He has also significantly expanded the use of drones against al-Qaeda leaders and foot soldiers. In Pakistan alone, the United States has carried out 227 drone strikes since Obama took office, nearly five times more than Bush conducted during his eight-year tenure.
According to the New America Foundation, the Obama administration has killed at least 1,100 combatants in those strikes, also a nearly fivefold increase from the Bush years. Those figures do not include civilian deaths that resulted from the remotely controlled attacks.
As his overall approval rating has sunk, Obama has seen a rise in support for his handling of national security. A Post-ABC News poll published last month showed that 62 percent approve of how he has managed the terrorist threat.
“In international affairs, he will take risks,” said John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, a think tank close to the administration. “The risks Bush took were bad bets because they were so influenced by ideology. Obama takes risks based on analysis and calculations.”
At a time of deep economic uncertainty, public support for Obama’s national security policies, including a steady troop drawdown from Iraq, has not improved his overall political standing on the eve of a difficult election year.
Although his approval rating jumped 9 percentage points immediately after bin Laden’s killing in May, the boost evaporated within weeks. In a New York Times-CBS News poll published last month, only 2 percent of respondents listed terrorism and national security as “the most important problem facing the country.”
But Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Obama has likely benefited from the intangible effect that diplomatic and military success can bring to a presidency, especially a Democratic one.
“Polls often miss the fact that if you seem strong on national security, it makes you look presidential more broadly, so it helps your image as a leader,” O’Hanlon said. “Unlike his predecessors in the Democratic Party, Obama’s not really accused of being weak and I think that’s a huge advantage for him heading into the campaign.”
In his remarks Friday, Obama called Aulaqi’s killing “another significant milestone in the broader effort to defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates.” He did not mention Aulaqi’s U.S. citizenship; administration officials stressed throughout the day that he is also a citizen of Yemen.
Many on the left expressed concern that Obama has taken the war against al Qaeda into territory where Bush did not venture. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) said in a statement that “the administration has a crossed a dangerous divide and set a dangerous precedent for how the United States handles terrorism cases.”
“Mr. al-Aulaqi’s allegedly violent rejection of America was not acceptable in any way,” Kucinich said. “Neither is it acceptable to trample the Constitution through extrajudicial killings.”
The operation also drew different reactions from Obama’s Republican rivals with Gov. Rick Perry of Texas praising the operation and Rep. Ron Paul, also of Texas, criticizing the president for killing a U.S. citizen without due process.
“Nobody knows if he ever killed anybody,” Paul said, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. “If the American people accept this blindly and casually . . . I think that’s sad.”
Staff researcher Julie Tate and polling analyst Scott Clement contributed to this report.
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