President Obama’s drone policy has received an unlikely endorsement:
Appearing on Fox’s Happening Now this morning, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton took to defending President Obama’s program of targeted assassinations of Americans abroad, calling it what it is: an extension of Bush-era policies.
“It seems to me that the approach that the Obama administration is following is consistent with and really derived from the Bush administration approach to the War on Terror,” Bolton told host Jenna Lee. “And I think it is entirely sensible. Whether it is foreign citizens who are involved with Al Qaeda or American citizens, we are in a war. They have attacked us. We have a congressional authorization to use military force in response. And that’s what’s at stake here.”
In a laughable analogy, Bolton then said, “This is not, you know, robbing the 7-Eleven down on the corner. These people are engaged in war against the United States.”
Except, you know, when they’re not. Take, for instance, 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki who, despite showing no signs of taking up arms against the U.S., was killed for being the son of a terrorist leader. Or, perhaps, the hundreds of women and children killed during strikes on weddings, funerals, etc.
Nevertheless, the Bushie neocon went on to say: “This is not robbing the local Starbucks down at the corner. This is not a criminal law matter. This is an issue that falls under the paradigm of the law of war where the commander-in-chief’s powers are plenary and where we don’t have judicial review of commander-in-chief decisions. And I think it’s a sound case.”
Well, I suppose it’s better than those on the right who have spent the last day or so criticizing the new revelations about the President’s policy while at the same time having spent the Bush years looking the other way while his Administration engaged in any number of policies ranging from enhanced interrogations to extraordinary renditions to the use of “black site” CIA outposts that were reportedly located in areas ranging from Eastern Europe to possibly even Libya under Gaddafi. Indeed, one might even say that Bolton is at least being intellectually consistent here given the fact that President Obama is merely taking the Bush Era policies to their logical conclusion. So, strike this up as one of those situations where politics makes strange bedfellows.
