The New York Times Reveals Obama’s Shadow War, and a Whole Lot More

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Manhattan, New York, United States of America (Free-Press-Release.com) August 26, 2010 -- (To view full article check out my blog: http://scholarlywritingreviewed.com/)

The Times’ story about Obama’s secret operations against Al Qaeda sheds some light on the little known campaigns being coordinated in Yemen and throughout the world, which still remain largely shrouded in mystery. In addition, the article carefully weighs the pros and cons of such conduct. Consequently, it implicitly conveys much more than may be intended about Obama’s handling the war on terror.

The “shadow war,” which began under Bush and has been vastly expanded by Obama, features a drastic escalation in assassination, intelligence gathering, and surveillance missions in a dozen different countries, from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to Somalia and Sudan.

But it is in Yemen where we see the heart of the “scalpel” strategy, as Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser calls it, in action. It is here that militants trained the failed Christmas Day Bomber, and, as the Times reports, “some American officials believe that militants in Yemen could now pose an even greater threat than Al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan.”

As such, the article details a handful of known air strikes in the region. One such operation killed a Qaeda operative named Jamil al-anbari, while another destroyed dozens of civilians. Perhaps most murky is the December 17th attack that took out a handful of militants but also a local governor, who was supposedly trying to persuade the enemy to surrender.

It is also important to bear in mind that the nascent efforts in Yemen require more time to attain their full potential. As the Times notes, all the CIA’s drones are currently tied up in Pakistan, leaving the units in Yemen with only “cruise missiles loaded with cluster bombs” that are fired from Navy ships offshore. These weapons are far less accurate and make collateral damage extremely difficult to contain. And so, as a senior official explains, “it will take time to develop and grow” the capabilities in the region. The ultimate goal here, as Obama administration officials point out, is not to fire missiles but to train “elite Yemeni units, providing equipment and sharing intelligence to support Yemeni sweeps against Al Qaeda.”

The Times does an excellent job at articulating the benefits and dangers of these efforts. Are they keeping us safer by killing militants or are they actually harming us by offering the enemy a tool to recruit those who were previously on our side or indifferent? Furthermore, in the shadow war military units now engage in missions that were traditionally reserved for surveillance/intelligence groups and vice versa, often rendering it impossible to distinguish between the two. This significantly compromises Congressional oversight capabilities, and it also places captured Americans in harm’s way, since as spies, not soldiers, they might be denied Geneva Convention protections. Last, as Micah Zenko details in his new book, historically, America has had little success with such operations since the Cold War ended.

I applaud Obama’s efforts for multiple reasons. First, it illustrates that he’s utilizing virtually every militaristic means available to combat terrorists. But in addition, and more important, it suggests that he has decided to break with a Bush administration approach in a subtle but significant manner. Yes, it is true that Obama has disappointed many on the left by continuing almost all of Bush’s controversial counterterrorism tactics such as unlimited surveillance capabilities, an intense reliance on independent paramilitary contractors and conventional foreign warfare, with the one exception being his executive order to abolish torture. He of course has gotten less than no credit from the right, which seeks to portray him as soft on terror. But I would argue that Obama has handled the threat of Islamic extremism in a way that is clever and creative, even though it has gone totally unappreciated, much like most of his initiatives.

Unlike Bush, whose war on terror was merely metaphorical, as he used the slogan to justify most of his foreign policy decisions, such as Iraq, which, although previously home to an evil dictator whom the world is undoubtedly better off without, was not a center for global Jihad and therefore not initially a crucial battleground against radical Islam, Obama has launched a literal war against Islamist terror. From the war in Afghanistan, which must never again become a safe haven for the Taliban and more importantly for Al Qaeda, to the strikes in Yemen and Pakistan, where nihilistic practitioners of global Jihad are plotting our destruction, Obama has started the first serious effort to root out Islamic radicals. It’s astonishing that it took nearly a decade since 9/11 for our government to begin this campaign, but here it is.

Perhaps even more impressive and admirable, however, is what Obama has not done...

al qaeda     Bush     drone strikes     New York Times     Obama     shadow war     war on terror     Yemen