What new revelations on drones and cyberwarfare say about President Obama
Government sources disclosed to The New York Times’ chief Washington correspondent that the United States, with the help of Israel, engineered a fabulously successful cyberattack on a key Iranian nuclear processing plant. Provided to David Sanger for a forthcoming book, the information found a proper home on the paper’s front page, in the process revealing to the world the secrets of who had pulled off the Stuxnet caper and how.
Days earlier, The Times had published an exhaustive report describing the inside workings of the U.S. drone war and placing President Obama squarely in charge of targeting particular Al Qaeda operatives for death in Pakistan and Yemen.
The conclusion is inescapable that Obama and/or his aides have pulled the curtains back on top-secret activities to burnish the President’s image as a commander in chief who has effectively wielded America’s techno-warfare skills to steely advantage.
That the Stuxnet affair and the drone program are both to be proudly applauded does not relieve officials of the moral, strategic and legal duty to keep secrets. Nor can leaking the Stuxnet details be justified on the ground that everyone suspected the U.S. and Israel, so what the heck.
Will Attorney General Eric Holder launch an investigation into who shared the Stuxnet specifics? Highly doubtful, even though, as The Times put it, Obama “repeatedly expressed concerns that any American acknowledgment that it was using cyberweapons — even under the most careful and limited circumstances — could enable other countries, terrorists or hackers to justify their own attacks.”
The upside of the collective disclosures is that the American public is better informed about Obama’s record, as it has been favorably cast in The Times.
On the drone front, Obama emerges as a onetime anti-war candidate and severe critic of George W. Bush’s anti-terror tactics who was transformed in office into a man who shuffles “baseball cards” of enemies to be killed with missile strikes. He wants the evidence. He wrestles with the chances of civilian casualties. And ultimately, he decides who lives or dies.
This portrayal of Obama has produced hand-wringing among liberals who believed he would lead a kinder, gentler war on terrorism after the Bush era of enhanced interrogation. Some go so far as to say that, even if it makes sense for the U.S. government to keep a kill list, the President should delegate the final decision-making to others.
Nuts to that. This is precisely the President’s job, and Obama deserves credit for assuming personal responsibility and, by all indications, exercising it ably.
Similarly, in Sanger’s account of Stuxnet, Obama ran with an operation begun by Bush. Its goal was to penetrate computer controls for the underground nuclear processing facility at Natanz, where Iran is enriching uranium.
Facing a longshot challenge, U.S. specialists breached Iranian security and, aided by the Israelis, implanted a “worm” that could make centrifuges self-destruct without leaving a trace, and communicated with the National Security Agency.
That’s exactly what happened on Obama’s watch — and bravo to him for delaying, if only temporarily, Iran’s march toward nuclear capability and a potential military strike by Israel or the U.S. The story is a good one — although it never should have been told.