US Politics: the eternal Teahad

[All-for-Joffrey]

1. Only judging by the policies pursued, and having no special insider knowledge, I'd guess that the president and his staff disagree with you.

Except there's no evidence to suggest that Obama instituted the drone program as a result of electoral calculus. If this is what you're going to argue (which is an absurd analysis imo), you have to provide the evidence. Drones are wildly unpopular with the American public if I'm recalling my polls correctly -- if anything they didn't detracted from his votes. Considering the fact that Obama has gone to great lengths to defend a program that is used to attack him from both the left and right, especially since the white paper was leaked, it's clearly something that he does because he likes -- not because of any sort of electoral calculus.

2. He expanded the drone program and cut back the boots-on-the-ground (which you rightly note started with figures from the previous admin, to be fair)..

Cut back on boots on the ground in Iraq but expanded them in Afghanistan and kept the same numbers of troops from Iraq deployed in the Gulf.

I understand your argument that Obama didn't need to do the former at all. I just don't agree with it. The "broad middle" of the public was not convinced that "cutting and running" (remember all those attacks from the right?) was the best idea. The general concensus, flawed as it might have been, was that we needed to keep the pressure on AQ.

And why is the drone program the only way to look tough on al-Qaeda? Surely most American public would be just as placated by raids akin to what we say in Libya and Somalia last week and the extradition of the captives to the US to hold civilian trials (you know, the type of thing we probably would have done before the war on terror)? Yes there would be belly aching from Republicans about civilian trials but it wouldn't translate into electoral collateral based on the less interventionist bent the American public has been taking the past few years.