The Drone Wars: How Obama's Strategy is Winning or How a Liberal Defends His Nation Better than the Republicans Before Him

Barack Obama's fucked up a lotta things. There, now nobody can call me a one-sided blind liberal dousche.

I'll admit, his whole health care thing was a dithering waste of time - the result of 2 years of sectarian - I mean party - division, what should've been a radical change in the way the private sector mismanages the health care of the citizens who live, work for, defend, and clean up our country (because let's admit it, the people who run it don't have too much problem with the status quo) in the end brought nothing to the table other than added the rule that insurance companies must strike "pre-existing condition" from their qualifications. If Obama loses, look for that to disappear before it's even enacted.

Then there's his reining in of Wall Street. Sure, Dodd Frank did a little something but by his trying to play fair and nice his bill lost a lot of his heft and, again, the Congress (which, it should be noted, has a lower approval than pornography and polygamy ) has been miserably acquiescent to all special interests in fighting any regulation tooth and nail (and by "acquiescent" imagine a prostitute lying in bed with her ankles tied to opposing bedposts and giving the nod to anybody who leaves a large enough stack on the bedside table). But Obama, instead of enacting a FDR-esque New Deal and fuck his adversaries (our last president did a helluva lot without seemingly anybody's approval) tried to satisfy his opponents (which, I might note, is impossible as they hold grudges above results) by coming up with a tamer, more level-headed position that took long enough to come into play that JP Morgan proved his point for him so in that way, perhaps, he'll have more ammo for upping the ante next time.

But one thing nobody can fucking deny, somehow this intellectual, Ivy League liberal Hawaiian has revamped our military into a lean machine that replaces bloated expenditure with targeted results. Even the Hawks, chomping at the bit for a fight because it's the only thing that gets their syphilitic johnsons at full mast, have to admit that this brainy Democrat has done better than any president we've had in the last 5 to 6 decades.

I'll temper this presidential HJ by saying, though, that the commercial blowing smoke up his ass about "he had the courage to push the button" is little more than bullshit melodrama. That commercial's bullshit in big part because of the fact that, seriously, if you had Bin Laden in your sights would it be a question that you'd kill him? But it's also bullshit because making his giving the go-ahead on the mission to take out Geronimo isn't his big accomplishment. It's like sleeping with a supermodel and talking to everybody about the money shot. Because the big accomplishment isn't the fact that you finished but instead the fact that you got the supermodel naked in your bed and asking for you to join her. And when it comes to that, Obama's been like Johnny Depp and Leo DiCaprio combined, having nailed the Kate Moss and Gisele Bundchen of terrorists one after the other thanks to his shift in the way America fights wars. And that's fuckin' awesome.

September 11, 2001. 2 commercial American planes were hijacked by Saudis and flown into the World Trade Towers in Manhattan. 1 was flown into the Pentagon and another was taken down in a field in Pennsylvania. This act was orchestrated by Osama Bin Laden, the head of Al Qaeda. That is to say, this was a mission perpetrated by the Terrorist Organization Al Qaeda which would have thereby made Al Qaeda America's #1 enemy. But Al Qaeda's a tricky one. America has for the most part established its mililtary power against countries and, if not strong enough by ourself to instill fear in our enemies, then we certainly accomplish this by joining forces with America's justice league of allies. As such, few countries are real threats to us and the ones who could be at least play nice, like the two rivals on the team who may dislike each other but when push comes to shove at least pay each other grudging respect for the good of the team (said team being the world). Along those lines, then, the only real enemies who have any chance of jeopardizing the American way of life are the smaller enemies. Like a big company whose loftiness makes it easy prey for smaller companies able to adapt to a changing world or a lumbering oil tanker easily overrun by heavily-armed pirates in agile speedboats, so is America's biggest weakness its very bigness and seeming inability to adapt to unconventional fighting. Al Qaeda's an idea made flesh, a nation without boundaries except the ones that exist in the mind, without fixed home or borders, a reversion to their nomadic ancestors and as such any type of full-frontal military operation will have no effect. It's like trying to shoot a swarm of bees with a glock. The swarm will just spread, then attack with increased intensity.

But in spite of all this George W. Bush announced a full-on attack on Iraq with a half-assed one on Afghanistan. Afghanistan, at least, was a nod in the right direction as they were led by a terrorist Taliban organization (which supported, but had nothing to do with September 11th). Now Iraq - I don't need to get into Iraq. It was for the most part a pointless war, especially since we still haven't even seen any oil benefits from putting in that U.S.-friendly regime - I mean democratically-elected president. Even more, the croneyism that went on, with bloated payments of taxpayer money to such slimey scumbags as Halliburton (an oil company owned previously by W.'s grandfather and CEO'ed by VP Dick Cheney which was paid $2.5B to rebuild the country's still-crumbling infrastructure) was disgusting. Add to that all the costs for personnel and simply the expenditures of mounting a several-year war and you have $805B and counting as we're still not completely out - to have simply pulled out even when Obama came into presidency would be akin to a hard shutdown on your computer in the middle of an update, a sure death I only know about from personal experience.

So you have a costly war with pretty much no point. Then there's the war in Afghanistan. It had started off strong with a quick victory over the Taliban, our soldiers fighting on horseback alongside native Afghani warlords, an advantage we quickly lost when people and resources were diverted to the money-and-flesh suck known as the Iraq War. When Iraq went down (read: when Saddam Hussein went down) resources switched back to an Afghanistan in which the Taliban were again firmly entrenched, rolling out tanks and all to little effect. Obama came in and began to pull troops out, though, things changed. With this pull-out suddenly the Taliban were open to Peace Talks. Which were destroyed by the murderous rampage of a US Soldier, just another of the many such mentally-cracked fighting men pouring out of these two wars with frustration at not only being deployed and re-deployed but having to fight any internal questions they may have about their efficacy in these campaigns - cue bee and gun analogy again.

The point is, America's only real enemies are terrorists right now. We have some enemies with whom we are still attempting to quell our differences using diplomacy - Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea come to mind - but let's be honest, they're all bluster. Said countries know that any success they would have against America would be a drop in the ocean of shit that would come their way in response. But the terrorists - they can blow up buildings and scatter, laughing as we launch expensive large-troop and tank movements on cities far away from them. Enter Obama's new campaign to develop more coordination between intelligence and special forces as well as develop more accurate technology which not only delivers greater results but delivers them at the result of little to no loos of American life. Enter Obama's Smart War (TM).

If George W. Bush had gotten notification of suspicion of Osama Bin Laden's whereabouts, he woulda turned to his band of hawks screaming for an epic firefight. But because Bin Laden had been in Pakistan they woulda had to negotiate with Pakistan who's most likely been harboring the bastard for quite a while anyway and woulda tipped him off. Thing is, W. never woulda found him. It was Obama's pressure on Leon Panetta to up CIA efforts in combination with an increase in surveillance drones which had spotted Bin Laden's compound in the first place. And if somehow W. accomplished what the bumbling fool couldn't do in 8 years with basically a carte blanche for military expenditure, he woulda been talked into a shock and awe campaign with requisite bombs and rolling troops and "woo-ah" and a nice big contract perhaps for Blackwater to storm the area. But using intelligence - that is, Intelligence - and increased drone technology, Obama set the stage for a small team of the most elite soldiers in the world to do what they do best, come in and kill Bin Laden, a massive blow to Al Qaeda.

And today, less than a year later and with Obama's drones programs being ramped up they've struck another fucking phenomenal bullseye. Abu Yahya Al-Libi, Al-Qaeda's number 2 and its most visible, given to acclaimed intelligent orations about their mission, Allah and death to infidel westerners and so on, and an escapee of American custody, was killed by a drone strike yesterday. He's al-Qaeda's mixture of Goebbels and Oprah, a propaganda machine whose every word is considered bible and his death not only strikes a huge blow at the dispersed terrorists who rely on such leaders' videos to inspire and connect them from afar, it's also painful because, since Al-Qaeda's a terrorist organization mostly made up of illiterate sheep who must be directed by a few sharp minds, without said minds they will quickly fall back into the loam from whence they came.

And to add to it, a strike a few days ago killed high commanders of Taliban leader Mullah Nazir under whose influence the Taliban had been enjoying a resurgence, they had bragged. These last 2 have been big strikes at any momentum-building propaganda efforts but, even more, it should be noted that these are heads of the hydra Obama's cutting off now. If he had been president when we went into Iraq, perhaps Saddam Hussein would've been assassinated in a year by a drone strike. Even more, while ground wars lead to more fatalities, they also lead to more destruction (hard to wind hearts and minds of people whose home you just blew up) and the deaths are usually low-ranking poor dumb bastards easily replaced by the many poor dumb bastards out there. Not to mention the absurd cost of our combined ground wars as it nears $1.5T. Or, to put it another way, these ground wars amount to about our 2012 national deficit.

So as the campaigns start up and everybody harangues Obama for this and that, there should be one subject that remains sacrosanct - his military strategery (yes, spelled like W. pronounced it). Because other policies be damned, considering what Obama's managed to get done in just a few years and the way he's revolutionizing the way we fight wars against the only real enemies who can hurt us with their subway bombs and hijackings and dirty bombs and all, he's gonna go down in history as the president who ushered in a new and better era in how America fights wars. That is, if he doesn't lose and turn it over to a president who would no doubt turn around to deliver fat ground war contracts to his buddies and clients.

I challenge anybody who doesn't believe Obama has improved our military policies, in light of these successes as well as the obviously-effective shift from large-scale atavistic battles to smart isolated strikes - to tell me why they believe so without resorting to bi-partisan politic attacks or shifting to any other issues. This isn't a Liberal talking; this is an American citizen who has seen in the last year top members of the organization that attacked our country killed in retribution finally after the president who promised me he would take care of this did not.

People can debate Obama's fiscal and social policies all they want. But you'll be hard pressed to find a single fucking flaw in the man's war policy. Wasn't that the biggest concerns from the losing GOP in '08, that the election of Obama would leave us open to attack from our enemies? And in general isn't that what most Americans truly care about most - that we're protected from our enemies, protected from the encroaching barbarians who want nothing but to blow us up, who hate us simply because we want to enjoy our toys and our vacations and casual sex and drunking and drugs and - and, hell who hate us because they hate Freedom? Because I know that's at the forefront of my mind. And this Obama bastard's got me resting damn well assured that I have nothing to fear on that front.

- Ryan