Failed counterinsurgency forced Obama back to counterterrorism and drone warfare

Evidence

In practice, this didn’t go very smoothly. The NATO intervention in Afghanistan began to lose its multilateral character, as various European nations started pulling out their forces in response to domestic opposition. By the end of the first decade of the new millennium, the “hearts and minds” approach and the counterinsurgency strategy had more or less failed. Obama therefore had to return to counterterrorism and say “good-bye to nation building and counter-insurgency operations.” The failure of the Bush policies he was pursuing ushered in a new phase in Obama’s imperial strategy. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 432

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 432
• XREF: connects to: Air Force strategists redefined counterinsurgency around airpower and drones. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 257; Drone doctrine replaces counterinsurgency’s population politics with terror-and-eradication yield — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 286; Obama’s presidency mutated and advanced rather than ended the war on terror — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 329 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Failed Iraq and Afghan wars drove Obama toward a rebranded smarter war on terror #corroborates (0.95)
• Obama’s rebranded war on terror kept drone and special-forces targeting against Muslims #corroborates (0.90) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 507
• Obama’s defense guidance continued the War on Terror via drones and special forces #corroborates (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 433
• Obama’s conciliatory rhetoric masked continued drone and surveillance warfare #expands (0.85) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 299
• Obama legitimized and expanded the war on terror, not reversed it #expands (0.80)
• Obama continued the War on Terror with rhetoric rather than swords #responds-to (0.75) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 296
• Drone war’s core task shifted from destroying enemies to finding and tracking them #expands (0.50)