In the weeks leading up to the first leg of America’s airstrikes inside Syria and Iraq, few media outlets have dared to ask a relatively simple, albeit telling question: is this even legal?

At the time, the Obama administration was still grappling with a way to sell drone strikes in Syria to the public. However, only a few weeks later, and thanks largely to a media that’s either too incompetent or altogether complacent to ask even basic legal questions, the President is succeeding, despite the relatively apparent illegalities of invading a sovereign airspace.

Thus far, President Obama has only a handful of ways through which he can justify these strikes, each carrying some glaringly obvious holes with respect to both executive authority and international law.

And yet, virtually every poll over the last week shows Americans overwhelmingly support bombing not only ISIS in Iraq, but previously unknown groups across the Syrian border.

On Sept. 12, if you had asked most Americans (or journalists, for that matter) who The Khorasan Group was, few would have any idea.

Fast-forward a day later, when an Associated Press article introduced the group as “a mix of hardened jihadis from Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Europe” that “poses a more direct and imminent threat to the United States, working with Yemeni bomb-makers to target U.S. aviation, American officials say.”

Fast-forward a few more days: The Khorasan Group are the hottest thing off the press—the new media darling; the heir-apparent to the ISIS Throne.

Since that time, virtually every major news outlet has run with the story, each showcasing an embarrassing level of fact checking, relying more on phrases like “officials say” or “according to a government spokesperson” than even a modicum of proof to support such statements.

Never mind that, prior to the AP report, The Khorasan Group was a virtually unheard of in the public eye.

Never mind that, prior to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s warning that Khorasan “may pose as much of a danger as the Islamic State,” they existed almost entirely in Pentagon briefings and classified files.

With the rise of the Khorasan—the new face of terror, the bastion of everything evil— President Obama suddenly had the two things standing between him and another unfettered, unchecked drone campaign abroad: a scared and ignorant public, informed by a blind and unquestioning media.

Fast-forward another two weeks to the morning of Sept. 23, when a Tomahawk missile killed as many as twelve women and children in Syria’s Idlib province. Official reports say the village was used by Khorasan to plot attacks on international aircraft.

Eyewitnesses (as well as YouTube videos), however, describe the bodies of women and children being pulled from the rubble of what was previously a home for displaced civilians.

A few years ago, we would’ve simply called that “collateral damage.” But thanks to a new Obama Administration policy that negates the prior and strict “near certainty” standard for drone strikes abroad, we can’t even call them that. I guess “dead women and children” will have to suffice for now.

It should be noted, by the way, that this is all happening amidst years-long drone campaigns in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan—campaigns that have killed at least 2,400 people and 270 civilians (exact numbers are muddied both by government secrecy and the tendency to include all able-bodied males as, by their very nature, prospective terrorists).

It should also be noted that at least four Americans are included in that casualty count, each killed without even hearing their Fifth Amendment rights.

What’s happening inside Syria right now is nothing new.

On the third day of the Obama Presidency, two drone strikes inside Pakistan killed as many as 19 civilians. Three days later, in his inaugural address, Obama sold America as “a friend of each nation, and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity.”

Fast-forward again, this time to Dec. 17, 2009, when a Navy submarine launched bomb-laden cruise missiles at a village al Majala, Yemen. 41 civilians died, 21 of them children, 12 of them women.

A week prior, Barack Obama was giving an acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. He spoke mainly about “just war,” but also touched on controversy over receiving the award, despite not really having done anything: “I am at the beginning, not the end, of my labors on the world stage,” he said. What foresight.

And yet, there is blood on our hands too. Because for more than a decade now, we’ve sat idly-by as American missiles decimated villages abroad.

We’ve failed to hold accountable our representatives for making political, rather than moral and legal, moves regarding the drone program.

While Barack Obama’s legacy at home will likely be defined by universal healthcare, LGBTQ rights and racial progress, his legacy abroad will likely be far darker, defined not by “just war” and peace, but by bloodshed and terror.

Years from now, President Obama will be remembered abroad through the eyes of his victims, victims like Zubair, a 12-year-old Pakistani boy who lost his granmother and, almost his sister, to drones. Zubair, who every day lives in constant fear of swift death from above:

“I no longer love blue skies,” Zubair told Congress last year. “In fact, I now prefer grey skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are grey, and for a short period of time, the mental tension and fear eases… When sky brightens, drones return, and we live in fear.”

And that’s our legacy, too.

Robert Downen is a senior journalism major. He can be reached at 581-7912 or [email protected]