Obama’s Dark Side

It’s not about sympathy for terrorists, nor for those suspected of terrorism. It’s simply a question of whether or not a Western democracy should be permitted to use any and all means it deems appropriate in its “war on terror.”

President Barack Obama has undertaken a massive expansion of unmanned drone use to kill (suspected) al-Qaida members. He authorized more than 250 drone attacks during his first three years as president – more than five times the number ordered by his predecessor, George W. Bush. Obama’s drone war is secret, silent, unforgiving and highly controversial.

That’s why it’s a good thing the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office has been investigating the case of Bünyamin E. to determine whether a war crime may have been committed. The Islamist is a native of Wuppertal and was killed by a U.S. unmanned drone in the Pakistani region of North Waziristan on Oct. 4, 2010, becoming the first German so killed.

It’s a touchy issue that could well lead to diplomatic turmoil between Germany and the United States. It is perhaps comparable to the arrest order issued by the Munich attorney’s office for the arrest of the CIA agent suspected of kidnapping Neu Ulm resident Khalid al-Masri. The German government never pursued the extradition of that agent, but it was, nevertheless, an indicator, and came just at the onset of investigations into the death of 20-year old Wuppertal resident Bünyamin E.

At the same time, by chance, relatives of American Islamists killed in Yemen by unmanned drones have filed suit with the help of prominent U.S. human rights organizations. Those killed can’t really be described as choir boys: Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both involved in Yemen as propagandists for al-Qaida, were two of the victims. What’s at issue here is the question of whether the United States can simply decide to put people on a “kill list.”

Obama came in with the promise to put an end to the dark era of the Bush administration, but the means he is using to combat terror seem more in tune with Bush than with what we would expect from a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.