The Awesome Obama Thread II

Child (or any) torture would be a deal breaker for me if any other candidate took a different position. But when the incumbent and his opposition both support torture, the point becomes rather moot. The incumbent is bad, the opposition is significantly worse, so I'll wind up voting for the lesser of two evils, as usual.That said, I'm not entirely certain that Obama has continued the Bush Administration's policies specifically regarding torture for suspected terrorists, with extraordinary renditions, waterboarding, and the like. Are you aware, and if so, what's your source?

He was 15 when he was captured, and it's possible that he was tortured (I have no idea whether it actually happened) but that was years before Obama took the presidency. He did plead guilty in 2010, with Obama in power, but he was 24 at the time, and still I have no knowledge of torture. The closest thing I've seen is that indefinite detention itself qualifies as "torture" as defined by the UN Convention Against Torture.

Right...So we know that torture has occurred. But the tapes were destroyed. So...We do not know whether Omar Khadr was tortured. Therefore we do not know whether any "child torture" actually occurred. It is a possibility, but we have no evidence beyond the knowledge that some unknown individuals were tortured an unknown number of times in unknown ways at unknown times and unknown locations, and Khadr may or may not have been one of those subjected.But beyond that, Kadr was no longer a child by the time Obama took office. It is therefore impossible for Obama to bear responsibility for torturing Khadr as a child, whether he was tortured or not. If Khadr was tortured between the ages of 15 and 18, then only the Bush Administration can possibly bear responsibility.It would seem, dronester, that while you and I would agree wholeheartedly that torture is repugnant and there is no excuse or reason for its use, ever, and particularly on a minor, if child torture has actually occurred under the Obama Administration, that fact is not known to you. Unless you have additional evidence you have not yet shared, in which case I would very much like to see it.

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Khadr stated that he was short-shackled in painful positions and left for up to ten hours in a freezing cold cell, threatened with rape and with being transferred to another country where he could be raped, and, on one particular occasion, when he had been left short-shackled in a painful position until he urinated on himself

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This would have been more effectively posted earlier, rather than using an admission of detroyed video tape with contents unknown excepting that the purpose of their destruction was to avoid possible torture prosecutions.Stress positions are in fact a method of torture. They can lead to permanent joint damage and even death, and they are excruciatingly painful. Other events reported in your quoted affidavits involve humiliation, which is also a form of torture.Both stress positions and humiliation are used frequently in American prisons on American citizens who are not terrorists, which to me qualifies the United States as a very serious human rights offender state, but the Federal Executive branch has little control over that excepting the ability to make it a political issue.But again - Khadr was only a child during the Bush Adminsitration. Obama cannot be guilty of sponsoring child torture in the case of this individual, because he was not a child by the time Obama took office, and because the dates from your own source are years prior to Obama's election.I would like to know whether torture has actually continued under Obama. Administration statements have indicated that the practice has supposedly stopped, and I'm aware of no further allegations of torture of the sort we saw during the Bush Administration, but I have no evidence beyond an assertion and a lack of mildly expected evidence that would be somewhat improbable to be made public anyway.

As an aside - you clearly have never experienced being bound in a stress position. Give me a day or two and some rope and even I could break damned near anyone who hasn't had military torture-survival training. Stress-position bondage is absolutely torture when prolonged beyond a few minutes to an hour.

This is irrelevant to your assertion, which was that Obama supported child torture.This case, even if you absolutely prove that torture occurred every single day that he has been detained, would still not qualify Obama as a child torturer, because the victim in question was an adult before Obama was elected President.Obama may or may not be guilty of perpetuating torture as an accepted practice in general, which would certainly be bad enough, but we have no additional facts (at least that you've presented) that qualify as convincing evidence of such a policy. The fact that accusations did arise from the Bush Administration but have not continued under Obama suggests that either the Obama Administration has significantly increased security (either indefinite secret detention with no communication so nobody finds out, or simply killing the detainees), or the torture policies have been discontinued.

That depends on the extent of the enemy you're trying to destroy. If you perpetuate the strikes for long enough the death toll just continues to rise - and it shows no signs of stopping, because the current "war" is against a poorly defined enemy.But overall, yes - it would have been vastly preferable in, say, the Iraq invasion, to simply use drone strikes to kill Hussein and his military leaders, as opposed to real warfare.The problem is that there are other options beside drone warfare or invasion. Counter-terrorism is best performed via police action - primarily because it's far more accurate than drone strikes at identifying your real target.Drone strikes are attacks of uncertainty - the operator thinks a group of targets may be associated with the enemy. Sometimes the distinction is clear, but often it's not - which is why we wind up with drone strikes that blow up friendly government forces, funerals, and weddings in addition to the occasional Taliban/al Qaeda member.Why do we care? "War" is messy after all, right? Collateral damage, and all that?We should care for two reasons. The first is the obvious ethical reason - killing innocent people is bad. Very bad. Minimizing civilian death should always be a priority in any military operation - and largely it is, that's why we use cruise missiles and Seal teams and yes, drone strikes as opposed to firebombing cities like we regrettably did in WWII.The other reason is far more practical. The "war on terrorism" is not a standard war of attrition. The enemy does not have a finite standing army whose numbers we must deplete. The enemy does not have factories or refineries or government capitols or commercial ports to attack and limit their ability to make war. The enemy does not come from a single political entity or even a single geographical area. They wear no uniforms, and they are blended in with our own allies and neutral parties.The enemy's ranks grow when we portray ourselves as tyrants, killing their children and neighbors and wives and husbands with impunity, without feeling the need to prove any sort of wrongdoing. If France sent an assassin to kill my fiance, I imagine I might hold something of a grudge against France...and suddenly, instead of eliminating one enemy, France has gained another, and likely many of her friends and family as well. The same holds true in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere the US uses its military power - the deaths of innocent civilians create more of the enemy.The "war on terrorism" is not a traditional war, and we cannot and should not fight it as such. This really is a war of hearts and minds - and the drone attacks are serving to turn more hearts and minds against us to replace the maybe-terrorists we blow up.

And this is the true dilemma - and it's not even limited to frontier regions. The problem with Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other nations is the lack of a suitably strong central government with law enforcement to back it up. Even in the US I can go to the backwoods somewhere in Montana - but law enforcement caught the Unibomber anyway. The difference is that the United States, while it may have "off the grid" areas that can hide all manner of individuals, also has local and state police, the FBI, and other agencies with the authority and ability to enforce the law anywhere in the nation's borders.Afghanistan and Pakistan certainly do not have that - their central governments are largely ignored by local tribes, who practice their own local laws independently.And yes, this is the best argument in favor of using drone strikes - while law enforcement would be the best solution to the problem, law enforcement in the relevant nations is simply too weak to perform the job, and so drone strikes from halfway around the world become the most effective replacement.I'm just not sure we can't come up with a better response. We know that drone strikes will be more likely to cause unintended civilian death than police action. We know that unilateral lethal force, particularly from a foreign polity (regardless of whether the local government has consented; government consent is different from civilian support), will be regarded negatively and cause resentment in those who feel its effects.The Navy Seal strike that killed bin Laden was far more precise and targeted than any drone strike...and caused limited resentment as compared to drone attacks. It also cost more and put American soldiers at risk, while drone attacks are relatively cheap and carry the life-risk (to the attacker, anyway) of your average video game.What I'd much rather see, as opposed to using the next-best tactic of drone attacks to replace ineffective law enforcement, would be local partnerships with tribal leaders, the central national government, and whatever US help they ask for to solve the real problem: create a strong law enforcement capability across the more lawless regions with consistent enforcement and checks against corruption. I have no idea how realistic that is - from what I understand even the central governments of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq are all corrupt to the core and the security forces we've helped them create are, if anything, worse.I'm not sure what's being done wrong, or if the cause is simply hopeless. The paradigm we're all used to involves the police being a phone call and a few minutes away, and where Unibombers and McVeighs and the like are hunted down and captured without foreign assistance. Perhaps the cultural background of the areas in question is simply incompatible with the sort of law enforcement necessary to attack terrorism without enraging the local populace.But I do know that the idea that the American "war on terror" is actually a war on Islam is not an uncommon belief, by Pakistanis, Afghanis, and Americans. I've heard multiple cases (NPR stories, so I don't have a link) where investigations have shown that the criteria for a drone attack has often involved little more than wearing traditional clothing and being male. The perception that a foreign nation is dealing out lethal force against local cultural and religious freedom is very real and powerful. Or perhaps I'd say "Oh, so that's why she wanted to blow up a bunch of French people, they really are evil and out to get us, she was right all along, let's see if I can blow up something in her stead." And they're right.But perhaps we can find a strategy that would just have them on our side against the terrorists, instead of hating us both?

I'm also in agreement with Dronester, though - the killing of innocent civilians and especially children is absolutely reprehensible.I suppose my greatest disappointment is simply that we're still relying heavily on a method that we know is at least somewhat counterproductive. I don't know how much effort has been devoted to finding more ethical and effective solutions to the problem of international terrorism, but I would really, really like to see a better solution...because the current methodology isn't a long-term solution to the problem. It's more like a treatment program to prevent symptoms from becoming too bad, but that doesn't ever cure the disease even in a single locality.I'd also like to see fewer American soldiers (read: zero) acting like jackasses and urinating on dead people, even if those dead people had moments ago been trying to kill them.War has always brought out the worst in humanity, and while this is certainly a different sort of war, one we can't win with tanks or fighter jets (and may not be able to "win" in the traditional sense at all, there is no central enemy to vanquish or sign a treaty with), that part remains the same.

Much as we may have wanted it, we did prescious little to actually get it.US-based oil corporations have gotten little or nothing from Iraq/Afghanistan. As I recall, most of the oil-related money in Iraq is going to Russia and China. The federal government, of course, only lost (our) money, and lots of it.The companies that made money from the invasions were construction and defense contractors. Blackwater and Halliburton made out like kings. US oil and natural gas imports were largely unaffected.I dislike the "no blood for oil" meme, not because I disagree with the sentiment, but because it had really nothing to do with reality. If the US had wanted control of Iraqi oil, we would have it...and we do not.

I think he's close, at least in many cases.I think many Republicans run to oppose the "leftist agenda," at any cost. It doesn't particularly matter to them what the "leftist agenda" is, as demonstrated by the simultaneous worship of Reagan while opposing policies he would have approved of, such as raising taxes.American politics is often like a bunch of soccer hooligans. I oppose policy x because my opponent supports it; I endorse policy y because my opponent opposes it.I don't think this is the case for every Republican, of course. But the Tea Party and anyone with a passing resemblance to our own Buz who honestly think Obama and the Democrats are the Antichrist and the army of Satan will oppose Obama, full stop, regardless of the policy he supports. Looking at the recent political past, you'd think the Republicans would try to block a Democrat resolution condemning the kicking of puppies.

Some of them have, or at least we can see clear evidence that he's trying.Much as I've criticized Obama, he's done an awful lot of good, too. The healthcare bill didn;t go nearly far enough in my opinion, but it's Obama who made it enough of a national issue that we actually passed some sort of reform. And while it's lacking, it does force insurers to cover pre-existing conditions, outlaws lifetime maximums, and corrects many other egregious flaws in the private healthcare system. Thanks to "Obamacare," even if I lose my job or change to a job that doesn't offer immediate healthcare, my fiance will continue to receive the medication she needs to survive with a terminal illness, and I'll never have to worry that the thousands of insurance dollars spent on her care every month will overrun our lifetime maximum.Obama has been right on with taxes as well, even if the legislature has had too many Republicans to pass what he proposes. The Bush tax cuts should expire for Americans making over $250,000 in a year, and should be extended for the rest of us. And as I recall, he's also talked about the "Buffet rule," suggesting that capital gains taxes should be adjusted such that Mr. Buffet should no longer pay a lower tax percentage than his secretary...and so that Mitt Romney should no longer pay a percentage roughly half that of an upper-middle-class American.He's far from perfect, but compared to Bush, he may as well have been a Messiah.

...Under that reasoning, no black person could ever hold any Federal-level public office. At all.Including the Supreme Court. Like Clarence Thomas.I wish all racists were so pathetically funny. Then we could just point and laugh and ignore their idiotic mewling.

dronester...I'm with you on being alternately disappointed and morally outraged with the Obama administration.But really...you're showing the telltale signs of confirmation bias run amok. You're so pissed off at the Obama administrations moral failings that you're including events that cannot possibly be attributed to any President as justification for your outrage. Things like your link to the article about the US soldier who "flipped out" and massacred 16 Afghani civilians. Do you think the Obama administration ordered those killings? Do you believe that the Obama administration put into place policies that encouraged such atrocities? Are you seriously placing blame for a war crime committed counter to military policy that was not ordered from higher up where the criminal admits that his crime was wrong on the Obama administration merely because our military remains in Afghanistan? If a soldier steals a pack of gum in Kabul, is Obama responsible for that as well? Sometimes the buck stops at the individual who committed the actual crime, not the Commander in Chief.Do you also believe that the Obama administration ordered the Koran to be burned?Just because an event is morally outrageous and involved the US military doesn't mean the Obama administration bears responsibility.crashfrog has swayed me on a great many of my complaints with the Obama administration - my blame should in many cases be more targeted at the American political system in general, or at the House and Senate.I remain morally outraged at the use of drone attacks as counter-terrorism tools, though no longer because of arguments of sovereignty (as the Afghani and Pakistani governments have apparently authorized their use...though I strongly suspect those decisions were made under the threat of losing American financial aid). I also find Atty General Holder's "reasoning" on the matter of due process and the unjustified killing of accused criminals with no trial to be reprehensible and frightening.But I think we need to take a deep breath and stop blaming Obama specifically for everything that makes us feel outraged.

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.