Wheeler: Obama’s Folly
By Katie Wheeler, Staff Columnist
Published on Tuesday, November 13, 2012
This past Tuesday, Barack Obama was reelected as the president of the United States. His triumph was met with great enthusiasm on college campuses across the nation. My Facebook and Twitter newsfeeds were quickly flooded with celebratory statuses as Sarner Underground “resonated with chants of ‘four more years’” (“Barack Obama reelected as president of the United States,” Nov. 7). Yet as my closest friends let out squeals of excitement as we watched news source after news source call the election, I found myself unable to share their enthusiasm. I wasn’t so proud to call this man my president.
Many Dartmouth students are especially supportive of Obama’s purported focus on social issues. Indeed, the College Democrats enumerated several social issues on their list of “reasons why we support President Obama” in chalk on Mass Row. They noted Obama’s advocacy of “marriage equality,” “immigration reform” and “women’s rights.” I do not deny that these are very important social issues, and I most definitely appreciate the importance that Obama places on them. Yet the portrayal of Obama as a generous humanitarian is a false one: He has repeatedly ignored basic human rights that our democracy prides itself on supporting.
The Sixth Amendment to the U.S Constitution stresses the importance of the right to “a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.” Obama very much identified with this notion in his initial advocacy for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, a naval base infamous for keeping suspected terrorists in secret custody without trial for long periods of time and for the use of coercive interrogation methods. Obama repeatedly expressed his desire to close the camp at Guantanamo and, as The New York Times reported, expressed his preference for “prosecutions in federal courts or, perhaps, in the existing military justice system, which provides legal guarantees similar to those of American civilian courts.”
Yet Obama seems to have forgotten about his commitment to the Sixth Amendment. He has failed to shut down the camp at Guantanamo, and even worse, he has displayed hypocrisy in his employment of drone warfare as the centerpiece of his counterterrorism policy. Drone strikes — the targeted killings of terrorism suspects — completely deny suspects the right to a fair trial and condemn them to an immediate, unjust death. Obama has been very enthusiastic about drone warfare, even though the manner in which it is waged blatantly violates basic human rights, and he has “insisted on approving every new name on an expanding ‘kill list,’ poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies,” according to The Times.
Drone warfare also poses a significant danger to completely innocent civilians. A recent study by Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute has found that the number of Pakistani civilians killed in drone strikes is “significantly and consistently underestimated” by tracking organizations. The Obama administration has refused to comment on said findings, citing secrecy as its primary concern. Yet it is extremely alarming to hear that Cameron Munter, Obama’s ambassador to Pakistan, has complained that “he didn’t realize his main job was to kill people,” according to one of his colleagues.
In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama stated, “I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight.” Is the denial of the importance of the Sixth Amendment and the reckless killing of innocent civilians the standard to which Obama is referring? For that is the standard to which he holds our country in its current conduct of war.
In reflecting on the final presidential debate on American foreign policy, Don Casler lamented that, “It is unfortunate and worrisome that the current centerpiece of American counterterrorism policy received so little attention from the candidates and moderator” (“The Dangers of Drones,” Oct. 29). It is also worrisome that Dartmouth students, self-proclaimed upholders of human rights, have neglected to criticize Obama for his blatant violations of said rights. It is easy to get swept up in pride for a candidate who has some very commendable qualities, and yet we must remain critical of his presidency and hold him to the standards of human rights that we claim to espouse.
This article is factually inaccurate.
Obama sought to close Guantanamo but cannot legally because House Republicans block funding to do so. The president cannot do so with the current legislation on the books. Of course he’d want this victory. But Republicans are blocking it from happening.
Your view of drone warfare is also a particularly simplistic one. Drone warfare is not used in the US. We don’t provide constitutional rights to enemies in war. We are using drones against enemy combatants not civilians. In both war and drone warfare civilians die. But far less die with such targeted methods than with troops on the ground.
Boom. Obama’s your president.
By Anonymous on Nov 13 | 6:13 am
That’s hardly fair, Ms. Wheeler. The President tried to close Guantanamo, issued an Executive Order for its closure on the day he took office, he made plans and arrangements for transfering prisoners, and was blocked by Congress. Between 2009-2011, Congress voted to block closing Guantanamo FOUR times, blocking using federal funds to transfer prisoners to the US or to appropriate facilities in other countries.
Your claim that the President has forgotten his pledge is entirely unfounded. He was blocked, yes, but for that you can blame Congress, or blame the framers for putting Congress in charge of the purse, but you can’t blame the President.
As for drone strikes posing an unacceptable risk to civilians, that does not have the ring of truth either. All war endangers civilians and that civilians die from war does not make it a violation of international law. The intentional targeting of civilians may be a war crime, reckless endangerment may be, but whether its a drone war or a ground war or an air war, there is always collateral damage. You made a sweeping statement that drone wars are a violation of human rights, and did not make any effort to actually say how, or which rights. That is not just sloppy, it undermines your entire argument.
By Anon on Nov 13 | 8:43 am
Excellent point about drone warfare, which is frequently ignored by the mainstream media.
I think you are confusing, however, the Sixth Amendment argument versus that of human rights. US Constitution protects US citizens, not terrorists sitting in Gitmo or Pakistanis targeted by drones.
By Anon on Nov 13 | 9:04 am
Lolz you mad obama’s your prez?
By Lol romney’s jelly on Nov 13 | 11:24 am
1st Anon,
If you’re going to complain about someone being factually inaccurate, don’t use it as a chance to be a partisan spewing out inaccurate facts! It was the Democrats who blocked the closure of Guantanamo when Obama took office. A quick google search revealed this (from a HuffPo article no less). Republicans may be doing so now, but blood is on the hands of both parties.
By @Anon on Nov 13 | 11:55 am
Why didn’t George W Bush and cronies get a speedy trial for lying to Congress and the United Nations about WMDs in Iraq and sending thousands of valiant US troops to their death? Obama let us down there too. Why did W get away with murder?
By randyVT on Nov 13 | 12:49 pm
Obama can’t close Gitmo because he needs Congress to support him and (bipartisanly), they don’t. The 6th Amendment does not apply to terrorists or enemies of the state; it applies to U.S. citizens. And do you know what drones do? They allow us to conduct military operations with minimal loss of American lives. Obviously, there is a risk of collateral damage (civilian deaths) every time we go to War, but unfortunately, this isn’t Candyland; there really are terrorists out there, and we should trust the president to hunt them down and deter their actions. This article is shortsighted and makes zero good points.
By ZM ‘13 on Nov 13 | 4:38 pm
Last Tuesday’s election exposed the Democrats as a lifeless class. Once a party that served as the moral conscience of the American people, making incremental reform possible, it now stands for nothing, and it believes in nothing. Last Tuesday, we mistook style for an experience, believing in Ad Age’s “Marketer of the Year” despite having so profoundly kept and even reversed some of the progress made against the reforms created during the Bush administration.
In many ways, Bush was just blithely ignorant of his actions. But Obama was trained in constitutional law, and he is well aware of the actions (or the inaction) that he took and what they did to our civil liberties and welfare. In some sense, his continued assault on the nation in service to the corporations is even more egregious due to those facts. Obama has become sort of a mascot for the corporations, choosing instead to pay deference to the financial elite instead of punishing the criminal enterprises for what they are. It is no wonder that people all across the country despise the liberal class, and they have every right to be despised. People feel betrayed by the President and his administration for basically being an appendage to the corporate state.
But to be fair, this article makes no mention of Romney, who is just as spineless as Obama is, if not even more so.
By Andrew Pham ‘13 on Nov 13 | 5:23 pm
People talking about the sixth amendment:
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”
Nowhere in that text does it specify that only citizens are entitled to this protection.
By Anonymous Maximus on Nov 14 | 4:43 am
The sixth amendment applies to American citizens.
Comment on drone warfare as a “blatant violation of human rights”:
Warfare and conflict sound like unfortunate inevitabilities in today’s world and given those circumstances, maybe it is worth considering a military strategy that exposes the least number of people to harm. And for the sake of complete information, there are a set of conditions that need to be met by a target in order to merit being killed by a drone- Obama’s not just arbitrarily sending out some robots to kill bad guys.
The target must be a “senior operational leader of al-Qaida or associated forces” otherwise known as an “enemy combatant.” The target must be planning at attack against the U.S. and be located in a country that has given the U.S. authority to strike. The target must not be able to be captured at the time the decision is made.“These preconditions align with the internationally-ratified Geneva Convention-based Law of Armed Conflict that requires verification of military targets, precautionary measures to minimize civilian harm and the avoidance of disproportionate collateral damage”.
By ‘13 on Nov 14 | 8:39 am
@ Andre Pham: “ this article makes no mention of Romney”
it makes no mention because, ahem, Romney didn’t get elected. =8(o)
By Anonymous on Nov 14 | 11:09 am
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
I have no issue with the targets that Obama selects—there is almost always compelling evidence that they are involved with Al-Qaeda. My issue lies in the fact that he considers all “military-age-males”—in effect anyone able to stand— an “enemy combatant”. True: a ten-year old can stand and hold an AK-47, and if he is, then he should be labeled an enemy combatant. But the fact that anyone in the target area is automatically acceptable to strike is appalling, and I’m glad that the author raised this point that so many of us willingly ignore. Hypocrisy is present in both parties, but this is an example that should not stand.
By Ryan on Nov 14 | 10:20 pm