This was supposed to be the latest and greatest form of "smart war": the use of unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), or lethal drones, to go after and eliminate evil terrorists without risking US soldiers' lives.

It all sounds so slick and, well, Obama cool. The problem is that any sober consideration of Obama's foreign policy over the course of his eight years as president reveals that the reality is altogether different. Judging by the murder and mayhem being perpetrated all across the Middle East, "smart war" was not so smart after all.

It's not easy to tease out how much of the mess in the Middle East is specifically due to Obama's accelerated use of lethal drones in "signature strikes" to kill thousands of military-age men in seven different lands. For he also implemented other, equally dubious initiatives. Planks of Obama's bloody "smart power" approach included deposing Libya's dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, and massively arming (from 2012 to 2013) a group of little-understood "appropriately vetted moderate rebels" in Syria.