a refreshing look at Obama

[fivekatz]

I must admit that I see drones as what Cheney talked about right after 9/11 which was the "dar side". I had no idea that Cheney meant two conventional wars, indefinite detention, the Patriot Act and torture.

All that shit is pretty hard to put back in bottle. The US is still in the process of leaving Afganistan and no President once granted the extraordinary powers given Bush 43 after 9/11 will give them back. Candidates will denounce how they are used but incumbents will keep them, believe "they" would never abuse them.

Now right or wrong, drones are an approach to combat with terrorists that is proportional versus conventional warfare. It is unappealing and in the hands of the wrong person it could create even greater harm but by its very nature easier to roll back than an invasion by 160,000 ground troops or carpet bombing to create "shock and awe". And for better or worse more likely to get the bad guys.

It is horrid that any of this exists but for all the outrage about drones, look at all the crap the Obama administration took and is taking over the embassy attack in Libya. The public expects the President to be excessively diligent in the defense of the nation and in the case of Obama I do not think anyone can say he has not. He has not however been provocative and fallen into the neo-con trap of pre-emptive action against Iran. But make no mistake the GOP found itself in the 2012 in the unusual position of not being able to attack the Dems as weak on defense.

There is no winning in killing and that is as it should be. Obama has sadly learned that closing Gitmo was no easy matter which is as sad as is the liberal use of drones. Genie left the bottle on 9/11 and as long as their are terrorists that render conventional defense meaningless, new and unfortunate means of dealing with it will sought out.

[Ben]

Barack Obama is pushing gun control at home, but he's a killer abroad

President Obama's appeals to respect human life in the US are at odds with his backing for drone strikes in foreign parts

Gary Yonge The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...-drones-killer

[Ben]

An Interview with Marjorie Cohn about Targeted Killings:

http://www.zcommunications.org/an-in...-marjorie-cohn

[fivekatz]

Gary Younge's premise seems to rely on the assumption that if the President had advance knowledge that a domestic shooter was going to plan an assault on 20-30 American's on US soil that the President would not use drones to eliminate shooter prior to the execution of his plan.

Obama's opponents on the left and many others worry that just opposite could be true.

Drones are a nasty topic as is all forms of killing. Even more nasty perhaps than how the drones are used today is how they could be used in the hands of others with executive power.

The drones are scary and the moral questions are obvious. But let's assume for a minute that the Bush Administration had drilled down on the warnings they got of impending attack better, that they were lucky enough to get more data and imaginative enough to realize that terrorists were going to hijack airliners and use them as suicide bombs on sites with high concentrations of innocent people.

Should the Bush people have ordered drone attacks targeting the key players in the plot r should they have waited until 3,000 plus had died and then attempted to capture, jail and put on trial the principle plotters since those that actual attacked the buildings died in doing so?

Indeed it is a dark question, it is what I thought Cheney meant went he said the dark side versus large conventional warfare combined with torture of detainees.

It is a leap of faith to give our elected officials the right to use drones and that is a slippery slope but I do believe when small groups of people render a nation's conventional defensive deterrents as irrelevant that the options all become unsavory.

[Ben]

MSNBC Says Trust Obama on Drones:

[Ben]

Bob Woodward demands law-ignoring, mind-controlling presidential leadership

Washington's most respected reporter is embarrassing himself in his sequester showdown comments:

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/27/bob_...al_leadership/

[buttslinger]

team obama

2014

[Ben]

Obama Urges Against Paranoia:

[fivekatz]

Obama Urges Against Paranoia:

Their premise is a great example of triangulating.

[Ben]

Their premise is a great example of triangulating.

Yep! It is....