“I’ve chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.”
—Martin Luther King Jr., 1967, “Why I am Opposed to the War in Vietnam”
“The Champion”—the title of a recent article on President Obama in The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates—must have been written in a world where the surveillance disclosures and the drone war do not exist. For how else can one claim in good faith: “[t]here are moments when I hear the president speak and I am awed”? When it comes to surveillance / drone matters, we often find ourselves more shocked than awed, as Obama’s previous speeches on the subject would likely have been recognized by George Orwell as “pure wind.” Here at the Fourth Estate Watch (FEW), we believe these critical aspects of Obama’s presidency and legacy cannot go ignored.
Whether viewed from a Yemeni wedding or an Afghan village, no one familiar with the drone war would conclude, as Coates does, that “Obama is as thoughtful as ever[.]” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports Obama has already authorized eight times as many drone strikes as his predecessor, at least one of which intentionally targeted a US citizen—an act The New York Times has said is “extremely rare, if not unprecedented.” All military-age males at the site of a drone strike are now defined as “combatants,” regardless of whether they were carrying rifles or roses. And yet Coates expects “that admiration for [Obama’s] thoughtfulness will grow as the ages pile upon us.” The victims of the drone war seem unlikely to join the congregation.
And where Coates dodges the drone war, he sidesteps the surveillance state. Instead of asking how a “thoughtful as ever” President could embrace surveillance programs such as XKeyscore and PRISM, Coates says things like this: “I don’t expect, in my lifetime, to again see a black family with the sheer beauty of Obama’s on such a prominent stage.” We are unsure how to react to such a statement. While former NSA Director Michael Hayden has made clear surveillance programs have “expanded” under President Obama, instead of examining the issue up-close Coates prefers to focus on superficial “sheer beauty.”
In fairness to Coates, the primary topic of his article was, as the sub-heading put it, “how black America talks to the White House.” We’re not clear on Coates’ answer to the question, but in the context of the drone war, we are reminded of Martin Luther King Jr.’s observation in 1967 that “my own government” is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today[.]” One can quibble with King’s characterization, but there can be no doubt of the drone war’s often violent—both physical and mental—impact on civilians. And while King was speaking with regard to Vietnam, his observations likely ring true for many of those living in the vast swaths of land from Somalia to Yemen to Afghanistan: “They must see Americans as strange liberators.”
Fourth Estate Watch 