The Awesome Obama Thread II

I said "a great many." I didn;t say "all." And my opening sentence in my initial reply to you was a general agreement that I, too still feel significant disappointment and often moral outrage at the activities of the Obama administration.My only point was to suggest that, while the Obama administration certainly bears responsibility for many of the evils that cause you and I to feel outraged, not every outrageous event that occurs on "Obama's watch" is the actual moral responsibility of the Obama administration. Your recent posting history has come across as, forgive me, hyperventilating "Obama is teh devil" ranting to a degree that would better fit a birther/Muslim-conspiracy nutcase in tone (though thankfully your actual basis and reasoning are on far more rational and ethical grounds). I simply think that you've identified Obama as "an enemy," and that now you've become too eager to blame that enemy for any event involving the US government or military forces, as if one man bore the entire weight of responsibility for every policy and decision and budget in the country.There's a lot wrong, and precious little right, but not all of it is Obama's fault specifically.

Very good Jar, very good. Now, this is where the questioning becomes a little difficult . . .Was the German invasion into Poland moral/legal?Take your time Jar, take your time. You're doing wonderful so far.

I think a more pertinent question is, was the German invasion of Poland Angela Merkel's fault?If no, why not?
If yes, why?

Ok, [dronester takes a deep breath, senses the air is suddenly not so stale, . . . a sunshine ray appears through the cracked shutters] . . . Sigh.Yes, yes, yes, you are correct. It would probably do well for me to publicly and explicitly admit that Obama is NOT responsible for EVERY atrocity on his watch: "I dronester, being of sound mind (well close enough) and body, declares that Obama is NOT responsible for EVERY atrocity on his watch." Perhaps CS can now respect me again? I asked before, how sad are you that innocent women and children are dying from weapons of the US military. CS honestly wrote a mere 2 on the 1-10 scale. If my reporting of events also registers a mere two from you, than I can imagine my "ranting" to be very inappropriate to you. But I believe my "rantings" are proportionately on target.I should think you would FIRST ask IF the topic warrants any "ranting"? Innocent women and children are, perhaps, being murdered by the US military every day. Often it is done in some backwater location that will NEVER be reported. Drones attacking innocent people at weddings and funerals, colourful bomblets that attract children, overnight raids that kill families indiscriminately, rendition locations that are completely invisible to the public, etc., etc., etc. I ask again, respectfully, if this isn't something to "rant" about, what exactly is? If you read/listen to the corporate news, I suppose being caused a "slut" by a radio personality is a much worse offense? (by reporting ONLY Limbaugh type of crap in the news, the 1%ers win by not having the 99%ers informed of their best interests. By fielding the current cast of republican side-tracking losers, the 1%ers will eventually still win from highly distracted voters. Crazy as a fox).But how's this for adjusting my debating strategy, in the future, I will only rant about injustices/atrocities/human right violations that Obama previously SUPPORTED while a senator. As Mod as explained, if Obama DELIBERATELY created conditions that fosters atrocities BEFORE BECOMING PRESIDENT, then yes, I will blame Obama. This is the specific argument that Crash continually disregards from me. See Message 158!!!

C'mon Jar, you were doing so good, try again, . . . concentrate, . . . concentrate . . .Was the German invasion into Poland moral/legal?

This isn't Jar, and I would say the German invasion of Poland was not moral. I would also say the invasion of Iraq was not moral.Neither of these invasions occured on Obama's watch or by his command. In fact, in the case of Iraq, he voted against the AUMF. So this was why I asked the question. Since the invasion of Iraq was done by a different person, it seemed to be the same as asking of Angela Merkel was responsible for Germany invading Poland, as she was likewise a different leader from the one who did the invading.

Yup, you've got it. Well shit, now you've lost it again. That wasn't even a reply to him...

The reason we don't use drone attacks on narcotics dealers in New York City is that there is a rule of law in New York City and an arrest is possible there, but that is not true in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan.Yes, it is not a Nation State conflict and we are not fighting a uniformed military and it is NOT a situation covered by any current conventions.We are still trying to develop the paradigm needed in this type of conflict.We don't have to go as far as Afghanistan or Iraq though to find similar lawless conditions, I just need to go a few miles south of me to be in an area much like Afghanistan in that regard.IMHO the invasions of both Iraq and Iran were immoral, possibly illegal and certainly stu-pid, but we are there.Until we can figure a way to get out of there I support minimizing US casualties.Yes, it's likely that we are making a few more enemies but I fear that is a cost we must accept for the moment; we screwed up the chance and opportunity to win hearts and minds and now it is simply work out the best exit strategy.Personally I like the Nixon plan, declare victory and run.

The German invasion of Poland may not have been legal and whether or not it was moral depended on your point of view.What does that have to do with Obama? Last I heard he had not invaded Poland.

It's not?Why not?Is there some reason that it's impossible to arrest a terrorist in Afghanistan or Pakistan? We have several accused terrorists in Guantanamo that came from those nations (their continued detention being another topic entirely), so clearly sometimes we're able to capture alleged terrorists.What's the threshold of difficulty involved in making an arrest before summary execution via drone attack is justified? What specific conditions need to be met? I won;t argue with that sentiment in general. I will argue that since we're not fighting a uniformed military, perhaps our ow uniformed military is not the best tool to combat the problem. We fight violent individuals destructive to society who want to remain hidden within the general population all the time. Why do we seem to forget that when a foreign nation is considered?More importantly - do you believe that human beings have inalienable rights? Do those rights include the right to face their accuser in a court of law? To be free from unreasonable search and seizure? To be immune from cruel or unusual punishment, or unreasonable bail? To be presumed innocent of a crime until proven guilty in a court of law?If those rights are truly inalienable, then you must agree that an accused terrorist has the right to face that charge in a court of law, that the state is burdened with the requirement to present sufficient proof to convince a jury that the charges are true beyond a reasonable doubt, and that if the state fails to meet those requirements the accused must be set free.Are those rights really inalienable? Or do we lose them the moment the state considers them inconvenient? Between Bush and Obama, it certainly seems like the convenience of the state is winning out. We are?It seems to me there are already policies in place. I'm not aware of any work being done to adjust those policies or "develop a paradigm." I'm aware of the Attorney General of the United States saying that "due process" does not mean "judicial process," and that the President has the ability to summarily execute American citizens (and obviously anyone else) on the bare accusation that they are "terrorists." I can see no reason to expect any of those policies to change in the near future in the current political climate. Yet curiously neither our government nor theirs are firing Hellfire missiles from remote drones at accused cartel members. Afghanistan, not Iran. Yet, anyway. Let's hope our leaders don;t turn out to be that stupid. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times...I'm not really being fooled, I obviously want it to happen. Are US casualties more meaningful to you than Afghani casualties? Your phrasing seems to suggest as much. How many Afghani deaths are equivalent to one dead US service member? One dead US civilian? It's interesting that your reaction to identifying that the current "paradigm" is a complete failure is simply to "stay the course" until we can get out.How many innocent Afghani deaths are justified in possibly preventing a maybe terrorist from carrying out an unknown plot that may or may not exist? Is it acceptable to kill 50 innocents to get one actual terrorist? 30? 10? 100? How many, jar?You acknowledge that we aren't winning hearts and minds as we are - so why are we maintaining the same course of action if we know that it's counterproductive? So why do you support continued drone attacks? If you think we should get out now, we might as well just stop with the drones now too, right? Or do you actually think that we should pull out our human presence and just keep flying drones from safe airbases?

Yes I support using drones instead of humans, but only over the near term.It is impossible to just go arrest someone in Iraq or Iran just as it is impossible to do that in Mexico.Yes, we have not yet employed drones against the drug dealers and cartels, but that might still come.No, I do not think there are any unalienable rights, only those rights we decide to implement.Yes, US casualties are of greater importance to me than Afghan casualties.We cannot pull out until we can reach agreement with the other nations also in this mess because of us, and that includes the British and the current Afghan government.We should try to kill as few people other than the objective as possible.There is a big difference between capturing folk during the events that happened before at what is going on today. Afghanistan today is much like Mexico where there simply is no structure, where police are either on the bad guys payroll or targets of opportunity, where whole towns and areas are run not by the government but regional warlords.

I would say somewhere between 7 and 8, calibrating 10 as being on the level of the Nazi genocide. But I'd identify the emotion more as "moral outrage" than "sadness." I didn't know those people, I don't feel a sense of loss, I can't process the emotion the same way the relatives of the victims do, but my ethical system requires that every human mind be considered equally valuable and that the unjustified destruction of such a mind is anathema. I don't particularly care whether they're "women and children" excepting that children logically must be innocent of any crime and women are statistically less likely to actually be terrorists than men, but the actual problem is any innocent person being punished for a crime they did not commit, an inevitability of summary executions without evidence or trial.My problem with your "rantings" is that your tone is one of hysterics rather than constructive discussion. To be perfectly blunt, you're not going to convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you, and you're leaving yourself extremely open to committing erroneous attributions of guilt, which will only serve as ammunition for an opponent who debates you. It's counterproductive. It's okay to feel outraged, but the more of that outrage you put into your posts, the less well-reasoned and sane they'll come across to everyone else. Again, the issue isn't at all what justifies a "rant." It's that ranting is not particularly effective at convincing others to join your cause unless they already agree with you, and that the attitude that spawns ranting tends toward an overabundance of eagerness to place guilt even when it's not deserved. Your arguments necessarily become tunnel-blind - you focus so hard on "the Obama administration" that you eagerly blame new travesties on the existing enemy, and miss out on correctly assessing the problem.After all - if Obama loses the 2012 election, do you really expect a significant change in the policies that so anger us both? I don;t think it particularly matters who wins in terms of improvement, all I can hope for is for things to not get significantly worse. If the problem extends beyond the Obama administration (as it must if changing administrations would cause no real improvement), perhaps the real problem is the attitude of the average voting American, who apparently honestly sees brown Muslims in a foreign country as less morally significant than any lower-middle-class-or-higher American, and who is perfectly happy killing several hundred thousand innocent Iraqi citizens because a few non-Iraquis who weren't tied to Iraq at all killed around 6000 Americans back in 2001. Or perhaps the problem is the 2-party winner-takes-all political engine of the United States, preventing easy alternatives to teh Democrats or Republicans on any but the most local scale election (and rarely then). Or perhaps the issue is one of a dozen other serious deficiencies in America that have nothing whatsoever to do with the specific administration that happens to have won the most recent election cycle.I'd rather put my efforts toward the real problem. I rather think the Obama administration is a symptom, not the disease. And I'd rather try to do something more effective than an "I hate Obama, look at these horrible pictures" rant that will gain no converts to my cause and will serve only to further alienate those who disagreed. I stopped paying significant attention to American news outlets other than NPR largely for that exact reason. The sensationalism and ratings-driven so-called "news" services are yet another symptom of the disease: Americans do not really care about non-Americans, except that some are willing to pay 50 cents per day to supposedly save some anonymous African child. They care about who is a "slut," who is a "douchebag," what new stuff they can buy, and anything that makes them laugh instead of feeling bad. And, to paraphrase the Dethklok song, we'd rather those foreigners be dead than contemplate not opening a restaurant. That's fine, except that it has to not only be something that Obama supports, but that he had control over. After all, jar may support the drone strikes, but he has no ability to control whether they actually happen or not, and so he's not morally culpable.

Whether I am completely behind Obama or not is irrelevant compared to the corporate war being waged on our political system.Page not found - Truthout

quote:

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Some 300 uber-rich corporate plutocrats and their political hirelings have pledged at least $100 million to bombard the Obama campaign with viciously negative ads.

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We can thank five corporatists on the Supreme Court for enabling this elite few to put up unlimited, secret, corporate dollars to buy our democracy out from under us. They are the wealthiest .0000063 percent of Americans who so far have poured at least $100,000 each into SuperPACs to pervert our elections.

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And the current crop of republican wannabees are sucking up.Enjoy

Why the "near term?" Can you explain why it would be okay now but not later? I know that you claim that. I asked why you believe that to be the case. Repeating an assertion, after all, doesn't help me understand your reason for making it. And why do you think we have not? Do you think we should? Do you think it would be a good idea? Why or why not? Obviously rights are human constructs and don't exist in an absolute, natural sense.But are you saying that you don't believe that there are rights that should be universally granted? Should my right to a speedy and fair trial be subject to a whim? If the police "know the guy did it," can we just bypass the trial entirely? ...well, that's rather monstrous. Why exactly does an American life carry more moral weight to you than an Afghani life? How many Afhani lives are equivalent to a single American life? From where do you think the value of a human life comes? What's the standard you apply to determine relative moral weight in human lives? is there some sort of human-life exchange rate you can clue me in to? How does the life of a British person compare to an Afghani? I'm fairly certain that we could just start flying troops home tomorrow and be out within a few months if we really wanted to, agreements or no.But I'll note that you're only obliquely responding to me, dodging most of what I say. Why is that, exactly? Well, there's finally something we agree on. At least you agree that Afhani lives have value, even if for some reason you think that value is somehow less than that of an American. It's curious to me that you believe that the location of one's birth has such strong bearing on the moral weight of a person. I was born in Indiana; tell me, does that make my life more or less important than someone born in Texas? I agree. But there are police, we are there to help them be police, not just death squads, and there are courts and laws for prosecuting the accused legally. It seems rather odd to me that our form of helping the Afghanis put together the infrastructure and police forces they need actually bears closer resemblance to training soldiers to kill an enemy as opposed to enforcing the law. Why is that, I wonder?

I am an American.It may well become necessary to use tactics like assassination of the drug cartel leaders but I hope not. It is serious though. If so then yes, attacks using a drone would be preferable to sending in human troops.Morality plays little part in my position, it's very likely that my position is immoral.I am trying not to dodge much of what you say though but believe I have answered your questions.