missed this from the NY Times. See, no civvies killed, by definition!Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
  - Info
    
    Hmmm, sadly the formatting of the post didn’t carry over. The quote I added begins with “Mr. Obama embraced…”
Ben

“Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the U.S. military machine to turn.”"It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms.”– John Stockwell, former CIA official and author

As Major General Smedley D. Butler stated in the 1930′s— War Is A Racket.

Still is.
R.

I think earlier comments miss an important point: the President has taken his role as Commander in Chief seriously in a way that other Presidents have shied away. One could say that Obama has taken on a role to spare those under him. If that is accurate perception then it is an impressive rejection of both “plausible deniability” that plagued Viet Nam and the ideological ignoring of realities during the Second Gulf War.
- mattlove1
  
  Then let’s get the impeachment started, now.
mattlove1

I like the comments somebody left at Salon:

“NPR’s Robin Young just did the best hagiography
of Obama EVER on this topic. She and the Times reporter go over how
Obama is a student of Aquinas’ “just war”. Then they reveal the real
reason he wants such close involvement in who to kill today is because
he really, really, really cares about avoiding civilian deaths. He even
asks about the ages of people he’s about to kill. What a mensch!

We have Brennan as priest, morally advising the most ethical warrior
president ever! (I didn’t make up the priest thing.) WOW! I feel so
much better!

Check out today’s “Hear & Now” for this amazing piece of propaganda.
I have not seen anything this thorough nor wide ranging in it’s level
of BS!

BTW, there’s a quick go through about two drone programs. The
disciple of Aquinas, the holy warrior who really cares only scrutinizes
one of those programs. I wonder why such a mensch isn’t scrutinizing
them both? Wouldn’t the same ethical issues arise in any case of drone
use? Just asking!”

�
I really thought we would have pulled back from this rush to fascism by now. Maybe we’re not going to pull out of this moral free fall this time.
Teh

The perpetual fake war on terrorism continues.
Manufacture enemies and sell them to the public via the mainstream media which is part of that bigger racket called MIMAC. Thats the Military Industrial Media Academic Complex.

Keep the masses frightened, confused, sedated and unhealthy and they will buy all this crap from the ruling elite and their puppets in Washington.