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Obama's military policy is popular
- Article by: MICHAEL A. COHEN , Foreign Policy
- Updated: June 10, 2012 - 6:59 PM
It's highly unlikely that Obama will be hurt politically by controversial revelations about his approach.
Illustration: Drones.
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Recently, two blockbuster New York Times stories cast perhaps the most unfavorable light on President Obama's foreign-policy performance since he took office.
First, there was the revelation that Obama maintains a "kill list" of potential Al-Qaida targets and signs off personally on major drone strikes.
While this suggests a certain level of rigor in target selection, the article also highlighted the fact that the president is ordering military strikes, including against U.S. citizens, without congressional or judicial oversight.
Next came the revelation that under Obama's presidency the United States has not only continued but ramped up a de facto war with Iran, with cybertools intended to disrupt Iran's efforts to create a nuclear weapon.
Both stories speak to the lack of transparency in the Obama White House on matters of national security -- as well as to the president's somewhat promiscuous use of force against declared and undeclared enemies of the United States.
But if one puts aside the many good reasons to be concerned about such policies on legal and moral grounds, it's highly unlikely that Obama will be hurt politically by these revelations.
While some members of his party might be offended by his actions, most Americans seem blithely unconcerned. The stories will, in fact, neutralize Republican attack lines and bolster the president's already strong public ratings on national security.
To understand why the existence of a presidential kill list won't do much to dent Obama's strong foreign-policy standing, it's important to remember that Americans don't just like drone warfare -- they love it.
A Washington Post poll this February found that 83 percent of Americans approve of Obama's drone policy. (It's hard to think of anything that 83 percent of Americans agree on these days.) In addition, a whopping 77 percent of liberal Democrats support the use of drones -- and 65 percent are fine with missile strikes against U.S. citizens, as was the case with the Yemeni-American cleric Anwar Awlaki, killed last September by a drone.
The popularity of unmanned vehicles is not difficult to understand. They're cheap; they keep Americans out of harm's way, and they kill "bad guys."
That unnamed and unseen civilians may be getting killed in the process or that the attacks stretch the outer limits of statutory law are of less concern. Indeed, rare is the American war where such legal and humanitarian niceties mattered much to the electorate.
And, in fairness to Obama, nothing about the drone war should be a major surprise to the American people. Throughout the 2008 campaign, Obama was a loud, uncompromising advocate of ramping up cross-border drone attacks against Al-Qaida in Pakistan.
As for cyberwarfare with Iran, this falls into a similar category as drones. Americans don't like Iran; they are deeply concerned about Tehran getting a nuclear weapon and have demonstrated a surprising willingness to countenance a military solution to stopping Iran from getting a bomb.
In fact, a March 2012 poll indicated that 53 percent of Americans support taking military action against Iran "even if it causes gasoline and fuel prices in the United States to go up." And no one likes when gas prices go up.
Given those numbers, it's not hard to imagine that an overwhelming majority of Americans would be fully supportive of a stealth cybercampaign as a cheap and efficient way to thwart Iran's nuclear aspirations. That such a move might represent an act of war by the United States against Iran is again likely of peripheral concern.
The final piece of the puzzle for the White House is that neither Obama's drone war nor his secret war against Iran engages any serious partisan passions.
Republicans might keep their praise to a minimum, but these are precisely the sorts of policies they have long supported. In reality, there is a disquieting political consensus in support of these policies.
If there is any place where Obama is getting grief, it is from his own liberal base. But it's hard to imagine that his campaign is worrying much.
That Obama's national security policies upset liberals only further confirms his image as not your typical Jimmy Carter/Michael Dukakis/John Kerry liberal afraid to use American power.
These, of course, are political canards, but potent ones -- and they have clearly shaped the Obama administration's thinking on foreign policy since the day he took office.
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