Do you agree with Obama's decision to start killing more people? Then why do you support him?

@parados,

But, I find it interesting that at the same time you accuse Obama of being a rampant killer the GOP is arguing that he isn't strong enough and is an appeaser.

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@parados,

No it doesn't. International law allows for this killing within certain parameters but does not discern whether or not this particular case is legitimate self-defense.

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@parados,

Well that's because of your inordinate partisanship, you can't help but find a way to make this about your political opponents. I find that wholly irrelevant to my discussion.

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@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

The US military is not keeping Americans safe from attacks. It is motivating them by being one of the biggest killing machines of your lifetime.

Reading Three Cups of Tea has brought me really strongly to this viewpoint.

Well, not just the killing machine side, but not keeping the promises made to help Pakistan and Afghanistan back in the 1980's and 1990's. Definitely heated up the anger - and provided a vacuum for Taliban leaders with cash to come in and build schools and indoctrinate in the area.

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@Robert Gentel,

My comment had nothing to do with partisanship. It was merely a comment on how Obama is seen in such diametrically opposed ways. It was an observation of how life is funny some times.

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@Robert Gentel,

In my mind, it's a case of the lesser of two evils.

Bush not only invaded Iraq on a pretext, but then occupied it and threw away money (and worse, too damn many lives) building and rebuilding their infrastructure.

Sure, we wouldn't have gotten Bush back again, but we would have gotten someone a lot more hawkish than Obama (IMO).

Do I agree with the drone attacks? No, I think they're counterproductive, as you've pointed out.

Do I think someone else in the White House would be as bad or worse? Damn straight.

I support Obama over his rivals, but I disagree with this particular policy.

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@Robert Gentel,

I don't understand your comment Robert.

International law certainly allows for killing of this type as self defense. Just because these particular cases haven't been adjudicated doesn't mean they are not covered under that law. The law certainly carries more weight than your viewpoint. You don't get to reject it out of hand simply because you don't feel it applies.

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@DrewDad,

I'll also say again that the best thing America could do to increase security would be to end the War on Drugs.

It creates an incentive to break the law.

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@parados,

parados wrote:

I don't understand your comment Robert.

Laws do not have an opinion on specific cases. So international law doesn't sit down an interpret this situation and decide its justified or not.

That is a conclusion that must be drawn both from the situation as interpreted through the laws.

Quote:

International law certainly allows for killing of this type as self defense.

International law allows for this kind of killing in self-defense. What it says nothing at all about is whether or not this case constitutes self-defense.

Quote:

Just because these particular cases haven't been adjudicated doesn't mean they are not covered under that law.

Whether or not this case is covered by the relevant laws is itself a very arguable thing, parados.

Quote:

The law certainly carries more weight than your viewpoint. You don't get to reject it out of hand simply because you don't feel it applies.

I'm not rejecting it out of hand, just pointing out that international law has nothing at all to say about whether these particular cases are legitimate cases of self-defense or not.

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@DrewDad,

DrewDad wrote:

In my mind, it's a case of the lesser of two evils.

I think this lesser of two evils rationale is part of why the vicious cycle doesn't break but I at least cede that it is arguably true (that some of the other alternatives to Obama would be even more hawkish).

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@Robert Gentel,

I just became curious as to what your answer to this question would be:

If Pakistanis attack Americans is this covered under international law as self-defense Parados?

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@Robert Gentel,

Quote:

That is, I think that if Obama stopped killing hundreds of people in Afghanistan and Pakistan each year, that Americans would actually be safer. I allege that Americans are targets of attacks precisely because of this killing habit it has, and not in spite of it. ...

I'm with you most of the way on this one, not all the way. I've mentioned that Saddam Hussein was provably involved in the anthrax attacks which followed 9/11 and something had to be done, but 12 years worth of something is no longer reasonable. The idea of the US engaging in "nation building" is not defensible, it's a hobby we cannot afford.

There is another problem in that the real bad actors in the picture i.e. Saudi Arabia and Iran are not being dealt with the way you'd want them to be. 9/11 as I understand it amounted mainly to Osama bin laden wanting to leapfrog the seventy-somethings in line for the SA throne by kicking the 800-lb gorilla in the balls while he was asleep; it had nothing to do with any sins the US may have been committing towards the muslim world.

Also not mentioned here is the very real danger which dog-wagging on the part of democrat presidents (Kosovo, Iraq, Sudan, Libya...) puts us in inasmuch as it convinces the world's bad actors that they need nuclear weaponry to keep us at bay.

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I would rather see the US disengage from that region entirely, and refuse to buy oil from there.

But, that's probably not going to happen. So, to me, there is a tier:

Worst: open warfare
Middle: targetted warfare
Best: no warfare

I'm not for hunting down terrorists using drones, but it's better than hunting them down by invading entire countries and destroying their governments, infrastructure, and incidentally hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in the process.

Cycloptichorn

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Then again, I'm still waiting for somebody to come up with a theory as to how FDR and Ike would have prosecuted WW-II while paying Adolf Hitler $100 a barrel for oil...

That drastically limits our options and Bork Obunga, the democrat party, and the enviro-whacks they kowtow to are the problem and not part of any sort of a solution to it. This stunt Bork has just pulled killing that Canadian pipeline deal is insanity to the tenth or eleventh power.

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@gungasnake,

Quote:

9/11 as I understand it amounted mainly to Osama bin laden wanting to leapfrog the seventy-somethings in line for the SA throne by kicking the 800-lb gorilla in the balls while he was asleep; it had nothing to do with any sins the US may have been committing towards the muslim world.

This is only partially true. There was also a component of letting us have a taste of what we've been dishing out over the decades. He said he was motivated, in part, by the support of the US sixth fleet when Israel invaded Lebanon. There was a direct reference to towers falling in Beirut and it was then that he became focused on the Twin Towers.

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@parados,

parados wrote:

But, I find it interesting that at the same time you accuse Obama of being a rampant killer the GOP is arguing that he isn't strong enough and is an appeaser.

I thought of this thread earlier today when I heard Michael Steele (former chairman of the RNC) say that Obama is "Bush times two" when it comes to drones. It wasn't a criticism. It was stated in response to those who have been saying that Obama has been too easy on our enemies. Steele was making the position that Obama deserves props for his foreign policy vs Al Qaeda.

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@gungasnake,

gungasnake wrote:

I've mentioned that Saddam Hussein was provably involved in the anthrax attacks which followed 9/11....

No, he wasn't. It was a mentally unstable American microbiologist (Bruce Edwards Ivins) acting on his own. The federal prosecutor (Jeffrey Taylor) formally declared him the sole person responsible for the attacks.

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@Robert Gentel,

Quote:

gungasnake wrote:
I've mentioned that Saddam Hussein was provably involved in the anthrax attacks which followed 9/11....

No, he wasn't. It was a mentally unstable American microbiologist (Bruce Edwards Ivins) acting on his own. The federal prosecutor (Jeffrey Taylor) formally declared him the sole person responsible for the attacks....

It just doesn't take that much thinking to see that for a bullshit cover-up, there is more than enough evidence and it is not ambiguous. The anthrax attacks followed immediately after 9-11 and they would take more time than that to prepare and there's no way any unstable American loner could have been in on 9-11 and he'd have to have been. The Czechs have stuck with their story about Mohammed Atta meeting with one of Saddam hussein's top spies in Prague a couple of months prior to 9-11 and nobody else ever really had weapon anthrax that sophisticated. The only nations which ever had any weapon anthrax programs at all were the US, England, Russia, and Iraq and it just doesn't take that much to figure which alone of the four would have given anything like that to a gang of lunatic terrorists.

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@gungasnake,

gungasnake wrote:

It just doesn't take that much thinking to see that for a bullshit cover-up...

I agree.

Quote:

The Czechs have stuck with their story about Mohammed Atta meeting with one of Saddam hussein's top spies in Prague a couple of months prior to 9-11...

No, they have not.

Wikipedia wrote:

The Czech police chief, Jiří Kolář, "said there were no documents showing that Atta visited Prague at any time" in 2001.[19]
In August 2002, Czech foreign intelligence chief František Bublan publicly backed away from the claim that Atta met al-Ani, saying that rumors of such meetings "have not been verified or proven." The Prague Post reported that "Bublan said that promoting a so-called 'Prague connection' between Atta and al-Ani might have been a ploy by U.S. policymakers seeking justifications for a new military action against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein."[20]
According to an article in the Washington Post more recently, the Czechs backed away from the claim: "After months of further investigation, Czech officials determined last year that they could no longer confirm that a meeting took place, telling the Bush administration that al-Ani might have met with someone other than Atta."[21] This perception seems confirmed by an associate of al-Ani's who suggested to a reporter that the Czech informant had mistaken another man for Atta. The associate said "I have sat with the two of them at least twice. The double is an Iraqi who has met with the consul. If someone saw a photo of Atta he might easily mistake the two."[19]

We clearly aren't watching the same film gunga.

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@Robert Gentel,

Wikipedia is a fabulous resource for any topic for which no controversy could plausibly exist. For everything else, wiki is worthless.

Real information:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/539dozfr.asp

http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2004/01/01.html

Quote:

...According to an article in the Washington Post more recently, the Czechs backed away from the claim: "After months of further investigation, Czech officials determined last year that they could no longer confirm that a meeting took place...

Translation into plain English: "Somebody got to them..." That one doesn't qualify as a conspiracy theory since there doesn't seem to be anything theoretical about it.

1 Reply

Do you agree with Obama's decision to start killing more people? Then why do you support him?

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