The Awesome Obama Thread II

Jar:Stop being a shit. The reason people ask you for clarification of your remarks is that you make remarks that appear nonsensical and obscure, it's not a trick or a trap.There's no need to get snide about it. Either you consider it important to express yourself in such a way that people understand you, or you don't. People asking you to clarify yourself are doing you the favor of finding your words and ideas interesting. The least you could do is be obliging when people have misconstrued your meaning.

Well, yes. That reason is that those are completely other countries, so we can't engage in law enforcement there - they're not subject to our laws. Since when is killing someone on a battlefield a "summary execution"? Is it a "summary execution" every time one soldier shoots another? Was the Civil War the "summary execution" of 250,000 Americans?You've mistaken the concept of "due process." Due process for the treatment of a criminal in police custody is a trial by jury, etc. The process due a soldier taking up arms against the United States is that the military determines that he's a threat on the battlefield, and neutralizes him.I'm sorry if that's shocking to you, or that it seems unfair, but it's always worked like that. It's not a new thing; that's built into our Constitution. Your argument for legal trials each and every time the United States kills someone is not an argument against Obama or Bush; your gripe is with the very concept of a state army.Armies shoot and bomb people. Now, the question is whether the Army can shoot and bomb people in other countries without a de facto state of war existing as a result, but those very nations themselves seem to have determined that there's a certain level of US military involvement within their borders - particularly within their lawless hinterlands - that does not constitute a declaration of war against their country by the US. I don't believe anyone has the right to shoot at (or plan to shoot at) soldiers, or anybody else, without expecting to be shot back at. Not even a US passport is a magic anti-bullet shield, and the Army doesn't ask permission of its targets to attack. Nor should it. Again, your gripe is with the very notion of warfare. I agree that warfare is bad, and an outrage; the point of warfare is that you only engage in it when the alternative is worse. Was that standard met in our current wars? Probably not. Well, it doesn't. It means those processes that are due someone. The Constitution spells out certain processes for some, and other processes for others. Soldiers on the battlefield are due the process of being identified as targets by the commanders of the military. They're not due a trial by jury of their peers, particularly since they're not under the jurisdiction of our laws. For that matter, their conduct - say, taking up arms to defend their territory - may not be illegal. What are you supposed to do then? I support them because they're effective, they expose US servicemen and women to the lowest level of risk, and they produce less casualties than committing troops to an invasion. Of course, the better alternative is to not engage in warfare in the first place. But that has nothing to do with drones.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

They have a voice in their own government. Sovereignty cuts both ways - they aren't entitled to a voice in ours.

To the extent that military threats to the security of the United States continue to act inside their borders? Yes, I would say that it is functionally irrelevant. The UN would side with us, not them, because the UN has already given its imprimatur to military attacks against al-Qaeda, and that imprimatur was never contingent on the permission of the countries in which al-Qaeda operates. It's never meant that nations have some kind of magic shield against warfare. War by its very nature disregards national sovereignty. We go to war specifically because an enemy nation is doing things in their own sovereign territory that we don't want them to do, or they have things in their territory that we want.Again, your issue is not with Obama but with the very concept of war. And I agree that war is a moral and legal outrage - it's the crime so awful there's no law against it, to use Terry Pratchett's formulation. It means that our use of force on other nations has to be justified by the most pressing reasons. Well, it would probably be considered an act of war, but an illegal one? The community of nations has already approved the use of military force against threats like al-Qaeda, because al-Qaeda has already attacked. Continued drone attacks under those conditions would probably be an outrage to Afghanistan or Pakistan but they would not contradict any of our treaties.

Well, he'd have to actually commit a war crime. Drone strikes against military targets in Afghanistan or Pakistan don't violate any treaty to which the US is signatory and it's not a "war crime" since it's a controlled military action against a specific military target.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

You're absolutely wrong. al-Qaeda is a military in open conflict with the United States. They've killed thousands of our soldiers, Rahvin, attacked our military installations, they train, they identify as part of an army, and they have emblems, uniforms, insignia, and rank:Images from an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan. Those look like uniforms to me. Notice how uniform they all look. These are soldiers, and they're training to attack our soldiers. They've openly declared a state of war with us. It's completely legal to respond with force. No, we're at war with the Taliban, who illegally seized control of the nation by force of arms. Similarly, during the American civil war, we were not at war with another country, but with an organization of American white-supremacists and rebels. "Okay" with who? Remember that adherence to international law is voluntary, in the sense that there's no "nation police" who can arrest countries that break the law. Recall also that different countries have different laws. If it's not illegal in the United States to hate MegaNation or even to plan and execute attacks against the soldiers and civilians of that more powerful country, are they seriously supposed to just sit on their hands?You asked why we don't send in police to arrest terrorists. Because terrorists live where it's not illegal to be terrorists! You can't arrest someone for breaking another country's laws. (Well, actually, in the US you can be arrested for breaking the laws of another country, even if that country doesn't actually enforce that law anymore.) I find these rape analogies stupid and insensitive, frankly. I'm not going to respond further to them.

No, it's not. That's why terrorist camps are invariably in those regions of the world that are beyond the reach of law, or where host governments promise to turn a blind eye - or even help. (Muammar Ghadafi offered Lybian state support to the Lockerbie bombers, for instance.)That's why you can't send in police - there's a stupidly obvious jurisdictional problem even if the activities of the terrorists you want to go after are breaking the laws in their host countries. Well, I guess if Noam Chomsky says it, it must be true. Maybe it has something to do with how I sound like a reasonable person, and you rave like a loon. (Also, you didn't come out looking very well, or very honest, after I demonstrated the five different instances where you said something you later claimed not to have ever said.)

You recall incorrectly. What you had said was obvious to all - especially since you kept repeating it. Yes, that's exactly right, since it's only my own responses which I am in control of, and only my own feelings which I can feel. Who else has to find it stupid and insensitive before I'm allowed to ignore it? Whose permission do I need, Dronester?Again, the reason that I'm convincing and you are not is that the things you say are so goddamned stupid, and the things I say are informed by reason and fact. Adequate reply to what? I'm struggling to see the relevance of what you posted to the discussion. How does what happened in Nicaragua under Reagan inform the legality of US operations against al-Qaeda authorized by the UN?

So, no substantive response. Per usual.

Yes, that's exactly right. But I'm unclear as to why you think we go to war with nations and not with armies. Who were we at war with during the American civil war? And I don't see why we have any obligation to do so, if they revoke permission but continue to harbor an army we're at war with, within their borders. Can't we? I assure you, the laws of physics are not subject to the desires of the governments of Pakistan or Afghanistan. American planes will continue to be able to fly over Pakistan and Afghanistan regardless of the desires of those governments.If this were a world where you could simply veto another nation's military, where you could simply withhold consent and, as a result, bombs and shells would fall harmlessly at the legal border, it would be a better world, no doubt. But that's not the world we live in. Just as al-Qaeda may harm us irregardless of our consent to be harmed, Pakistan's consent to allow drone strikes within their country really is irrelevant except in so far as having their consent advances American interests. Well, that's one response. Another response is that Turkey realizes we're going to attack al-Qaeda within their borders regardless of whether they give their permission, and if Turkey decides to declare war as a result and attack our military, they're likely to suffer substantial losses as a result. So what they do is "give their permission" and act like we're there by their invitation. It's a face-saving measure, in other words, and one that results in the eviction of terrorists from their country with little to no effort on their part. The justification but not the ability. The ability stems from the fact that they have those assets to deploy. We need it for what, exactly? For our bombs to work? For our drones to work?No, absolutely not. Our military power is fully functional even without the permission of the countries in which it operates. It would be a better world - an invasion-proof world, by definition - were that not so, but it is. We don't need their permission for anything. We'd like it, because it serves American interests to have it. But if the dilemma is whether we violate the national sovereignty of Pakistan or Afghanistan in order to eliminate truly dangerous threats to the United States, or sit on our hands and allow Americans to die, the latter is clearly not the right decision. Yet, invasions continue to occur. So clearly diplomacy is not the solution to every international issue. Again, your gripe is with the concept of warfare, which inherently disregards national boundaries and sovereignty, not with any particular action of the Obama administration. War was once called the "last argument of kings." It's the tool of last resort to settle international conflicts, and as yet, we've not found a way to make it permanently unnecessary - since not going to war continues to be a voluntary act on the part of nations. Well, ok - what Afghan law does it violate? Please be specific. It's legal in the United States, if you're a member of the military acting on lawful orders, and those military forces and civilians are citizens of another country. Why wouldn't the same thing be true in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or any of the nations we've been at war with, in the past?

How would it serve American interests to do so?The things you say are so goddamn dumb.

I wonder if you could elaborate. The Taliban was a state sponsor of terrorism, was harboring Osama bin Laden, and they were intimately and directly linked to 9/11 by virtue of their logistic and monetary support for al-Qaeda. All of that in addition to the brutality of their rule, specifically in regards to women (which I understand cannot always be a justification for invasion.)Iraq, of course, was always unjustifiable except by deception. But our mission in Afghanistan seemed reasonable at the time and, in hindsight, still seems reasonable. They declared war on us by deed. What were we supposed to do, nothing? Afghanistan in 2001 wasn't like Pakistan - an ally with a terrorist "problem" in its lawless hinterlands. They were a state-sponsor of terror that had attacked us. Why was a military response "foolish"?

Just a quick aside - I'll cop to being a stubborn asshole, but I'm not amoral - I'm a moral relativist. I don't think you can construct a finite set of moral principles that properly applies to all possible situations.I have a small number of moral precepts of my own - for the most part, I don't like bullies - but I don't pretend that they can accurately inform all possible moral situations. Or even most of them.Morally, I place a very high but finite value on human life - higher value than adherence to any rules or laws.

And there's your reason why Congress will never, ever again attempt to force the President to end a war by defunding it. Well, not everybody can have Dennis Kucinich's distinguished record of... hrm, what, exactly? Belief in UFO's, opposition to reproductive freedom, and a cowardly withdrawal from the Senate?If you insist that the only palatable Senator/President is the one who insists on martyring himself on every single issue, then Kucinich was definitely your guy. But a great many of us elected a President with the idea of policy accomplishment, and to the extent that the President is constrained by Congress, there remains much to be pleased by.

No, it did. The Taliban, which was the ruling government of Afghanistan, gave aid and harbor to bin Laden and the al-Qaeda soldiers who attacked us. That's a matter of historical fact.We were attacked by Afghanistan via al-Qaeda proxies. It was, likely, not illegal since Saddam had violated the terms of the cease-fire. But it was certainly against American interests to have done so. Saddam was contained; there was no reason to invade.