Barack Obama

Barack Obama: At the core of Obamas speech was a resolve to correct perilous drifts affecting his country. Since 9/11, he noted, its fight against terrorism has succeeded in averting mass terror attacks on U.S. soil but at a very steep cost. On the domestic side, those costs include nearly a trillion dollars of counterterrorism spending that raised deficits and foreclosed investment in national well-being; over 7,000 Americans dead and many more maimed; and disturbing infringements of democratic freedoms and the rule of law. On the international side also, the costs to Americas interests have been staggering. Its reputation has been deeply damaged through drone strikes on civilians and extra-judicial detentions at Guantanamo Bay, and it has failed to help bring peace to the Middle East. For all these reasons, the president said, the choice is stark: We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, according to The Star. Some critics immediately charged that the changes Obama described or implied were not specific, transparent or far-reaching enough. And as many experts have pointed out , the implementation of this new global vision faces formidable hurdles: from legal messes at Guantanamo, to entrenched wartime bureaucracies in Washington, to persistent foreign crises and And now, a public service announcement: while Canadians have been gripped by scandal in Ottawa and Toronto for the past two weeks, the global war on terror has ended. In a major speech last Friday, President Barack Obama declared that after 11 years of wartime footing, a new approach is required. It is time, he said, for the U.S. to define its effort not as a boundless global war on terror, but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America. The program of action Obama laid out to undo the paradigm of unending war on terror is sweeping. Among other things, he vowed to adopt the aim of disrupting terrorist networks directly threatening the U.S., as opposed to eliminating violent extremists everywhere; to close the Guantanamo Bay prison at last; to ensure more policy clarity on, and oversight of, U.S. targeted killing via drones; to limit presidential powers to act on a wartime footing; and to use U.S. diplomacy and foreign aid better in pursuing policy goals unattainable through force alone. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.