Obama Adds New Item to Long List of Things He Believes Himself to be Awesome At: "I'm Really Good at Killing People"

At Twitchy, via Business Insider, the upcoming book Double Down (from the writers of Game Change) reveal that Obama bragged about his drone strike Kill Lists, saying he was "really good at killing people."

This reveals a lot about Barack Obama.

First of all, it reveals his fundamental moral unseriousness. I don't remember George W. Bush bragging about how many people he'd killed. He treated matters of life and death with the level of emotional maturity of which they are deserving, not as a baskets made in a game of Horse.

Second of all, it reveals his toxic level of narcissism. Obama is hardly the one doing these things. A lot of men and women are putting together intelligence and designing attack strategies and presenting them to Obama for him to check a box "yes" or check a box "no." And that's the extent of his engagement.

For this he smothers himself in self-flattery?

Let's recount this preference of Obama's for superficial, box-checking "leadership."

Contrarian liberal blogger Mickey Kaus sums it up: "The president's decision-making method -- at least as described in this piece -- seems to consist of mainly checking boxes on memos his aides have written for him."

A $60 billion cut in the stimulus package? "OK." Use the reconciliation process to pass the health care bill? A checkmark in the box labeled "yes."

Include medical malpractice reform in the health care bill? The man who as an Illinois legislator often voted "present" writes, "We should explore it."

Obama's narcissism spares him from self-criticism. And self-criticism is critical to achievement. Perhaps if Obama were more self-critical about his alleged awesomeness at killing people, he wouldn't be signing on to dubious tactics like these:

Under Obama U.S. drone operators began practicing “signature strikes,” a tactic in which targets are chosen based on patterns of suspicious behavior and the identities of those to be killed aren't necessarily known. (The administration counts all “military-age males” in a strike zone as combatants.)

Furthermore, the disturbing trend of the “double tap” — bombing the same place in quick succession and often hitting first responders — has become common practice.

Obama may be good at killing people, but it's unclear to me how good he is at killing terrorists, which is, I should hope, the actual goal here.*

* Business Insider is a lefty webzine. Honestly, I have never heard of the "double tap" technique before, and I should have been cautious about echoing Business Insider in claiming the veracity of the claims made here.

The part about not knowing precisely whom they were bombing is, I think, more or less accepted as true, and has been reported by others. As is the part about calling all military-aged males in the bomb radius terrorists.

posted by Ace at 12:15 PM

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