How Obama Gave Trump the ‘Military-Age Males’ Talking Point

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1 year ago

April 10, 2024

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Immigration hawks want you to believe that men are a threat by default. Figures like former President Donald Trump and current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (RLa.) argue that immigration is really an “invasion” because many migrants lined up at the border are ” military-age males ” from ” adversarial nations .” The implication isn’t that these people work for any specific army or militant organization, but that any young man from the wrong country is guilty until proven innocent.

Conservatives and liberals alike might be surprised to learn that this idea was written into U.S. policy by former President Barack Obama. During drone campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Obama administration counted any ” military-age ” men in certain areas as enemy fighters, even if the U.S. government didn’t know who those men were. The policy allowed Obama to lowball the number of civilians killed by U.S. drone strikes.

Of course, the category of military-age or fighting-age men is much older than the drone program. But as political scientist Micah Zenko pointed out in an article for the Council on Foreign Relations, the term “military-age male reentered the lexicon of American warfare” during the Obama-era debate over the drone program.

“Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in,” The New York Times revealed in 2012. “It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”

Even more dystopically, the CIA had inherited a policy known as “signature strikes” from the Bush administration. Drone pilots were allowed to fire on armed men “associated with suspicious activity even if their identities were unknown,” according to The New Yorker .

Obama expanded the definition of “suspicious activity” to include almost any man in the wrong place at the wrong time, overseeing 10 times as many drone strikes as Bush had. Obama administration officials told the Times that “people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.”

The phrase “military-age males” jumped from U.S. military and intelligence circles to American politics during the Obama era, too. In late 2015, at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis, Republican politicians including Trump began claiming that the Obama administration was importing an “army” of fighting-age Syrian men. Radio host Rush Limbaugh, who had previously covered the Times revelations about Obama’s targeting of “military-age males,” was a major figure pushing this narrative .

Only a quarter of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States at the time were adult men, and only two percent were single adult men, according to U.S. State Department records .

One of the first uses of the specific term “military-age males” in the immigration debate came from Allen West, a former Army colonel who had derailed his career by torturing an Iraqi detainee. “We should not allow any military-age males to be part of this refugee crisis,” West said in a Fox and Friends interview on November 16, 2015. “I believe that anyone from about 16 to 40 years of age, single males, should not be allowed to come in. That’s a Trojan horse.”

The Obama administration didn’t have much ground to oppose West’s logic. A few months after that interview, the Obama administration finished its internal review of signature strikes. The government decided to continue the practice of killing suspicious unknown men, with the caveat that people will now be considered “noncombatants until proved otherwise” rather than the other way around.

Throughout the Trump and Biden eras, politiciansfrom Rep. Jeff Duncan (RS.C.) and former Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones continued to rail against “military-age males” immigrating to Western countries.

That talking point really took off again in mid-2023, according to the News on the Web Corpus, a database of English-language online media in several countries. The data also captured a spike in articles about young Russian men fleeing the draft in mid-2022.

The same was true for television, according to an analysis commissioned by The Washington Post, which showed a massive increase in the use of the phrase “military-age” in the context of immigration debates since mid-2023. Almost all those mentions came on Fox News, particularly on Sean Hannity’s show. And the increased use of the term was entirely political, because it came as a decreasing percentage of people stopped at the border were single adults while an increasing percentage came from families with children.

Immigration restrictionists, of course, don’t need an Obama-era term to demonize immigrant men . But the category of “military-age males” lends an official-sounding sheen to the idea that young adults looking for work or asylum are really an army of conquest. It’s encouraging everyone to look at the huddled masses through a drone’s eye view.

The migration of this phrase from Obama’s CIA to anti-immigration rants should be a lesson to liberals and conservatives alike. Liberals who support a hawkish foreign policyeven the kindler, gentler war on terror that Obama promisedmay end up normalizing repression at home. And even conservatives who rail against the “forever wars” may allow the logic of those wars to live on, directed at the American homeland itself.

UK

Fourteen children arrested on suspicion of manslaughter over Gateshead fire released on bail

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1 hour ago

May 5, 2025

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Fourteen children arrested on suspicion of manslaughter over Gateshead fire released on bail

All 14 children arrested on suspicion of manslaughter after a boy died in a fire have been released on police bail, officers said.

Layton Carr, 14, was found dead near the site of a fire at Fairfield industrial park in the Bill Quay area of Gateshead on Friday.

Northumbria Police said on Saturday that they had arrested 11 boys and three girls in connection with the incident.

In an update on Sunday, a Northumbria Police spokesman said: “All those arrested have since been released on police bail pending further inquiries.”

Firefighters raced to the industrial site shortly after 8pm on Friday, putting out the blaze a short time later.

Police then issued an appeal for Carr, who was believed to be in the area at that time.

In a statement on Saturday, the force said that “sadly, following searches, a body believed to be that of 14-year-old Layton Carr was located deceased inside the building”.

David Thompson, headteacher of Hebburn Comprehensive School, where Layton was a pupil, said the school community was “heartbroken”.

Mr Thompson described him as a “valued and much-loved member of Year 9” and said he would be “greatly missed by everyone”.

He added that the school’s “sincere condolences” were with Layton’s family and that the community would “rally together to support one another through this tragedy”.

A fundraising page on GoFundMe has been set up to help Layton’s mother pay for funeral costs.

Organiser Stephanie Simpson said: “The last thing Georgia needs to stress trying to pay for a funeral for her Boy Any donations will help thank you.”

One tribute in a Facebook post read: “Can’t believe I’m writing this my nephew RIP Layton 💔 forever 14 you’ll be a massive miss, thinking of my sister and 2 beautiful nieces right now.”

Detective Chief Inspector Louise Jenkins, of Northumbria Police, also said: “This is an extremely tragic incident where a boy has sadly lost his life.”

She added that the force’s “thoughts are with Layton’s family as they begin to attempt to process the loss of their loved one”.

They are working to establish “the full circumstances surrounding the incident” and officers will be in the area to “offer reassurance to the public”, she added.

A cordon remains in place at the site while police carry out enquiries.

UK

Football bodies could be forced to pay towards brain injury care costs of ex-players

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1 hour ago

May 5, 2025

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Football bodies could be forced to pay towards brain injury care costs of ex-players

Football bodies could be forced to pay towards the care costs of ex-players who have been diagnosed with brain conditions, under proposals set to be considered by MPs.

Campaigners are drafting amendments to the Football Governance Bill, which would treat conditions caused by heading balls as an “industrial injuries issue”.

The proposals seek to require the football industry to provide the necessary financial support.

Campaigners say existing support is not fit for purpose, including the Brain Health Fund which was set up with an initial £1m by the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), supported by the Premier League.

But the Premier League said the fund has supported 121 families with at-home adaptations and care home fees.

From England‘s 1966 World Cup-winning team, both Jack and Bobby Charlton died with dementia, as did Martin Peters, Ray Wilson and Nobby Stiles.

Ex-players, including former Liverpool defender Neil Ruddock, went to parliament last week to lobby MPs.

Ruddock told Sky News he had joined campaigners “for the families who’ve gone through hell”.

“A professional footballer, greatest job in the world, but no one knew the dangers, and that’s scary,” he said.

“Every time someone heads a ball it’s got to be dangerous to you. You know, I used to head 100 balls a day in training. I didn’t realise that might affect my future.”

A study co-funded by the PFA and the Football Association (FA) in 2019 found footballers were three and a half times more likely to die of a neurodegenerative disease than members of the public of the same age.

‘In denial’

Among those calling on football authorities to contribute towards the care costs of ex-players who have gone on to develop conditions such as Alzheimer’s and dementia is Labour MP Chris Evans.

Mr Evans, who represents Caerphilly in South Wales, hopes to amend the Bill to establish a care and financial support scheme for ex-footballers and told a recent event in parliament that affected ex-players “deserve to be compensated”.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who helped to draft the amendment, said the game was “in denial about the whole thing”.

Mr Burnham called for it to be seen as “an industrial injuries issue in the same way with mining”.

In January, David Beckham lent his support to calls for greater support for footballers affected by dementia.

One of the amendments says that “the industry rather than the public should bear the financial burden”.

A spokesperson for the FA said it was taking a “leading role in reviewing and improving the safety of our game” and that it had “already taken many proactive steps to review and address potential risk factors”.

An English Football League spokesperson said it was “working closely with other football bodies” to ensure both professional and grassroots football are “as safe as it can be”.

The PFA and Premier League declined to comment.

UK

Terror arrests came in context of raised warnings about Iran, with ongoing chaos in its own backyard

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1 hour ago

May 5, 2025

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Terror arrests came in context of raised warnings about Iran, with ongoing chaos in its own backyard

These are two separate and unrelated investigations by counter-terror officers.

But the common thread is nationality – seven out of the eight people arrested are Iranian.

And that comes in the context of increased warnings from government and the security services about Iranian activity on British soil.

Last year, the director general of MI5, Ken McCallum, said his organisation and police had responded to 20 Iran-backed plots presenting potentially lethal threats to British citizens and UK residents since January 2022.

He linked that increase to the ongoing situation in Iran’s own backyard.

“As events unfold in the Middle East, we will give our fullest attention to the risk of an increase in – or a broadening of – Iranian state aggression in the UK,” he said.

The implication is that even as Iran grapples with a rapidly changing situation in its own region, having seen its proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, decimated and itself coming under Israeli attack, it may seek avenues further abroad.

The government reiterated this warning only a few weeks ago, with security minister Dan Jarvis addressing parliament.

“The threat from Iran sits in a wider context of the growing, diversifying and evolving threat that the UK faces from malign activity by a number of states,” Jarvis said.

“The threat from states has become increasingly interconnected in nature, blurring the lines between: domestic and international; online and offline; and states and their proxies.

“Turning specifically to Iran, the regime has become increasingly emboldened, asserting itself more aggressively to advance their objectives and undermine ours.”

As part of that address, Jarvis highlighted the National Security Act 2023, which “criminalises assisting a foreign intelligence service”, among other things.

So it was notable that this was the act used in one of this weekend’s investigations.

The suspects were detained under section 27 of the same act, which allows police to arrest those suspected of being “involved in foreign power threat activity”.

Those powers are apparently being put to use.