Presidential parley

Obama is a debating president. Not only does he not shun debate; he courts it. What for some is a virtue, for others is an annoyance or a defect. He argues because he believes in the strength of words, and in his ability to convince. The talking president's stock is low of late. He has walked the tightrope of the shutdown, but has yet to ensure the success of his healthcare program, and knows that budgetary peace will last only until January. On the foreign policy front, his geopolitical weakness was embarrassingly apparent in Syria, while general discredit has come from the NSA espionage affair, and in particular from the practice of murdering mad mullahs with drones in regions otherwise of difficult access for American power.

In May he spoke at the National Defense University, promising to "define the nature and objective of this fight," lest it "define us." He placed particular emphasis on drone attacks and their collateral damage. "These deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as the civilian victims in conventional wars will haunt us," this moralizing, parleying president went so far as to say. The gist of his speech was a promise to restrict and codify the use of drones, under a judicial or executive authority, transferring their control from the CIA to the army, to put an end to secrecy, jettison the antiterrorist strategy of Bush and build one of his own.

But explainers and talkers generally come up against someone who talks back to them. Two NGOs have now directly challenged him, questioning the presumption of his good intentions, and even insinuating that his apparently enlightened antiterrorist policy is in fact a sinister one. Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have published parallel investigations on drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen, in which they document the death of innocent civilians, and question their legality and efficacy. These groups argue against Obama, point by point. AI questions whether the attacks are prompted by clear directives, or are properly supervised or followed up afterwards in accordance with presidential guidelines (which remain secret). Since May 2013, when the president promised to supply all possible information, nothing has happened to modify the policy of total opacity concerning the number of attacks and of their victims. "This recognition," says AI, "is an essential first step, if the victims of illegal attacks are to have access to reparations." The question of indemnities payable to civilians is another of the points where practice runs counter to presidential doctrine.

Amnesty questions whether the attacks are prompted by clear directives, or are properly supervised or followed up

As for responsibility being shifted from the CIA to the Department of Defense, AI is profoundly skeptical, believing it leads not to better supervision and accountability, but to exactly the opposite, since it falls to a military body, the Joint Special Operations Command, which runs units like the one that liquidated Bin Laden and functions with an even higher degree of secrecy and impunity. The NGO doubts the restrictive criterion claimed by Obama on "the use of lethal force only against objectives that pose a continuing and imminent threat to American citizens." Nor are they convinced about his good intentions regarding an end to the global war on terror, given that the US still considers itself at war with Al Qaeda, and uses the drones as an instrument of combat, as if in a permanent armed conflict.

According to HRW, the drone attacks carried out in Yemen include cases where capture of the terrorists was quite feasible, so that, according to official doctrine, the drone should never have been launched. In none of the cases documented by HRW did the persons targeted constitute a "continuing and imminent threat." Meanwhile, HRW knows of no cases where civilian deaths have been investigated or indemnified by the US.

A commander-in-chief who invites discussion needs to have plenty of strength and authority if he is not to come off badly from the encounter. This is what is happening to Obama.