The Awesome Obama Thread II

Curiously, the first time I "quote-mined" your reply, you didn't mention it. So you are NOW acknowleging that the Iraqis are not that powerful? Consistent much? Well, you almost got it. The invasions of the Iraq and Afghani wars were/are immoral and illegal. Therefore every foreign troop that kills there is a murderer, everything that flows from that event is connected. This was the findings of the Nuremberg trials. E.g. Germany immorally and illegally invades Poland. German troops kill woman and children. Tell, me what is the difference? I find it strange that this premise is so difficult to comprehend. Please re-read the first Obama thread and this thread from the beginning. It is unfair for you to come into the middle of the picture and ask me to do a re-cap just for you.

Yawn.Obama had nothing to do with either the Iraq or Afghanistan invasions.The Iraq and Afghanistan invasions happened.Recalling troops involves more than just an order, is best done gradually and must also consider domestic repercussions.Drone attacks are less destructive and more selective than carpet bombing.The issue is not whether anyone approves of what the current US policy is but rather what steps need to be taken to minimize adverse effects both home and abroad.

Arrrgh, you are killing me Jar! Jar, would you please directly answer THIS question: "Did the German invasion of Poland just happen"?Requesting some non-American POV here. Anybody?(Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?)

There is some evidence that the Obama administration has been abusing mental health legislation as a means to get rid of trouble makers or to avoid paying benefits to service members. One could argue that this has fostered an environment were mental illness will go unreported.I think it's about 5% of all people suffer from at least one psychotic break in their lives. That's a large number of soldiers who are at risk. Triggers are usually stress related. Soldiers are regularly armed, tasked with taking the lives of others where necessary and trained to do so. Soldiers also face various unfair discrimination issues: Women have to fear rape - and fear reprisals for reporting rape. Gay people have famous problems of their own, as I'm sure many racial minorities do. Religion is a big issue in the American Army which has a strong Christian flavour to it and so heaven help the Muslims or Atheists.So yeah, it might depend on your ideas of moral responsibility but I think a case could be made that Obama is responsible if he gives mentally unstable people weapons, puts them in a position to be potentially bullied and then puts them in a war zone (I appreciate he is not literally handing over weapons to known loonies). He may well be responsible for assuring continued vigilance over mental illness development - educating soldiers to look out for signs with each other and themselves with the assurances that mental breakdowns will be treated compassionately and fairly (so that people won't be afraid of asking for help).Any administration which fails to do this may be regarded as morally culpable due to negligence. If the administration extends tours, has people come home and then go back to war, does little to alleviate bullying and so on an so forth: I think the case might be stronger.I'm not saying that Obama is definitely responsible for the specific case at hand, I simply lack necessary facts to say, and maybe previous Presidents may be regarded as more responsible. While Joe Poverty is responsible for the armed robbery he commits, Joe President is responsible for the poverty that might cause a person to become so poor he has to commit crimes to survive. He might be regarded as responsible to create policies to help the hungry, the sick or the unemployed. Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Agreed. I can't even say the Afghanistan invasion was wrong, because there really were terrorist training camps and a large amount of al Qaeda infrastructure there. I'd like to see a faster drawdown and pullout, but to be perfectly honest...Afghanistan does not have a reasonably functional central government or security force. The country is riddled with corruption and more recognized authority comes from local tribal and religious leaders than from Kabul...and that's reasonable, because the local warlord is the guy actually keeping you and your family safe from the neighboring tribe that wants your stuff, or who will pass judgment on criminals. The central government is just too corrupt and weak. This, however, is poor reasoning. You may as well say that blowing up your house is less destructive than blowing up your entire block. The drone attacks are less wrong than carpet bombing would be, but they're still wrong. You don't blow people up because they look like they might be terrorists. If you have evidence that they're terrorists, you arrest them and give them a fair trial. And if you don't have evidence that they're terrorists, why the hell do you want to blow them up? "They're out in the middle of nowhere" is not a reasonable threshold for determining that arrest is not feasible. If the local tribal leaders refuse to submit those under their charge to the Afhani judicial system...well, that's an issue of diplomacy and internal Afghani law, not an excuse to justify murder. Use the drones for surveillance to determine actual terrorist activity and send in troops to arrest if necessary. If there's a clear terrorist training camp or other real military target, only then is firing a freaking missile justified.

The German invasion of Poland happened.Note that that is irrelevant to anything related to Obama.

Unfortunately in an area where there is NOT a rule of law, normal police and judiciary procedures just are not practical.Yes. arrest and trial would be preferable, but I see no way that it would be possible currently.

Hrm, I thought I answered the question... I still believe that american presence in Afghanistan is accomplishing something good because you are advancing the position that they are not and almost everything I see you write is extreme hyberbolic spin to the point of falsehood - like "Obama supports child torture" Apathy. I don't have the facts, but since you're calling it a murder then it must not be. Any death of a child is going to cause me some amount of sadness, so I'll go with a 2 on this one. But I'm not familiar with the story, I've seen some headlines but haven't read into it. Ergo, Obama pees on dead bodies I kid, I kid I don't think I've ever "supported" Obama... I'd bet they think you're crazy. I doubt it. Post whatever the hell you want, I was just answering your question and giving my reasons for it.Your extremely hyperbolic spin-conspiracies are so far off that I just have to go with reality being the opposite by default.

Have a link?Not doubting you in general - what I've heard and read of medical treatment for soldiers in America, particularly mental health treatment, is pretty abhorrent.Of course, that's the case with American health insurance in general.But the real question would be how much of this is due to the Obama administration's policies, and how much is due to Congress not providing adequate funding to military healthcare and mental health? Don't forget the fact that military service can sometimes attract the very last person you'd want to hand an assault rifle. I've read stories of several US service members who shame their brothers and sisters in uniform by essentially just wanting to shoot people, not seeking to serve their country or help create a better world or even just get money for college. Obama didn't give anyone a weapon. The military does have psychiatric evaluations and policies intended to prevent truly mentally unstable individuals from serving in the military.The unfortunate side effect is that some people who are mentally unstable will seek to hide that fact so that they can serve...and neither the Obama administration nor the military recruiters are magically able to see through such deception in every case. You don't have to be mentally unstable in the first place to become mentally unstable in a war zone. I'm fairly well-adjusted, but if you send me to Kabul and I have to live for 6 months wondering which of the apparent civilians actually has an automatic rifle or a bomb and wants to kill me, I might start to lose it.Even a rational, reasonable person is going to develop a pretty strong "us vs. them" mentality when occupying a foreign nation where a significant portion of the populace is openly hostile and unexpected bombings and shootings are commonplace. It's a damned strong feedback loop.How is the Obama administration responsible for any of that? The military has specific policies created to prevent the sort of tragedy we're talking about - the only thing Obama could do better in that case would be to immediately pull out of Afghanistan, which may or may not be a better ethically utilitarian solution. And what if the failure isn't the administration, but the individuals in the military who ignore policy and fail to report their squadmate for fear of reprisal or out of a sense of loyalty? After all, in the military you don't really fight for your country, not after you've already reached the warzone. You fight to protect your friends, and your friends are the guys who watch your back in turn. It's an inevitable result of combat, and there is no policy any administration can put into place to overcome it short of simply not having any more warzones ever. I'd like that as much as you, but I'm fairly certain that's just fantasy. The President is not an omnipotent King. An administration can ensure that policies and reporting structures are in place, they can institute penalties and incentives for following those policies, but at the end of the day the squadmate and/or superior officer has to actually do the reporting, and in a warzone you will have a greater sense of loyalty to your comrades in arms than some suit sitting safe in Washington.A reasonable person can very easily fall into the trap of excusing suspicious behavior because "I know John, he's just going through a rough time, god knows it's hell on Earth here and it's hard for all of us. But he's not crazy. Even if he's acting a little weird from the stress, he wouldn't snap. The training said to report stuff like this, but I won;t risk John's career over something so small. After all, he saved my life at least twice in the past month, I owe him. And the other guys would kick the shit out of me if I betrayed him." After all, 9 times out of 10 he might be right. It's just that last one that causes problems.Is that the fault of the administration? Or is it simply an inevitable result of warfare? I can see exactly where the incentives lie - those who need mental health care will not request it and will actively try to hide it so that they can remain on duty to help their buddies and to preserve their career. Their buddies will not report suspicious activity because they don't want to betray the guy who saved their life. The commanders feel the same way. The military in general has always had an attitude of taking care of its own and covering up embarrassment. What do we expect to happen? And sometimes the policies are in place, and Joe Poverty doesn't use any of the programs they set up because he's mentally ill.Unless someone can point to a specific failing of the Obama administration detailing a policy, lack of a policy, or an ignored systemic pattern that leads to atrocities such as the recent Afhanistan massacre, I don't see how the administration can be morally culpable.

Take a Humvee for a drive. Make an arrest. If you know the location for a missile launch, you know the location for an arrest.Since when is "it's a long drive" or "we might have to take a helicopter" sufficient cause to just say "fuck it, we'll just blow up the suspect?"

BOOM! You just hit an IED.Turn to page 43.

In times of war it is more than sufficient.Using the drone protects American (or other nationals) lives.The issue of saving combatants lives certainly needs to be discussed as we develop a rational and paradigm for non-nation state conflicts. I hope that will evolve.

We're not at war.We are not engaged in hostilities with a foreign nation-state or a uniformed military.We're scared to death, to the point of ignoring human rights, of a bunch of criminals. Plane hijackers and bomb makers. Not soldiers.In war, you don't need to work to identify the enemy - they wear a uniform that clearly identifies that they're on the other side. Your governments have engaged in legally declared open hostilities until such time as one of them surrenders. Their personnel and infrastructure are identifiably distinct from innocent neutral parties.The Afghanistan invasion started as a war, with the coalition military fighting the Taliban, formerly the official government of Afghanistan.We won that war. It's over.This isn't war. We're pretending it is, to justify sending over a bunch of soldiers and Hellfire missiles and drones.But we're fighting criminals.And our heavy-handed approach creates more of the enemy every time we cause "collateral damage."For some reason people have bought into the whole "war on x" meme and actually started to think that just because we call something a "war on x" means that it's actual war and justifies deployment of the military.It doesn't. For the same reason that we don't use drone attacks and cruise missiles to combat narcotics dealers in New York City for the "war on drugs," and we don't send in Navy SEAL teams to kill the homeless in the "war on poverty."The "war on terror" is a misnomer, just like those. If we can arrest Timothy McVeigh, we can arrest other terrorists. If we can give Ted Kaczynski a trial, we can give other terrorists trials. If we send the FBI to arrest a heavily-armed David Koresh (even if that turned out poorly), then we don't need to use the Marines to murder another alleged terrorist.

Sure, there's this

quote:

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Soldiers who carry a diagnosis of a personality disorder often face being discharged, and find that their access to military and health benefits cut at the same time. Nearly 1,000 soldiers a year between 2005 and 2007 were discharged for having a personality disorder. Soldiers who receive a PTSD diagnosis can receive treatment while still being enlisted, and continue to receive all of the military and health benefits of an active duty soldier.

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Advocates for veterans suggest that the practice, although supposedly stopped by the Army since it first came to light, is still occurring. Hundreds of soldiers are still receiving personality disorder diagnoses, cutting off their access to needed health care and treatment, according to advocates.

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And this

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After a soldier complained that she had made sexually suggestive remarks, she was suspended from her counseling duties and sent to an Army psychiatrist for evaluation. His findings were shattering: She had, he said in a report, a personality disorder, a diagnosis that the military has used to discharge thousands of troops. She was sent home.

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She disputed the diagnosis, but it was not until months later that she found what seemed powerful ammunition buried in her medical file, portions of which she provided to The New York Times. Her command specifically asks for a diagnosis of a personality disorder, a document signed by the psychiatrist said.

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We should also ask how much effort Obama's administration has taken to correct the problems. I think the way recruitment works might be somewhat responsible for letting those kinds of people in. From what I know of recruiters is that they are somewhat zealous, looking for reasons that a person should join rather than trying to find reasons they should not. I mentioned that Obama didn't give anyone a weapon.I'm not talking about people who have had some kind of mental break, schizophrenics or other seriously mentally ill people.The people we are talking about here are 'antisocial personality disorder' and the like. The American Army insists these kinds of personality disorder are 'pre-existing conditions'. Meaning they believe they were there when the evaluations were given. He's responsible if he's basically putting people under those kinds of stresses and does not take reasonable protections in place for people who might start to show difficulties. If people fear getting kicked out for having a 'personality disorder', when they in fact have PTSD - that's a recipe for disaster.If the Commander-in-Chief of the military is powerless to make these kinds of changes, who has that power? Fault is not an all or nothing affair. I see no reason why moral responsibility cannot be divided among the administration, the immediate military superiors and comrades, the individual and perhaps others.As I said

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I'm not saying that Obama is definitely responsible for the specific case at hand, I simply lack necessary facts to say

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I don't dispute that, and I'm not sure how it relates to what I said. I was talking about policies of educating your buddies and your superiors as well as yourself about the dangers of mental health breakdowns. A system which doesn't penalize you for having a mental health crisis. I'm fully aware. Again, I'm not sure what this has to do with anything that I said. I don't disagree with any of it. The point is that the soldiers should not be in a position where they believe reporting this stuff could ruin a guy's career. If it is PTSD, they are allowed to continue serving but they are given help. However, if it is a personality disorder - they're cut out of the military. That's the policy I'm drawing attention to, the thing that Obama may have some responsibility for. Yes exactly! As I said

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One could argue that this has fostered an environment were mental illness will go unreported.

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I'm not saying Obama has the power to completely change this environment, but dismissing people for having pre-existing conditions rather than treating them as if they became ill as a result of the stresses of the job certainly helps reinforce that mindset. To the detriment of the military's reputation, I fear. As far as I am aware, the details are not in the public domain, so how could we? I was only pointing to the kinds of things that Obama might be responsible for that they have the power to do something about.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Then I respectfully ask you, to ask yourself, why Crash didn't respond to my post Message 158 (or other similar posts while Obama was a SENATOR).