The New York Times has a big feature out about the President personally approving every single unmanned drone attack, and boy is the BBC’s US President editor distraught. It’s been making the rounds of the media today, lots of debate, and Mardell is not taking it well.
Is Obama’s drone doctrine counter-productive?
It doesn’t make the President look bad in the mainstream media, but it sure angers the anti-war crowd. The report features several high-ranking Administration figures, and even Mardell realizes that they’re talking with His approval. It was clearly coordinated with the New York Times as an opening move in the official election campaign now that the Republican race is finally settled. I’m not sure this is going to go over very well on either side, and I don’t think it’s going to give Him any kind of boost in approval. What I think may be going is that this was all going to be revealed in a book due out soon, and the White House coordinated with gave some interviews to the New York Times to give His side of the story in an attempt to head that off at the pass.
The President has to tread a very careful line on the war against Islamist military and terrorist action. On the one hand He needs to keep the anti-war crowd on side and withdraw the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. On the other, He has to reassure the rest of the country that He’s still taking strong action to fight our enemies. So on one side He’s ending the official war business in Iraq and Afghanistan, drawing criticism from those who say it’s retreat and leaving a mess before our work is really done, but on the other side He gets to have Bin Laden’s head figuratively on the spike outside the Tower of London.
These drone attacks are supposed to help Him walk that line, and it’s pretty obvious from the NY Times piece that’s the message He’s trying to send. He’s telling the people whom Mardell loathes as wanting justice “from the barrell of a gun” that He’s still keeping us safe. He’s also telling the anti-war crowd that He’s really on top of things, and doing this to avoid civilian casualties and not to worry because He has the moral authority to make these decisions. I guess when you win the Nobel Prize for Peace, you get to choose your targets.
And it’s killing Mardell inside. So he spends most of his piece giving you different voices critical of the whole drone process, the usual journo trick for expressing views by proxy. Some say they’re murder, he writes. Some say they’re illegal, and other say the strategy doesn’t work. Then he frets that the President will find the “sci-fi” aspect too attractive anyway, which is him expressing his disapproval of the drone attacks. Not a single word from anyone holding the point of view that maybe killing Al-Alwaki or Zawahiri might have prevented more attacks on civilians or troops or anything of the sort. It’s all negative. Regardless of which side of the issue one is on, there can be no question that this isn’t a balanced or impartial take.
It’s not difficult to guess which side of the issue Mardell is on. One can almost hear him sighing as he types the words. This warmongering continues to be the only one of the President’s policies about which Mardell is critical or has written anything negative. He eventually had to figure out a way to spin Gaddafi’s death as vindication for the President’s supposed strategy of “leading from behind” on Libya. He’s even criticized the fact that troops will still be in Afghanistan for a while longer, until security is finally handed over to the Afghans, showing that he doesn’t know the difference between that and a cease-fire. Amusingly, even though this reads like an angry letter from a spurned worshiper, Mardell still can’t quite bring himself to remind you the very relevant fact that the President has killed more people with these drone attacks than Bush could ever have dreamed of. That would just be too much negative about Him in one place, and we can’t have that.
His piece isn’t journalism: it’s an op-ed disguised as a question. But I guess that’s what he’s really paid to do, isn’t it?
I guess Obama won’t be bragging too loudly about his Nobel Peace Prize this campaign.
Charles Krauthammer (that;s the eminent US journalist that the BBC NEVER interviews) nailed this on Tuesday –
http://realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/05/29/krauthammer_obama_denounced_enhanced_interrogation_but_now_hes_judge_jury_and_executioner.html
That’s the Obama who spent much of his early life on drugs. Choom Boy. But he grew out of a lot of that, carried on smoking pot but concentrated on “learning ” from every tin-pot leftie he could find.
Leader of the Western World ? Gawd help us if he gets back in.
The terror network is hurting, the drone campaign is doing its job, terrorist leaders and organizers are dying like flies, Toyota pick ups loaded with naive fools from the mosques are being wiped out on their way to the border, resupply trucks are being wiped out, safe houses are reduced to holes in the ground, training camp staff are simply reduced to ashes.
The terrorists friends in the West are getting to work to stop the drone campaign before it completely destroys the terror network and its leaders, the BBC is one of the terror networks best friends. The two arms of the terror network, one that crosses to borders to murder civilians and spread fear by the bomb and AK47 and the other in the West, lawyers and peace campaigners and bleeding heart useful idiots.
The terror network works on the principle of eating away at their enemies will to fight, it works by instilling fear and by killing civilians who then clamour for peace at any price. The drone campaign turns the tables, it is the terrorist leaders who now live in fear, they live with the knowledge that death is a moment away.
The terror network has thrived on its ability to spread fear, to attack and then run for safety across the border. The game has changed now with the coming of the drones, no longer can the terror network operate in the way that it did where foot soldiers died and were replaced straight from the mosques and the leadership and command structures were immune, the terror network now knows the fear that they have inflicted on others for years.
Its not the terrorist foot soldiers who decide a campaign it is the leaders and the safe houses and resupply points and transport infrastructure and training camps, destroy those and the terrorists lose. The terror network is hurting and that is why their useful idiots in the MSM are stepping up their whining and moaning, the terror network is losing leaders and organizers at the rear at an unsustainable rate, it is fast becoming a death sentence to be a terrorist leader.
That is how the war on terror is won, not by killing the foolish recruits fired up at the mosque by some warped old pervert. No, the war is won by killing the leaders where they hide, by making it a virtual death sentence to be a terrorist leader, by destroying the terror network bases and command structures. The drones are a game changer and that is why we see the useful idiots in the West clamouring for the drones to stop.
The two best friends of the terrorist, the AK47 and the BBC.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100161507/barack-obamas-war-on-terror-is-nastier-and-less-ethical-than-george-w-bushs/
I simply observe in the picture where (it’s not a mirror) He is looking, and who He is not so concerned with seeing. There’s a metaphor to reflect upon for His UK PR agency in that too.
“Read Some of the Best Parts of the New York Times Expose on Obama‘s ’Kill List’”
-from Glenn Beck’s ‘The Blaze’
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/new-york-times-comes-out-with-8-page-expose-on-obamas-kill-list/
So that’s it. Not a single mention of this story anywhere else on the BBC. Something as philosophically and legally important as this, something that turns the BBC’s portrayal of the beloved Obamessiah, the Lightworker who would end Bush’s wars and bring peace, who would reach out to the Muslim world and work with them, on its head, and they don’t think it’s worth an actual report outside of Mardell’s op-ed piece.
Where’s the anti-war crowd now, BBC? Where are your darlings screaming about war crimes? Where are your tut-tutting experts whom you paraded on camera during what Matt Frei referred to on air as “the grim eight years of the Bush Administration”? Why are all of the 55 Beeboids working in the US intellectually incapable of asking this question? I noticed none of them (whom I’ve checked so far) have retweeted the NY Times article. Curious.
There’s a reason the tag “Pro Obama At All Costs” keeps getting used. I wonder if there’s a single Beeboid other than Mardell who questions their devotion to Him over this? Come to think of it, I bet Mardell doesn’t really question it much, either. He probably blames the knuckle-draggers in flyover country for forcing the President to do this against His better nature, like he did with Libya.
David, regardless of what Mr Mardell (or the bbc for that matter) might say or think, unless the American public destroy Mr Obama and his socialist philosophy (and for it to be seen to have been destroyed), it will linger on, with the prospect that and Obama lookilikee will be presented to the electorate sometime in the near future with the promise that if only Mr Obama had been allowed a second term….
Socialism/communism/marxism/greenism/islamism must be ground into the dirt, where it belongs, otherwise, the USA and consequently the rest of us in the Anglo-Saxon world will eventually be subsumed in the web of evil that it so obviously is.
I will watch Mardell’s next postings with interest. Will he toss his Hero under a bus? Or will he scream “a plague on both your houses”? Oh, dear Mark, what a problem you have?
In my opinion he will not distance himself sufficiently from the “Preezey of the United Steezy” to harm any chance of a face to face interview with Him.
Mardell will continue to shift blame away from the President. It will be more “ooh, look how partisan and ugly things have become since the black man became President,” (that one’s from Jonny Dymond, whose reports Mardell has called “fantastic stuff”) and “everyone I talk to in DC laments the loss of the golden age when people reached across the aisle”, etc.
White House political strategist David Axelrod tried a stealth stump speech in Massachusetts today (not so stealth, really, because CNN somehow had a live feed hooked up and ready to go, even though the appearance wasn’t announced until this morning). Some Romney supporters showed up and chanted “Solyndra” and “We Want Mitt” and “Cory Booker” at him. Media Matters and the NY Times and CNN were, naturally, appalled that the evil crowd wouldn’t let Axelrod talk.
The same medicine the Dems have been dealing for years suddenly tastes terrible when handed back to them. Mardell has his marching orders.
People aren’t going to go gently into that good night this year, and Mardell will be there to heap scorn upon us all.
Mardell interviewing Obama? I watched the Justin Webb “interview,” when he was North America “editor.” He could hardly formulate a question, but sat there like a frozen rabbit, caught in the glare of the great man’s headlights.
The drone campaign only brings joy to my heart. How could it not? More, please – lots more. What’s not to like about vaporising these retarded maniacs? And who cares how it goes down in the Muslim world? No fu*k is given here, let alone two…
Killing US citizens without a trial or any due process of law does not bring joy to my heart. The fact the anti-war and human rights and civil liberties crowd are utterly silent on this speaks volumes about their true beliefs and motives. And the fact that the BBC isn’t asking why the radio silence speaks volumes about their beliefs as well.
David Preiser,
Yours is a very important post and I’m sorry I didn’t catch it earlier. I can’t think of a clearer expression of the BBC’s hypocrisy and that of its fellow MSM travellers than the lack of criticism of the war on terror after Obama assumed responsibility for much of it.
It’s quite possible that Obama has a personal vendetta to fulfil here, quite apart from 9/11. I have often wondered how he was affected by the savage terror attacks on the US embassies in Tanzania and, especially, Kenya.
It’s obvious to anyone half awake that if Bush had been at the helm during the past four years, the BBC and others would have been screaming blue murder at the “extra-judicial” killing of so many terrorists, including, of course, Bin Laden.
It seems to me that their attitude to Obama is that of puzzled hurt at the actions of a beloved idol who has gone so far astray.
They still love Him, of course, but their love and devotion has been sorely tested.
I’d say the President wasn’t personally affected by those US embassy bombings in the slightest. He didn’t even really consider Himself an American at that point. He’s doing these drone attacks now because He knows He has to kill bad guys to appease one group of voters, while He also must end Bush’s Illegal Wars and bring the troops home to appease the other group. The drone attacks are the easiest solution, and since He not only believes that He has the supreme moral authority to be judge, jury and executioner of US citizens, but that the supine press will largely give Him a pass, He’ll pretty much get away with it, now that the NY Times collaborated with His campaign on that report showing how thoughtful and deliberate He is about picking targets.
He also knows that not a single Hollywood idiot will stop giving Him money over it, and not a single young voter who was thrilled to vote for Him last time won’t want to do it again because of this.
Interesting, but my observation on Tanzania and Kenya was because of his African background, not his (then) feelings for America or lack of them.
I’m thinking specificaly of his Kenyan father and the possibility that he knew people murdered at the US Embassy in Nairobi. Was he/is he patriotic towards Kenya?
Anyway, I take your point about the balancing act to attract maximum votes.