ABSTRACT
During his Second Inaugural Address, on 21 January 2013, US President Barack Obama insisted that he and all Americans understand that ‘enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war’. He confidently declared that a ‘decade of war is now ending’ (Obama 2013). Almost a dozen years, however, after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC on 11 September 2001, the United States remains embroiled in a long-term struggle with what George W. Bush (2001) called the existential threat of international terrorism. On the campaign trail in 2008, his successor as US President, Barack Obama, promised to reboot the ‘War on Terror’. He claimed that his new administration would step back from the rhetoric and much of the policy of the Bush administration, conducting a counter-terrorism campaign that would be more morally acceptable, more focused and more effective – smarter, better, nimbler, stronger (‘Obama’s Remarks on Iraq and Afghanistan’ 2008). Those expecting wholesale changes to US counter-terrorism policy, however, misread Obama’s intentions. Obama always intended to deepen Bush’s commitment to counter-terrorism, while at the same time ending the ‘distraction’ of the Iraq War. Rather than being trapped by Bush’s institutionalised construction of a global war on terror (see Section 2 of this book and, in particular, Jackson’s and Bentley’s chapters), the continuities in counter-terrorism can be explained by Obama’s shared conception of the imperative of reducing the terrorist threat to the US, as demonstrated by his pursuit and elimination of the al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. This chapter focuses on the difficulties Obama has had in distinguishing his counter-terrorism policy from that of his predecessor and explores how his rhetoric has been reconstituted as the actions of his policy have unfolded. In particular, attention is focused on the problems of fulfilling his promise to continue combating terrorism, while adhering to core moral values and principles. By addressing his policies toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, Guantanamo Bay and torture, and the use of unmanned drone attacks, it will be argued that Obama’s ‘war’ against terrorism is not only in keeping with the assumptions and priorities of the last decade but also that, despite some successes, it is just as problematic as that of his predecessor.
