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Obama defends use of drone strikes
President Obama defended his administration’s counterterrorism operations Tuesday, which have come under fire from liberal Democrats in recent weeks.
Obama did not use the word “drone” in his State of the Union address, but he said that the administration has created a “durable legal and policy framework” for counterterrorism operations, a reference to the recent disclosure of the administration’s “white paper” justifying the killing of American citizens with drone strikes if they are al Qaeda leaders.
“As we do, we must enlist our values in the fight,” Obama said. “That is why my administration has worked tirelessly to forge a durable legal and policy framework to guide our counterterrorism efforts.”
The administration’s drone policy was a key part of last week’s confirmation hearing for Obama’s CIA Director nominee John Brennan, who is currently the White House’s chief counterterrorism adviser and an architect of the drone policy.
Senators like Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said they had been requesting those documents for more than a year.
“We have kept Congress fully informed of our efforts,” Obama said Tuesday, downplaying the congressional criticisms.
“I recognize that in our democracy, no one should just take my word for it that we’re doing things the right way,” he said. “So, in the months ahead, I will continue to engage Congress to ensure not only that our targeting, detention, and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances, but that our efforts are even more transparent to the American people and to the world.”
Obama said that al Qaeda was today “a shadow of its former self.”
He noted that al Qaeda affiliates and other extremist groups have emerged from the Arabian Peninsula to Africa, and that the threat these groups pose is “evolving.”
But he said that instead of sending troops to countries like Yemen, Libya and Somalia, the United States can help them provide for their own security, as well as continue taking “direct action against those terrorists who pose the gravest threat to Americans.”
