2008 Candidate Barack Obama wasn’t a big fan of the war against terror. He excoriated President Bush’s policies at every opportunity, and made a whole series of promises to the anti-war Left. Let’s see how he’s done.
First, and probably most emphatically, he promised to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq. 2 ½ years into his Administration, we still have approximately 50,000 troops there. It’s important to remember that Senator Obama strongly opposed President Bush’s surge in Iraq. Most experts agree that the surge (which I supported) was the difference between an ignominious defeat in Iraq, and the victory and stability we’ve seen there since the surge.
Next, Candidate Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) within one year of taking office. 2 ½ years after he was sworn in as President, it’s still open and there are 172 detainees still held there.
Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder and the ACLU said they were going to shut down the military tribunals of the Gitmo detainees, and try them in U.S. civilian courts. This was a terrible idea, and after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, they decided to try them in military tribunal courts in Gitmo after all. My view – they ultimately made the right decision, but only after wasting a lot of time and energy trying to placate the Left. Why in the world would we even consider bringing someone like Khalid Sheik Mohammed (the mastermind of 9/11) to the U.S. for trial, where he’d only use it to spread his vile anti-American views in a circus trial?
Candidate Obama was critical of military tactics carried out on President Bush’s watch, alleging that Bush was too callous regarding civilian collateral deaths. However, President Obama has, for example, increased the number of unmanned drone attacks against enemy targets in Afghanistan, despite the collateral civilian deaths. Again, I think President Obama has done the right thing with respect to the drones, but it would have been nice if he’d been less critical of President Bush for doing essentially the same thing. Another reason for my support of the drone program is it allows us to target top al-Qaida and Taliban leaders without putting our troops in harms’ way.
And finally, Candidate Obama was highly critical of President Bush for using enhanced interrogation methods, i.e. water-boarding, on three captured terrorists, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed. As it turns out, intelligence gathered through this method was critical in locating Osama bin Laden, and ultimately in his death. President Obama acted on information gathered by methods that Candidate Obama opposed.
Let me make one final point. Whereas President Obama deserves credit for ordering the mission which finally killed Osama bin Laden, the troops who actually carried out the raid deserve the real credit. And President Bush deserves credit for keeping our nation free from another attack after September 11th, for seven years. And he also deserves credit for setting many of the war and terror policies which Candidate Obama once opposed, and President Obama is now following.