Obama’s Drone War - Is it legal? Is it constitutional? And is it the right policy?

American Spectator ^ | May 2013 | Jed Babbin

[neverdem]

--snip--

The military awards many medals for bravery in combat, and many more for meritorious non-combat service. But the new Distinguished Warfare medal, to be awarded to drone operators and cyberwar experts, seems to be neither one nor the other. As the Defense Department describes it, a recipient could be a drone operator at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, flying a drone over Afghanistan, or a soldier at Fort Meade, Maryland, thwarting a cyber attack on a defense network. Yet the Distinguished Warfare medal has been placed higher than both the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star with a “V” for valor in combat.

This rankles the warriors, as well it should. Marine Captain Harold Babbin—my father—finished World War II with a Bronze Star with the Combat “V” and a Purple Heart after having fought on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima. A non-combat medal outranking the Bronze Star could seem just only to liberals who have no regard for real warriors.

In fact, in many ways the drone campaign is liberals’ dream war: no combat troops at risk on the ground, at sea, or in the air; no casualties. It’s also neat, surgical, and conducted personally by Obama. Such direct presidential involvement in a military campaign is bizarre. In the case of Obama, it’s also uncharacteristic. (For the most part, he has distanced himself from the day-to-day conduct of his administration’s foreign policy: His new secretary of defense is fumbling through a budget crisis with no guidance from the White House.) Yet an article in the May 26, 2012, New York Times reported that “When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises…it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.”

Wars aren’t fought one enemy at a time. Such moral “calculations”...

[Graewoulf]

Documentation File on “The Curse of Obamanation.”