After Obama won the election, he continued Bush’s second-term foreign policy agenda. While he retreated rhetorically from the use of harsh Islamophobic language, in practice he sent thirty thousand more troops to Afghanistan, expanded the war to Pakistan, and tried to alter the Status of Forces Agreement in Iraq so as to not only extend the US occupation but also grant immunity to US troops from Iraqi prosecution. Not only did he carry out far more drone attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan than his predecessor, he also integrated them into his strategies for Yemen and Somalia. He made a show of demonstrating his loyalty to Israel and failed, like every previous president, to prevent Israeli attacks on Palestinians.

XREF: Relates to broader scholarship on the continuity between Bush and Obama counterterrorism/drone policy, such as work by Micah Zenko and others.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 579