In terms of public relations, it has been a tough week for the U.S. military. First there was the flurry of scolding commentary over the ‘Wikileaked’ video of U.S. Apache helicopter pilots gunning down a group of people in Baghdad.
Now this article by Dietmar Ostermann of the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau writes with some disappointment that in terms of protecting human rights while fighting terror, President Obama has been arguably as bad or worse than George W. Bush.
For Frankfurter Rundschau, Dietmar Ostermann writes in part:
We know now that the new U.S. president also stands on something of a middle ground when it comes to hunting suspected terrorists. Some excesses have been rectified, but other programs have been sustained, including hit lists that are kept by the military and secret service. Apparently, the Obama Administration now even has approved a U.S. citizen for termination: radical preacher and alleged al-Qaeda operative, Anwar al-Awlaki.
According to former officials who ought to know, not even under George W. Bush was an American approved for a targeted killing. … What does this say about this U.S. president? It says that allegations by American hard-liners to the effect that he is a naive wimp are absurd. Unfortunately, it also says that Obama is far from fulfilling all of the hopes placed in him by human rights activists.
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