Re: Really, some americans still approve of Obama?
CS writes:
I don't think I've ever "supported" Obama...
Yes, I am aware you vote republican. Since you have absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about the Bush Jr. Administration, I guess you have a clear conscience.
CS writes:
Your extremely hyperbolic spin-conspiracies are so far off that I just have to go with reality being the opposite by default.
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
Arguments of sovereignty, back on the table . . .
quote:March 12, 2012 Pakistan Ends Drone Strikes in Blow to U.S. War on Terror Pakistan’s sovereignty over its airspace and the civilian casualties that have resulted from drone strikes are emotional issues in Pakistan, where public opinion heavily favors terminating drone missions, Pakistani officials say
The [Obama] administration authorized 53 drone attacks in 2009 and 117 in 2010, compared with 35 in 2008 under former President George W. Bush
Re: Arguments of sovereignty, back on the table . . .
They have a voice in their own government. Sovereignty cuts both ways - they aren't entitled to a voice in ours.
So if Afghanistan or Pakistan were to revoke any and all permission that may have been granted for the United States to use their airspace for the purpose of drone attacks, their withdrawal of consent is functionally irrelevant if the United States still wants to use drones?
What exactly does sovereignty mean crash? Does it mean you have the exclusive right to control your own territory including whether other nations are permitted to utilize your airspace, or is it a matter of simple mutual recognition, void if one party chooses to ignore the other party's demands?
If you're having consensual intercourse with a woman, and after a time she withdraws consent but you want to keep going, are you permitted to continue, or has the withdrawal of consent now made further acts of coitus into rape?
I think, if we consider sovereignty to be at all relevant (including considering our own ability to control our own territory such as denying the use of our national airspace to a foreign military), that if Afghanistan or Pakistan withdraw consent to allow drone attacks within their airspace, we would be obligated to stop, else be considered a rogue nation committing an act of war by the international community.
Do you think differently? Why, or why not?
“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.” - Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
Re: Arguments of sovereignty, back on the table . . .
So if Afghanistan or Pakistan were to revoke any and all permission that may have been granted for the United States to use their airspace for the purpose of drone attacks, their withdrawal of consent is functionally irrelevant if the United States still wants to use drones?
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.
What exactly does sovereignty mean crash?
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.
we would be obligated to stop, else be considered a rogue nation committing an act of war by the international community.
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.
Re: Arguments of sovereignty, back on the table . . .
In that event, do you suppose Obama might then be branded a . . . a . . . a . . . war criminal?
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.
Re: Arguments of sovereignty, back on the table . . .
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.
No, frog.
My issue is not with war itself.
My issue is that this is not a war.
There is no enemy nation-state. There is no uniformed enemy military.
We keep calling it a "war," but it's only a war in the same sense that the "War on drugs" is also a war, or the "War on poverty."
We are not at war with Afghanistan, who are supposed to be our allies. We are not at war with Pakistan, who are supposed to be our allies. If we were at war, then of course to hell with concepts of sovereignty, but we are not at all at war with those nations.
I wonder at your position if the Unites States were the militarily weaker nation containing a loose coalition of independent militias hostile to a more militarily powerful external nation presumably allied to the US. Would you think it would be okay for the "allied" nation to dispatch military assets inside of your own borders even after you told them to stop? Wouldn't that rather harm the presumed alliance? If the foreign "allied" nation was killing your citizens on suspicion of being part of those militias with scant (or no) evidence, and your citizens were frightened and angry at the seemingly indiscriminate killings of innocent people (along with some possible number of guilty individuals, but we'll never know the actual ratio), would you consider the "allied" nation to be acting in an ethical manner? Would you want to remain "allied" with them?
Why should other nations trust the United States to respect their own rights to national sovereignty if we show that we're just going to do whatever we want because the other guy doesn't have enough guns to stop us?
Again - if you were having consensual sex with a woman, and partway through she tells you to stop, what happens? Do you have the right to just keep going because you want to, and her rights to her own body don't matter?
If continuing would constitute rape...then how is it ethical to continue to use the airspace of a nation you are not at war with after that nation revokes permission to do so?
“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.” - Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
Re: Arguments of sovereignty, back on the table . . .
My issue is that this is not a war.
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.
We are not at war with Afghanistan, who are supposed to be our allies.
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.
Would you think it would be okay for the "allied" nation to dispatch military assets inside of your own borders even after you told them to stop?
"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.)
Do you have the right to just keep going because you want to, and her rights to her own body don't matter?
I find these rape analogies stupid and insensitive, frankly. I'm not going to respond further to them.
Because terrorists live where it's not illegal to be terrorists!
This is just a dumb statement. Maybe the following two examples will highlight his hypocrisy and small-mindedness.
quote:The U.S. is the only country that was condemned for international terrorism by the World Court and that rejected a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law.
The Republic of Nicaragua v. The United States of America[1] was a 1984 case of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in which the ICJ ruled in favor of Nicaragua and against the United States and awarded reparations to Nicaragua. The ICJ held that the U.S. had violated international law by supporting the Contras in their rebellion against the Nicaraguan government and by mining Nicaragua's harbors. The United States refused to participate in the proceedings after the Court rejected its argument that the ICJ lacked jurisdiction to hear the case. The U.S. later blocked enforcement of the judgment by the United Nations Security Council and thereby prevented Nicaragua from obtaining any actual compensation.[2] The Nicaraguan government finally withdrew the complaint from the court in September 1992 (under the later, post-FSLN, government of Violeta Chamorro), following a repeal of the law requiring the country to seek compensation.[3]
The Court found in its verdict that the United States was "in breach of its obligations under customary international law not to use force against another State", "not to intervene in its affairs", "not to violate its sovereignty", "not to interrupt peaceful maritime commerce", and "in breach of its obligations under Article XIX of the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation between the Parties signed at Managua on 21 January 1956."
The Court had 16 final decisions upon which it voted. In Statement 9, the Court stated that the U.S. encouraged human rights violations by the Contras by the manual entitled Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare. However, this did not make such acts attributable to the U.S.[4]
quote:On the thirtieth anniversary of the missile crisis, Cuba protested a machine-gun attack against a Spanish-Cuban tourist hotel; responsibility was claimed by a group in Miami. Bombings in Cuba in 1997, which killed an Italian tourist, were traced back to Miami. The perpetrators were Salvadoran criminals operating under the direction of Luis Posada Carriles and financed in Miami. One of the most notorious international terrorists, Posada had escaped from a Venezuelan prison, where he had been held for the Cubana airliner bombing, with the aid of Jorge Mas Canosa, a Miami businessman who was the head of the tax-exempt Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF). Posada went from Venezuela to El Salvador, where he was put to work at the Ilopango military air base to help organize US terrorist attacks against Nicaragua under Oliver North's direction. Posada has described in detail his terrorist activities and the funding for them from exiles and CANF in Miami, but felt secure that he would not be investigated by the FBI. He was a Bay of Pigs veteran, and his subsequent operations in the 1960s were directed by the CIA. When he later joined Venezuelan intelligence with CIA help, he was able to arrange for Orlando Bosch, an associate from his CIA days who had been convicted in the US for a bomb attack on a Cuba-bound freighter, to join him in Venezuela to organize further attacks against Cuba. An ex-CIA official familiar with the Cubana bombing identifies Posada and Bosch as the only suspects in the bombing, which Bosch defended as "a legitimate act of war." Generally considered the "mastermind" of the airline bombing, Bosch was responsible for thirty other acts of terrorism, according to the FBI. He was granted a presidential pardon in 1989 by the incoming Bush I administration after intense lobbying by Jeb Bush and South Florida Cuban-American leaders, overruling the Justice Department, which had found the conclusion "inescapable that it would be prejudicial to the public interest for the United States to provide a safe haven for Bosch [because] the security of this nation is affected by its ability to urge credibly other nations to refuse aid and shelter to terrorists."
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How could you possibly be aware of that?
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