Barack Obama: From anti-war law professor to warmonger in 100 days | News & Politics | News & Comment

FIRST POSTED MAY 19, 2009

torturers to advise US military teams in counter-insurgency ops in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Obama campaigned on a pledge to 'decapitate' al-Qaeda, meaning the assassination of its leaders. It was his short-hand way of advertising that he had the right stuff. Now, like Kennedy, he's summoned the exponents of unconventional, short-cut paths to success in that mission.

Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal now replaces General David McKiernan as Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan. McChrystal's expertise is precisely in assassination and 'decapitation'. As commander of the military's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for nearly five years starting in 2003, McChrystal was in charge of death squad ops, his best advertised success being the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The phrase 'sophisticated networks' tends to crop up in assessments of McChrystal's Iraq years. Actually there's nothing fresh or sophisticated in what

A girl wounded in the US air raid on Bala Boluk in Farah, Afghanistan

Afghan girl wounded in a US bombing raid on a village in Farah

he did. Programmes of targeted assassination aren't new in counter-insurgency. The most infamous and best known was the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, designed to identify and eliminate cadres of Vietnam's National Liberation Front, informally known as the Viet Cong, of whom, on some estimates, at least 40,000 were duly assassinated.

In such enterprises two outcomes are inevitable. Identification of the human targets requires either voluntary informants or captives. In the latter instance torture is certain, whatever rhetorical pledges are proclaimed back home. There may be intelligence officers who rely on patient, non-violent interrogation, as the US officer who elicited the whereabouts of al-Zarqawi claims he did.

But there will be others who will reach for the garden hose and the face towel. (McChrystal, not uncoincidentally, was involved in the prisoner abuse scandal at Baghdad's Camp Nama. He also played a sordid role in the cover-up of the friendly-fire death of ex-NFL star and Army Ranger Pat Tillman.)

Whatever the technique, a second certainty is the killing of large numbers of civilians in the final 'targeted assassination'. At one point in the first war on Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s, a huge component of US air sorties was devoted each day to bombing places where US intelligence had concluded Saddam might be hiding. Time after time, after the mangled bodies of men, women and children had been scrutinised, came the

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It's in the American nature to become an insane murdering thug. Clinton cheerfully bombed civilian targets in Serbia, knowing he was mass-murdering entirely innocent people. All it takes is an American passport - democrat or republican, no difference.

Posted by neil mcgowan at 1:39am on May 20, 2009

Hey, perhaps Obama is not as useless as we first thought!

Posted by mikidiki at 12:07pm on May 20, 2009

Reality Rules in the Real World! (as opposed to elections, where lies and gullible people rule).

Posted by TomNightingale at 12:37pm on May 20, 2009

So, simply because the predecessors of American presidency did less than savory things means that the ones who come decades later will never change? I'd like to think the world is better than that. We have evolved as the years passed. And there were plenty of American presidents that didn't partake in such douchebaggery. Does the name Abraham Lincoln sound familiar? What about George Washington, or Franklin Delanor Roosevelt? Falling victim to unfounded prejudice of one man because the man who held the position before him did not do an excellent job at the very least makes hypocrites of us all.

Posted by Shangri La at 1:54pm on May 20, 2009

Obama is finally starting to realise that Islam will not take his olive branch. I still think he is naive but there are signs that reality is sinking in. Islam does not want peace with the West, all Muslims need to do is lay down their arms for their pointless jihad struggle against the infidel. The world is imploding due to militant Islam; Pakistan, Afghanistan, Darfur, Somalia, Iraq and very soon Iran. It is not Obama, the West or Europe that wants war with blood on their hands but Islam.

Posted by Nicholas Folkes at 1:58pm on May 20, 2009

OUCH ... but then lily livered europe surrenders to anyone. Why not move to europe Alex?

Posted by Dee at 2:32pm on May 20, 2009

Only the Right Wing Press and media tried to make out that President Obama was a wimp. So nice to see that Alexander Cockburn and First Post got taken in by Fox and the NY Times. Remember, being black in the US is not the easiest game to have to play. And you don't get to be a black President if you only play soft ball. Just think what fun some other countries leaders would have if they thought that the US president was some kind of Numpty. Just look what happened under BUSH. At least Obama is showing the velvet glove, not just the steel fist. The US President is responsible for all US citizens. And if there is any, repeat, any threat to the US, then God help those who endanger the US. Also, just as a debating point, the US government is theoretically subservient (ok, this would have been satirical under Bush, but not to a lawyer like Obama) to the people, unlike in the UK, where the Monarch and Government are sovereign.

Posted by Ray Merrall at 3:49pm on May 20, 2009

I had an annoying friend who goaded me over my support for Obama. "He's no different from the Conservatives, hahaha, you'll see.." he jeered at me. Now that he's been proved right he's doubly annoying...

Posted by hidflect at 4:42pm on May 20, 2009

In this day and age,almost 45 years after the one drop rule was outlawed in America,we still have people ( probably closet racists) referring to people of mixed heritage as black. This is 2009,not 1959.Please do your home work. White plus black does not equal to black. Obama is as equally white as he is black

Posted by Andrew Longworth at 6:31pm on May 20, 2009

The parallels with Vietnam, from bright hopeful young break with the past, to non-events like Gulf of Tonkin, through Op. Phoenix to the final flight from the embassy rooftop is making the carbon paper pretty faded. Reality does not, cannot, intrude on amerikans because until recently their crimes abroad did not come home to roost.

Posted by allan kessing at 1:00am on May 21, 2009

Obama was never a professor. He was part timer, a lawyer with no further academic credentials. He has never published a single academic paper. He taught an introductory course. His title was Lecturer. The press tries to give Obama an intellectual mystique. It is pure imagination. The guy was never more than a Chi Town hack.

Posted by tadzio at 8:46am on May 21, 2009

While I can understand and accept the First Post and its bias in covering President Obama since his campaign and subsequent election, I thought this would end after november 4th. However ,Alexander Cockburn(and his right wingers) have persisted in their negative attacks. What has Obama's skin color , past employment and where he lived got to do with his article. He could have criticised him or dis agreed with him without all that stuff. His bias and partiality in his comments I can deal with. His latent racism and obvious prejudice against this guy may just have cost First Post a reader.

Posted by angel at 9:32pm on May 21, 2009

I'm an American. Why should it surprise anyone that Mr. Obama's foreign policies would be any diffrent than Mr. Bush's? There is not one farthing's bit of diffrence between the Republicans and the Democrats and never has been. Both political parties are owned lock, stock and barrel by America's ruling political-military-corporate establishment. And the goal of America's ruling establishment is nothing less than total political and economical world domination. They seek world domination peacefully if possible; if that is not possible, then they will exert their will by the brutal and bloody application of raw military force. Is the fog now starting to lift everyone? Good. In order to defeat your enemies, you must first know who they truly are.

Posted by Patrick Henry at 1:18am on May 22, 2009

Normally Cockburns articles are well balanced assessments of whatever he has fastened his sights on but this one goes down the toilet for me. Obama never claimed to be a miracle worker and when he started his campaign did not expect the mental derelicts in the GOP to leave him the situation he inherited. One might almost believe that Cheney, Bush et al planned the crash with their Wall Street buddies because they knew Obama would win the Presidency and they wanted to give him a hard time along with all those who voted for him. And they dished the same dirt to the rest of the world. That he hasn't found an excuse to retire to his sick bed is enough tesitmony for me that he has what it takes. It is early days still. Lets give him some elbow room.

Posted by John Hatchard at 11:00am on May 22, 2009

We the liberal left who elected Barack Obama on a campaign promise of change are wholly and completely disappointed with the results of his first 100 days. He has become what he railed against in his campaign, a war-monger and torturer of innocent men. The only reason I can see this happening is because of the cocooning of the president as he enters the White House. There in that home and national symbol, a person starts to think of themselves as the whole country wrapped up in a single person, and the sycophantic toadies that surround the president do not make it any easier for them to hear the cries of the people that they are murdering for the sake of democracy. Should Barack Obama, ever ask for and receive the words of the people he will hear these, War is not the raison d'etre of our country and you have brought us further down the road of decay with your war-mongering ideals.

Posted by nrobi at 2:08pm on May 22, 2009

Shangri La, you are wasting your breath. The west will never learn the reality on the ground or they are afriad to admit it. They will learn when it hits between the eyes. I think Obama found out that, being black, with Muslim background, will not bring peace. What he is facing is "Black and White", we are muslims and you are not and until you become there will be no peace. simple as that. Press and others are quick to condemn the United States, but I haven't heard a single voice condeming the genocide in Darfur. They are afraid to talk against Islam and their murders.

Posted by Georges Samara at 3:14pm on May 22, 2009

LH Oswald's decapitation strategy? What a moron. Cockburn and his "liberal" cohorts still have their heads up their asses about JFK and similarly refuse to acknowledge the reality of 9-11. The war on terror is fraud, Obama is a fraud.

Posted by dg cole at 11:17pm on May 25, 2009

The trouble is in putting your faith in leaders. They always disappoint. Obama showed his true worth when he agreed to the removal of wolves from the endangered species list, thus giving the go ahead for perverts like Palin to shoot them for sport. A person wo cares nothing for animals, usually cares nothing for people too. He buys his kids a puppy while allowing the killing of their wild cousins for pleasure. Did anyone really imagine Obama would be any different? He's running the most belligerent, right wing, greedy, bullying, toxic, self-deceiving state in the history of homo sapiens; founded on genocide and slavery, it has yet to change into anything the rest of the world would recognise as faintly liberal.

Posted by Peter Simmons at 11:59am on May 27, 2009

Georges Samara, you haven't heard a single voice condeming [sic] the genocide in Darfur? What exactly do you read, comics? There's been widespread condemnation, try reading more widely.

Posted by Peter Simmons at 10:39am on May 28, 2009