On Monday Alex Wagner and the the NOW panel discussed President Obama’s foreign policy agenda and compared it with that of his predecessor–President George W. Bush.
Much has been made of President Obama’s escalating use of drones in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia and the administration’s lack of transparency when it comes to extrajudicial killings of suspected terrorists–including Americans–overseas.
Yet while conservatives have largely given President Obama a free pass on drones, they’ve been more critical of his lack of appetite for military involvement overseas. On Sunday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said the lack of action by the administration in Syria–where over 60,000 people have reportedly died–was “shameful.”
“There remains the discrepancy between an extensive campaign of drones and a passive foreign policy that maintains–the president’s very words–that an era of war is ending,” Fouad Ajami wrote in an Op-Ed for Bloomberg.
“Forgive those Syrians left at the mercy of their dictator’s cruel war: It is hard to explain to them why those drones don’t somehow find their way to Bashar al-Assad ‘s bunker. We do anti-terrorism. Wars of rescue are not an American specialty nowadays.”
Matthew Alexander