>> ^Yogi:

>> ^VoodooV:
>> ^Yogi:
I love Joss Whedon. Everything he's done I worship at the guys feet. Stay outa politics Whedon so I don't have to hate you.

Sorry, Repubs made it personal so you have to fight back.
This "wah! they're equally bad" nonsense is just that.

I'm sorry but what the fuck are you talking about? How did repubs call out Joss Whedon? I'm saying he should leave it be, I don't want him in politics because I'm a fan of his. I don't like hearing people who don't know shit about fuck telling me what I should do.
I voted for Obama once, he sounded like a good choice, also it was a historical event I wanted to be a part of. I knew he wouldn't do much, I didn't know he would go around assassinating children and trying his best to make sure Pakistan breaks up and hands out it's nukes like candy. Or that there would be NO CHANGE in how Israel does business, Gaza is still the worlds largest prison, Israel is completely immune to international law.
Sorry Mother Fucker, I voted for him once he ain't getting my vote again. And I want Whedon to shut up about this because I like him, and I can't stand to see the man who made Firefly support a War Criminal.


WTF? Did Obama visit Yogi and do a Sandusky on him or something? Talk about taking it personal.

I agree both parties are shitty, but it's demonstrable that one is worse than the other. Yeah, I'm not exactly a fan of drone strikes and dead civillians. But you honestly think the other guy is any better? Or hey, you want to go back to Bush the lesser and not only have a bunch of dead civillians, but have a bunch of dead Americans too because of wars of deception? Romney's beating the war drums for Iran. Yeah...SO MUCH BETTER!! lets have MORE dead people wooo!! I'm sorry, but cherry picking drone strikes is pretty bad tunnel vision, when in reality, it's actually drastically reduced the death toll because they are strikes instead of another occupation where even more people would be killed.

I'm sorry, but we are never going to live in a world where our politicians are squeaky clean. Even in a utopia, our politicians are going to have to, by necessity, do shitty things. In the real world, people have to get their hands dirty.

It's great that you're idealistic, really, I applaud it. But here in the real world, we really do have to choose between the lesser of two evils. Take your pick or stfu.

Edit: sorry, I always mix up Kofi and Yogi for some reason.

Great, so when are you going to stop drone strikes?

>> ^Trancecoach:

It doesn't refute the logic, however, as to why Treyvon's death matters and Answar's does not.>> ^doogle:
I don't think Cenk's logic adds up.
If Obama had a son, he'd most definitely not look like Anwar.
But if Cenk had a son, I think he'd look like Anwar.
Not Trayvon.



Do you know who Anwar was?

Treyvon was just an innocent random civilian killed at random, probably because of his race.

Anwar was actively involved in coordinating multiple international murders and had made supporting and encouraging them his full time job. He was doing this while hiding out in an area beyond the reach of any court or judicial system that could have charged and arrested him with all due process. The decision with guys like Anwar is do you simply give up and let them continue killing people, or do you follow the law of the land they are hiding in and just send in a drone? Even if you come back with a different answer than Obama, don't tell me it's the same thing as just killing random civilians in the street based on race. That couldn't be more insulting to victims like Treyvon.

It doesn't refute the logic, however, as to why Treyvon's death matters and Answar's does not.>> ^doogle:

I don't think Cenk's logic adds up.
If Obama had a son, he'd most definitely not look like Anwar.
But if Cenk had a son, I think he'd look like Anwar.
Not Trayvon.

That was great! If everyone in the US thought like that it would be no.1 in everything. God knows it has the rescources to be and then some.

Tolstoy said 'Anyone who says things are worse now than they were before is a fool.'

But it has to be said that right wing mercenaries knocking over democracies and looting their countries used to be done in the dark, not in broad daylight. And when the much vaunted new LIBERAL president is sending killer robots to blow up funerals without feeling he has to explain himself it's difficult to say nothing has changed..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/25/jimmy-carter-drone-strikes

>> ^criticalthud:

uggg. everything was not GREAT in the past. utter bullshit. we are just repeating the same mistake today.
this generation is a direct product of the past generations.

That approximation of civilian casualties alone is reason enough to question the intent of this video: objective journalism or propaganda?

Add the "almost supernatural effectiveness" or the grossly misleading "inherent right to self-defence under international law" and I'm inclined to say that this is a disgusting propaganda piece.

When he emphasized the "humane" behaviour of operators (let the children leave before pulling the trigger) and the insinuation that victims of drone attacks are actually thankful for it, well that's just icing on the cake.


What he fails to mention:

-- low rate of civilian casualties: every male of fighting age in the target area is now considered a militant, so everything you hit is a target, unless there is concrete intelligence to prove otherwise, posthumously.

-- pinpoint accuracy: UAVs hit their targets, but the targets themselves are defined as such by piss-poor intelligence or no intelligence at all.

-- guilt by proximity: if you are near a suspect or, generally speaking, in a strike-zone, your mere presence makes you a suspect yourself, as defined by the Obama administration. Now try to square this definition with previous accusations that terrorists embed themselves into the civilian population.

-- double-tap: again, your mere presence at the site of a strike, even if your intent is to provide medical assistance, turns you into a target (eg Collateral Murder). And better stay away from funerals as well, or else they send you a present.

-- US citizens Anwar al-Awlaki, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were intentionally killed by drone strikes, without trial.

-- collateral damage: when you kill a person's family, you provide that person with a non-ideological reason to fight the US, a personal vendetta. Recent drone attacks in Yemen increased the numbers of AQAP members by killing civilians left, right and center.

-- covert killings, proxy warfare: the use of UAVs, particularly in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, reminds us of the good old days. Death from above or how I learned to love the drone.

>> ^Yogi:

Chomsky was right...Bush jailed people without trials indefinitely. Obama skips that step and goes straight to murder. It isn't legal, it isn't moral, Obama is worse than Bush and the American Empire is still kicking. We need to put it down here at home if we're going to have a chance at a civilized life.


I'll take a wild guess that everything Cenk is talking about most certainly did happen in Afghanistan and Iraq first during our dear leader "Junior Bush", let alone "during the Obama administration". I won't bother to say any more than that as any president that must inevitable go to war with another nation has failed his people (to some extent, some leaders are given no choice and some are caught off guard--but many use it like it's a fraternal right of the presidency--make war and no one complains) and we WILL be committing murder on the large scale, that will always be a partial description and definition of war; except for a few extraneous and special circumstances were we defend ourselves, but in the end we turn into the monster we tried not to be: WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Korea, Bosnia, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, South VS. North USA, even the Cold War and are malicious proxy wars...

Trust me this has been around a long time, might as well bring up the every presidents "expenditure" or whatever they ended up calling it in those days and ages. War really is one side murdering the other for not a single good reason between the two, but their own bigotry created by...

...Organizations (like Al Qaeda) are capable of strikes that can affect a city block (a large suicide bomb) typically and in a grand while one that effects perhaps 20 blocks (the World Trade Center, which was felt "afterwards much farther away than 20 blocks, it circled the globe)... But, overall they have an effect on a much smaller section of people. It's hard to decide what to give up sometimes as we see others suffering, but we do wish to help them. At some point though an organization is a small group that becomes a country; like our Republicans and Democrats, two flavors of a one flavor system (unless you like pure batshiat crazy, we have that one too).

Thanks! Scahill is the best.
In reply to this comment by ghark:
Anything Scahill is quality

>> ^radx:

"Why don't more people know about this?"
Well, why didn't more people know about the existence of the Mafia previous to Joe Valachi's testimony before Senate? The CIA's involvement in drug trafficking? Police brutality? Climate change? Peak oil? Torture camps? Civilian casualties of drone strikes?
It was/is not part of the major consensus narrative.
Similarly, churches are entities of morality, protectors of the weak. At least that's what the narrative still says. So when people hear about these atrocious acts of child abuse, they don't buy it. It doesn't fit their world view, and overcoming the inevitable cognitive dissonance would require them to a) re-examine their own beliefs/perceptions and b) act upon it. That's not an easy thing to do.
Once they cross that threshold, "I don't buy it" turns into "I've known all along". Happens all the time.

Paedophilia in the Catholic church is part of the "consensus narrative"; so much so that it's the first thing I think of when I think of the Catholic Church.

"Why don't more people know about this?"

Well, why didn't more people know about the existence of the Mafia previous to Joe Valachi's testimony before Senate? The CIA's involvement in drug trafficking? Police brutality? Climate change? Peak oil? Torture camps? Civilian casualties of drone strikes?

It was/is not part of the major consensus narrative.

Similarly, churches are entities of morality, protectors of the weak. At least that's what the narrative still says. So when people hear about these atrocious acts of child abuse, they don't buy it. It doesn't fit their world view, and overcoming the inevitable cognitive dissonance would require them to a) re-examine their own beliefs/perceptions and b) act upon it. That's not an easy thing to do.

Once they cross that threshold, "I don't buy it" turns into "I've known all along". Happens all the time.

The regions of which you speak belong to another era. Villages out there take days to walk to along mountain trails in some of the highest mountain ranges in the world. Is similiar to a lot of terrain in Afghanistan. Natural forts.

They've never really been conquered or been part of established empire. People are still organized along tribal lines, with the tribes engaged in continuous inter-tribe warfare. Every kid is handed a gun as soon as he's old enough to shoot and raised to abide by the honour code (pashtunwali, yes they even have a name for it). When the tribe is under attack, you don't question right or wrong, you defend the tribe. They're no electricity, television, newspapers, literacy, or any other medium that counters this message. I know it sounds racist but those boys are like klingons, the Pakistani government has never really dared to take them on.

Couple that with the decades of training provided in the arts of guerilla warfare; including drug running, weapons manufacture, crude bomb manufacture, etc. by the CIA and ISI during the cold war and the Soviet invasion, means they are a force to be reckoned with as the US is finding out in Afghanistan.

Despite all of that they've never really bothered us until the "war on terror". They've always bbeen kind of our crazy cousins. We don't wanna be around them but they're family. Most of the country is similarly undeveloped (as in people still live like 3000 years ago undeveloped) and backwards. Bringing them into the modern era is a long term project but there's a 150 million more people on that waiting list.

Since the war on terror Pakistan has taken a serious beating. This was supposed to be our decade of growth instead the economy is in shambles. We've been through yet another round of Western supported, foreign policy obsessed, military dictator leaving our civil institutions in shambles. We've lost around 4 thousand soldiers another 8.5 wounded. 40 thousand civilians killed and 3.5 million internal refugees (dirt poor and starving variety).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_North-West_Pakistan

Those are big numbers, people are angry. The Americans are unlikely to win in Afghanistan. They're putting tribe against tribe. All this talk of democracy vs. extremism/terrorism is not something the average Afghan understands. The average Afghan is illiterate and does not understand complex ideas. He understands this: foreigners, christian army, my tribe has chosen this side because we always hated those other fuckers anyways. Americans will leave, leaving Pakistan with a mess. They did it before and we've been screwed since. There's a huuuuge (as in a small city big) Afghan refugee camp near where I live that's some thirty years old, from the last time American boys were in the region playing their geopolitical monopoly game. It's horrible.

From the Pakistani perspective the War on Terror has been a disaster. It's solved nothing and created tenfold the problem it aimed to solve. The Afghans are a primitive bunch (made more so by warfare) and need to establish a government, after which they will slowly over time, maybe a century, join the civilized world. Pakistan wholeheartedly supported the Taliban (as did the US) when they took control of the country and brought peace to it. Warfare is the real bitch not how "extreme" they are. Saudi's are equally nuts and there's not a single American president who doesn't go pay a visit right away upon taking office. Best friends.

Now the government/military of Pakistan is in a tricky situation, we have to play both sides, thus the lack of trust. Either side has the ability to seriously take Pakistan on and bring it to it's knees. The government the American's have propped up in Kabul wouldn't last a month without them, is corrupt, and allied to the Indians, with whom we see ourselves as being in a state of justified war. What to do!? What to do!? (in a indian accent).

I guess my point being, we're actually not a bad bunch. Just in a shitty situation. Come sometime and I can show you around. Most of the country is safe. Safer than mexico anyways.

Sorry that was a long post





>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^FermitTheKrog:
Thanks for having a more nuanced understanding of the matter... thought I'd share a Pakistani perspective:
-Yes, no arabs here. Lots of Muslims though as in loads of other countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Muslim_population
-Pakistani's despise the drone strikes for the same reason we despised the Bin Laden assasination. It is a terrible loss of sovereignity to have foreign soldiers killing with impunity, racking up civilian casualties, within your borders. It makes the matter worse, Pakistan is radicalizing tremendously fast and every time the US flattens another village in Afghanistan or our border regions, everytime American troops accidentally kill ours, that pace accelerates.
-An analogy: If Mexico had drones over the US taking out gang leaders in LA, the US would flatten Mexico in response. All we do is get angry.
-Things are not that bad: Liberals are not dying off. We are in government by popular vote. The Pakistani military is not some tinpot force, it is very much in control of itself and thus of it's nukes. We will deal with the militancy problem over time; education, economic opputurnity, writ of law; not bombs. We are a third world country, Afghanistan has been a war zone forever now, these things take time, most of us still shit in fields, out people are hungry, we have bigger problems to deal with than car bombs.
-In Pakistan, conservatives want the American's gone because they are an imperial force at our doorstep. All talk of human rights and democracy is hogwash. Palestine is the example. Amongst the ultra right (3-4% of the population, I'm sure you have them too, wherever you are) the "we" is Muslims and the "them" is a collaboration of Zionists and American bible thumpers.
Liberals want the American's gone because they are an imperial force at our doorstep. All talk of human rights and democracy is hogwash. Saudi Arab is the example. If they go away we can educate our people out of the mental cesspit they seem to be headed into. American bombs make us look like traitors to our people and weaken our stance.
Thanks for listening. Open to discussion


>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^vaire2ube:
well the trick is eventually we dont tell the kids running the drones that its actually REALITY! Ahh! Ender's Game!
But by then the arabs formics will be gone.

The populations in Afghanistan and Pakistan are primarily Muslim, not Arab. There are in fact more Arabs living in America than there are in Afghanistan and Pakistan combined.
I know, not your point at all, but if you try and hash out the real news by reading through middle eastern news outlets you won't be able to make head from tails wondering why a pro-Arab outlet like Al Jazeera would willingly say anything bad about Iran. It's not until realizing that Iran is largely Persian and not Arab that it makes any sense.
I rant about this because it's crazily important and the details matter. American drone attacks have killed hundreds within Pakistan, but even by Pakistan's most anti-American media those people were largely militants responsible for killing Pakistani civilians. The Pakistani Taliban have meanwhile killed thousands of civilians, including former PM Benazir Bhutto, and there is infinitely more outrage and hatred for America's drones than for the Pakistani Taliban. It's something important to think about. What's more, there is MORE hatred in Pakistan over America's raid that killed Bin Laden than there is for the unmanned drone attacks. That's even more important to think about.
The reality is that the moderates in Pakistan are fighting an uphill struggle in Pakistan. We need them to win but they are being killed off faster than we can defend them, and even attempting to defend them is hurting their cause to boot. It's easy to declare that a strategy is bad and has horrible consequences, it's a lot more important though to propose a better alternative. Stop the attacks and do nothing means a Pakistan where the Taliban where still best friends with the military and intelligence agencies. It means a nuclear armed state that was best friends with terrorist organizations eager to use those nuclear weapons in their jihad while we lacked any way of assessing just how close and willing their partnership was. Don't dismiss this assessment as doomsday fear mongering. One of the debates in Pakistan's national assemblies after Osama's death included elected representatives bemoaning Pakistan's failure to protect a great Muslim hero like Bin Laden. Pakistan is a battle ground between extremist and moderate populations and we have a very vested interest in who wins that struggle.


Thank you for adding so much to the discussion, very much appreciated.
Yes, I do understand the sovereignty issue looms huge in the opinion of American actions within Pakistan's borders. I can really understand how that would enrage anyone with any manner of national pride. America is in a tough spot though too. The mountainous tribal regions along the Pak-Afghan border are not under the control of the Pakistani central government. On paper the border may run there, but in practice militants can relatively safely travel back and forth between the two. What's more, there still remain places within Pakistan's proper borders that are controlled by the local tribal leaders, and NOT the central Pakistani government. Those local tribal leaders are allying themselves to the Pakistani Taliban and providing them safe haven within Pakistan to launch attacks in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Afghan part does make it America's business. The Pakistani part in my humble opinion, should be a source of greater public outrage than it is.
I guess I find it worrying that extremists can be in de-facto control of large swathes of land within Pakistan's proper borders. So much so that it is still unsafe for the Pakistani police and even military to patrol there. To me, that seems like it is already an enormous sovereignty issue. America's attacks against militants in that region I can understand being a source of outrage. I don't understand why there isn't equal or greater outrage that those regions on the ground are no longer under the control of the Pakistani government at all and being used as a base of operations for launching attacks on the rest of Pakistan.
I think America's problem is knowing whom they can trust within Pakistan's power structure to work against rather than with extremists like the Taliban. Hamid Gul, former leader of Pakistan's ISI, scares the crap out of me. How many of his friends are still in the ISI that think like him? The JUI-F party declared Osama a muslim hero in Pakistan's National Assemblies. How much support has that party been able to hold onto within Pakistan still after taking that stance? Political parties like the PPP seem to share alot of moderate values, but have historically been ridden out of office by the military every few years.
Do you have good reasons that those fears are unfounded? From what I see and read(largely from "The News International") the moderates like yourself have always been in an uphill struggle against extremists and the opportunists willing to work with them.

>> ^FermitTheKrog:

Thanks for having a more nuanced understanding of the matter... thought I'd share a Pakistani perspective:
-Yes, no arabs here. Lots of Muslims though as in loads of other countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Muslim_population
-Pakistani's despise the drone strikes for the same reason we despised the Bin Laden assasination. It is a terrible loss of sovereignity to have foreign soldiers killing with impunity, racking up civilian casualties, within your borders. It makes the matter worse, Pakistan is radicalizing tremendously fast and every time the US flattens another village in Afghanistan or our border regions, everytime American troops accidentally kill ours, that pace accelerates.
-An analogy: If Mexico had drones over the US taking out gang leaders in LA, the US would flatten Mexico in response. All we do is get angry.
-Things are not that bad: Liberals are not dying off. We are in government by popular vote. The Pakistani military is not some tinpot force, it is very much in control of itself and thus of it's nukes. We will deal with the militancy problem over time; education, economic opputurnity, writ of law; not bombs. We are a third world country, Afghanistan has been a war zone forever now, these things take time, most of us still shit in fields, out people are hungry, we have bigger problems to deal with than car bombs.
-In Pakistan, conservatives want the American's gone because they are an imperial force at our doorstep. All talk of human rights and democracy is hogwash. Palestine is the example. Amongst the ultra right (3-4% of the population, I'm sure you have them too, wherever you are) the "we" is Muslims and the "them" is a collaboration of Zionists and American bible thumpers.
Liberals want the American's gone because they are an imperial force at our doorstep. All talk of human rights and democracy is hogwash. Saudi Arab is the example. If they go away we can educate our people out of the mental cesspit they seem to be headed into. American bombs make us look like traitors to our people and weaken our stance.
Thanks for listening. Open to discussion


>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^vaire2ube:
well the trick is eventually we dont tell the kids running the drones that its actually REALITY! Ahh! Ender's Game!
But by then the arabs formics will be gone.

The populations in Afghanistan and Pakistan are primarily Muslim, not Arab. There are in fact more Arabs living in America than there are in Afghanistan and Pakistan combined.
I know, not your point at all, but if you try and hash out the real news by reading through middle eastern news outlets you won't be able to make head from tails wondering why a pro-Arab outlet like Al Jazeera would willingly say anything bad about Iran. It's not until realizing that Iran is largely Persian and not Arab that it makes any sense.
I rant about this because it's crazily important and the details matter. American drone attacks have killed hundreds within Pakistan, but even by Pakistan's most anti-American media those people were largely militants responsible for killing Pakistani civilians. The Pakistani Taliban have meanwhile killed thousands of civilians, including former PM Benazir Bhutto, and there is infinitely more outrage and hatred for America's drones than for the Pakistani Taliban. It's something important to think about. What's more, there is MORE hatred in Pakistan over America's raid that killed Bin Laden than there is for the unmanned drone attacks. That's even more important to think about.
The reality is that the moderates in Pakistan are fighting an uphill struggle in Pakistan. We need them to win but they are being killed off faster than we can defend them, and even attempting to defend them is hurting their cause to boot. It's easy to declare that a strategy is bad and has horrible consequences, it's a lot more important though to propose a better alternative. Stop the attacks and do nothing means a Pakistan where the Taliban where still best friends with the military and intelligence agencies. It means a nuclear armed state that was best friends with terrorist organizations eager to use those nuclear weapons in their jihad while we lacked any way of assessing just how close and willing their partnership was. Don't dismiss this assessment as doomsday fear mongering. One of the debates in Pakistan's national assemblies after Osama's death included elected representatives bemoaning Pakistan's failure to protect a great Muslim hero like Bin Laden. Pakistan is a battle ground between extremist and moderate populations and we have a very vested interest in who wins that struggle.



Thank you for adding so much to the discussion, very much appreciated.

Yes, I do understand the sovereignty issue looms huge in the opinion of American actions within Pakistan's borders. I can really understand how that would enrage anyone with any manner of national pride. America is in a tough spot though too. The mountainous tribal regions along the Pak-Afghan border are not under the control of the Pakistani central government. On paper the border may run there, but in practice militants can relatively safely travel back and forth between the two. What's more, there still remain places within Pakistan's proper borders that are controlled by the local tribal leaders, and NOT the central Pakistani government. Those local tribal leaders are allying themselves to the Pakistani Taliban and providing them safe haven within Pakistan to launch attacks in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Afghan part does make it America's business. The Pakistani part in my humble opinion, should be a source of greater public outrage than it is.

I guess I find it worrying that extremists can be in de-facto control of large swathes of land within Pakistan's proper borders. So much so that it is still unsafe for the Pakistani police and even military to patrol there. To me, that seems like it is already an enormous sovereignty issue. America's attacks against militants in that region I can understand being a source of outrage. I don't understand why there isn't equal or greater outrage that those regions on the ground are no longer under the control of the Pakistani government at all and being used as a base of operations for launching attacks on the rest of Pakistan.

I think America's problem is knowing whom they can trust within Pakistan's power structure to work against rather than with extremists like the Taliban. Hamid Gul, former leader of Pakistan's ISI, scares the crap out of me. How many of his friends are still in the ISI that think like him? The JUI-F party declared Osama a muslim hero in Pakistan's National Assemblies. How much support has that party been able to hold onto within Pakistan still after taking that stance? Political parties like the PPP seem to share alot of moderate values, but have historically been ridden out of office by the military every few years.

Do you have good reasons that those fears are unfounded? From what I see and read(largely from "The News International") the moderates like yourself have always been in an uphill struggle against extremists and the opportunists willing to work with them.

Thanks for having a more nuanced understanding of the matter... thought I'd share a Pakistani perspective:

-Yes, no arabs here. Lots of Muslims though as in loads of other countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Muslim_population

-Pakistani's despise the drone strikes for the same reason we despised the Bin Laden assasination. It is a terrible loss of sovereignity to have foreign soldiers killing with impunity, racking up civilian casualties, within your borders. It makes the matter worse, Pakistan is radicalizing tremendously fast and every time the US flattens another village in Afghanistan or our border regions, everytime American troops accidentally kill ours, that pace accelerates.

-An analogy: If Mexico had drones over the US taking out gang leaders in LA, the US would flatten Mexico in response. All we do is get angry.

-Things are not that bad: Liberals are not dying off. We are in government by popular vote. The Pakistani military is not some tinpot force, it is very much in control of itself and thus of it's nukes. We will deal with the militancy problem over time; education, economic opputurnity, writ of law; not bombs. We are a third world country, Afghanistan has been a war zone forever now, these things take time, most of us still shit in fields, out people are hungry, we have bigger problems to deal with than car bombs.

-In Pakistan, conservatives want the American's gone because they are an imperial force at our doorstep. All talk of human rights and democracy is hogwash. Palestine is the example. Amongst the ultra right (3-4% of the population, I'm sure you have them too, wherever you are) the "we" is Muslims and the "them" is a collaboration of Zionists and American bible thumpers.

Liberals want the American's gone because they are an imperial force at our doorstep. All talk of human rights and democracy is hogwash. Saudi Arab is the example. If they go away we can educate our people out of the mental cesspit they seem to be headed into. American bombs make us look like traitors to our people and weaken our stance.

Thanks for listening. Open to discussion




>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^vaire2ube:
well the trick is eventually we dont tell the kids running the drones that its actually REALITY! Ahh! Ender's Game!
But by then the arabs formics will be gone.

The populations in Afghanistan and Pakistan are primarily Muslim, not Arab. There are in fact more Arabs living in America than there are in Afghanistan and Pakistan combined.
I know, not your point at all, but if you try and hash out the real news by reading through middle eastern news outlets you won't be able to make head from tails wondering why a pro-Arab outlet like Al Jazeera would willingly say anything bad about Iran. It's not until realizing that Iran is largely Persian and not Arab that it makes any sense.
I rant about this because it's crazily important and the details matter. American drone attacks have killed hundreds within Pakistan, but even by Pakistan's most anti-American media those people were largely militants responsible for killing Pakistani civilians. The Pakistani Taliban have meanwhile killed thousands of civilians, including former PM Benazir Bhutto, and there is infinitely more outrage and hatred for America's drones than for the Pakistani Taliban. It's something important to think about. What's more, there is MORE hatred in Pakistan over America's raid that killed Bin Laden than there is for the unmanned drone attacks. That's even more important to think about.
The reality is that the moderates in Pakistan are fighting an uphill struggle in Pakistan. We need them to win but they are being killed off faster than we can defend them, and even attempting to defend them is hurting their cause to boot. It's easy to declare that a strategy is bad and has horrible consequences, it's a lot more important though to propose a better alternative. Stop the attacks and do nothing means a Pakistan where the Taliban where still best friends with the military and intelligence agencies. It means a nuclear armed state that was best friends with terrorist organizations eager to use those nuclear weapons in their jihad while we lacked any way of assessing just how close and willing their partnership was. Don't dismiss this assessment as doomsday fear mongering. One of the debates in Pakistan's national assemblies after Osama's death included elected representatives bemoaning Pakistan's failure to protect a great Muslim hero like Bin Laden. Pakistan is a battle ground between extremist and moderate populations and we have a very vested interest in who wins that struggle.

Now they just drone strike the town from 10,000 feet. No body bags!

@marbles, the most powerful psychological weapon being deployed on us right now is the simplistic idea that you can classify an entire category as universally "bad" or "good".

Signing statements are not all bad, nor are they all good.

Similarly, "targeted killing" is a pretty icky concept. But Obama's trying to emphasize that as an alternative to the full scale war the Bushites preferred. I'm not sure where you come down on war these days, but IMO I'd have preferred just drone strikes on Al Qaeda's hideouts to the full scale invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

I wish both would stop, and moreover I wish that military force was never necessary in the first place, but since this is still the real world, I'm willing to settle for our military reaction to national security threats returning to being somewhat proportional to the actual threat being presented.

Where we fit this into our concepts of rights and laws is an important question, but the present law passed by our duly-elected representatives in 2001 in the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force is what codified this as being a "war" where the President could kill people whenever the fuck he felt like it, in accordance with the Constitution's definition of war.

Keeping people in prison is a similar matter. Technically, the people in Gitmo are "prisoners of war" and not really charged with any sort of crime, beyond being combatants for the other side in this "war".

Now, to your specific comments about "section 1031" -- that section (in the original Senate draft of the bill) is titled "DEFINITION OF INDIVIDUAL DETAINED AT GUANTANAMO". Originally it specifically excluded U.S. Citizens from being legally classified a detainee at Guantanamo.

Now, IANAL, but I looked at the rest of the bill for references to "individuals detained at Guantanamo", and it doesn't say anything about how people become detainees at Gitmo, just a long list of restrictions on the President's ability to release those detainees (like, you can't turn them over to non-military personnel, you can't move them onto U.S. soil, you can't let them go to their country of origin, and there's a list of conditions countries must meet before they can receive custody of them).

But the God's honest truth is that ever since Bush insisted on this being legally defined as a war, it hasn't mattered what the fucking laws say, because in a war there isn't any real rule of law. There's the Geneva conventions, but that's international law, and seriously, which country out there is gonna try to enforce those against us?

I don't think Obama likes any of this. It's another fucking mess the Bush administration made, and Congress is definitely not helping him out in trying to fix things. Moreover, Congress is responsible for passing the AUMF, and allowing something like Gitmo to exist (and now essentially refusing to give Obama any legal avenue to close it down, either), and now apparently they want to make sure to enshrine in law the legality of keeping something like Gitmo in operation indefinitely.

Nothing about what Obama's done makes me think he's changed his mind about this all being awful. But I think he's trying to do the best he can given that there seems to be no appetite in Congress for repealing the AUMF, or even allowing the detainees at Gitmo trials in Federal court.

As with many things, I think Obama could and should be making a big principled stand on the issue, but as I've come to accept, Obama just doesn't do that kind of thing. I think that's a pretty big flaw, and ultimately it's the only reason why he's not gonna cake-walk to re-election, but I don't think that's the same thing as actively supporting the things Congress is foisting on him.