President Barack Obama, faced with international criticism over excessive use of drone attacks and delay in closure of Gitmo military prison, will deliver a speech on Thursday to explain his administration’s policy on bringing counterterrorism policies in line with legal framework.
According to the Washington Post, Obama will speak at the National Defense University with a White House official saying that he would “discuss our broad counterterrorism policy, including our military, diplomatic, intelligence and legal efforts.”
In the speech, the official said the US president would frame the future of the government’s efforts against al Qaeda, its affiliates and adherents.
The speech will be watched closely in Pakistan, where a new democratic government will shortly take charge of Islamabad after the historic May 11 polls. Pakistan’s mainstream political parties, including victorious Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), voiced serious opposition to the controversial US drone strikes in pursuit of suspected al Qaeda and other militants hiding in tribal areas along the Afghan border.
The US official told the paper that Obama would review the state of the threats US faced, particularly as the al Qaeda core had weakened.
“He will discuss the policy and legal framework under which we take action against terrorist threats, including the use of drones. And he will review our detention policy and efforts to close the detention facility at GuantanamoBay.”
Into his second term, Obama said this year he would “continue to engage the Congress to ensure not only that targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with American laws and system of checks and balances, but that efforts are even more transparent to the American people and to the world.”
The address will serve as a second-term bookend to his National Archives speech in 2009, when he argued that US national security interests do not have to conflict with the country’s commitment to human rights and the rule of law.
However, the newspaper noted that since then, Obama had found it difficult at times to balance his counterterrorism policies with the values he had said were essential to restoring the US image abroad.
The speech also comes amid criticism over the Justice Department’s move to secretly obtain the phone records of Associated Press journalists as part of a federal investigation into national security leaks within the administration.
The report says although torture is no longer allowed in US, the military brig at Guantanamo still held 166 prisoners, more than half of whom were on a hunger strike to protest conditions. Obama said last month that he would try again to close Guantanamo, despite enduring congressional opposition.
Also concerning many human rights and civil liberties groups has been Obama’s significant expansion of the drone program, including the first killing of a US citizen with an unmanned aircraft without charge or trial. Obama approved the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American cleric affiliated with al Qaeda, in 2011.
Obama has used it to keep pressure on al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and, more recently, in Yemen.
