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Obama had run as a kind of anti-war candidate in his fairytale 2008 campaign, and when it turned out that he was a hard-bitten pragmatist, in this and other areas, many of his supporters were surprised.
在2008年童话般的竞选中，奥巴马曾作为一名反战候选人参选，但事实证明他在战争领域和其他方面是一个强硬的实用主义者，他的很多支持者都很意外。
Obama expanded the “war on terror” to an awesome extent, while making it sustainable for a domestic audience in a way his predecessor never did – in part because Obama understood the political uses of transforming American warfare in a humane direction.
奥巴马将 "反恐战争 "扩大到令人敬畏的程度，同时以其前任从未有过的方式让国内民众能长期接受--部分原因是奥巴马了解将美国的战争向人性化方向转变所带来的政治利好。
In just the first few months of 2009, after Obama took the oath of office, the initial metamorphosis of American war into humane form was achieved.
在2009年宣誓就职后的头几个月，奥巴马就实现了美国战争向人性化的初步蜕变。
As the worst sins of the prior administration were disowned, Obama’s lawyers claimed authority to continue war indefinitely across space and time, devising formal legal frameworks for targeted killings.
随着前任政府最严重的罪行被否定，奥巴马的律师声称有权无限期地跨越空间和时间继续战争，为定向清除制定了正式的法律框架。
The rise of the armed drone empire under Obama’s watch was merely the symbol of the extension and expansion of endless war.
在奥巴马的眼皮底下，武装无人机帝国的崛起仅象征着无休止的战争的延伸和扩张。
“Lawyerliness suffused the Obama administration,” observed Charlie Savage, the New York Times reporter who broke many explosive national security stories during the Obama years.
《纽约时报》记者查理-萨维奇（Charlie Savage）说："律师精神充斥着奥巴马的政府。”他在奥巴马时期爆出了许多爆炸性的国家安全新闻。
But that lawyerliness often served as an elaborate rationalisation process.
但这种律师精神往往是一种精心设计的合理化过程。
The president’s men and women, Savage has written, “were trying to fight al-Qaida while adhering to what they saw as the rule of law”.
萨维奇写道，总统的爪牙们"试图打击基地组织，同时坚持他们认为的法治"。
Though what they saw as the rule of law meant little more than self-regulation, their commitment to humane standards of fighting war –
尽管他们眼中的法治只是意味着自我约束，但他们对人道的战争标准的承诺--
while by no means perfect in legal theory or military practice – had rhetorical power for some Americans, significant effects on the fighting itself, and helped produce endless war.
尽管在法律理论或军事实践中并不完美--对一些美国人来说具有言辞上的力量，对战斗本身有重大影响，并有助于产生无休止的战争。
Obama continued a process begun in the later Bush years, but he more credibly advertised the country’s uprightness as steward of the least-brutal form of war possible.
奥巴马继续着布什执政后期开始的这一进程，但他更可信地宣传了国家作为最不残暴的战争的管理者的正直性。
And he transformed the “war on terror” itself.
他还改变了 "反恐战争 "本身。
Expansion and humanisation went together, branding Obama’s wars with an ominous trademark.
扩张和人性化同时进行，给奥巴马的战争打上了一个不祥的烙印。
Beyond its other shortcomings, the transformation of American war incurred a gargantuan risk that its defenders and its opponents largely failed to notice before it was too late.
除了其他缺点之外，美国战争的转型还带来了巨大的风险，其捍卫者和反对者在为时已晚之前基本上没有注意到这一点。
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