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Killing them Softly

I like it. I heard a piece about it this morning on NPR.

I think history will judge whether Obama's principles and will were sound in each specific case, but I fully support this president in using this process to oversee and decide on these matters.

I think this is probably the right way to fight this kind of war, and while it would be acceptable for the president to delegate more of the responsibility to subordinates, it is good that he personally involve himself in these difficult decisions.

I have a lot of respect for Obama, for doing this. I especially appreciate that by treating this specifically as warfare, he avoids all the tiresome and complicated pitfalls of "lawfare".
 
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I think Obama has been very strong on foreign policy. It is just too bad that he isn't going to get a whole lot of credit from his farther left base because they are stuck in this ideological web which doesn't allow for them to understand the complexities of running a country as powerful and big as the United States. It is going to be tough for Romney to campaign against how Obama has handled foreign policy but he will try.
 
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theprestige said:
I like it. I heard a piece about it this morning on NPR.

I think history will judge whether Obama's principles and will were sound in each specific case, but I fully support this president in using this process to oversee and decide on these matters.

I think this is probably the right way to fight this kind of war, and while it would be acceptable for the president to delegate more of the responsibility to subordinates, it is good that he personally involve himself in these difficult decisions.

I have a lot of respect for Obama, for doing this. I especially appreciate that by treating this specifically as warfare, he avoids all the tiresome and complicated pitfalls of "lawfare".
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I agree.

Try though you might, it is probably impossible to make the right call in each and every case, so if some day they kill somebody whose only crime was having his identity stolen by a terrorist, try not to judge that too harshly.
 
Rebel Yellow said:
It is going to be tough for Romney to campaign against how Obama has handled foreign policy but he will try.
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So far he has not.

Romney has been pushing the economy, economy, economy. He said very little about Obama's foreign policy; Romney's only criticism that I can think of was about too few terrorists taken into custody -- something about potential intelligence being lost when they are killed with drone strikes as opposed to arrested. But he only mentioned it a couple times.
 
BenBurch said:
Try though you might, it is probably impossible to make the right call in each and every case, so if some day they kill somebody whose only crime was having his identity stolen by a terrorist, try not to judge that too harshly.
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Indeed. I'll judge Obama harshly on a lot of things, but this won't be one of them--neither for the targets he should have included but didn't, nor for the targets he shouldn't have included but did.

I also want to emphasize that I really don't have enough information to judge any individual decision. That information may never be made public in my lifetime. But I do approve of the process, and I fully support Obama in using this process and taking these steps. Everything I've heard about it so far supports my interpretation that Obama is doing a hard thing well.
 
BenBurch said:
I agree.

Try though you might, it is probably impossible to make the right call in each and every case, so if some day they kill somebody whose only crime was having his identity stolen by a terrorist, try not to judge that too harshly.
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Wasn't there a case few years ago (may have been still under Bush) when a carload of Al-Qaeda members was blown up, and turned out one of them was undercover CIA agent?

Although if true, that's different from "only crime was having his identity stolen by a terrorist" -- he knew the risks.
 
theprestige said:
I like it. I heard a piece about it this morning on NPR.

I think history will judge whether Obama's principles and will were sound in each specific case, but I fully support this president in using this process to oversee and decide on these matters.
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Which principles would those be ? I don't see the exercise of any principles at all. It's more ad-hoc government.

Since when does the president declare individuals to be worthy of death - that sounds more like a a mafia boss or a strong-man dictator.

His lackey Holder is making ridiculous claims about due process when US citizens are involved ....
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/nati...cess-doesnt-necessarily-mean-courtroom/49509/

So we haven't had a declared war in many decades, we are nominally at war only with Afghanistan, we are busy making incursions into other nations via drones in order to performs executions of their citizens. Yes, perhaps badguys, but this is a terribly approach. How do we react when their intelligence services start killing select US citizens on our soil ?


Apparently some of you would be happy giving up all your rights and liberty to an emperor, while committing any sort of international crimes and constitutional violations.

I don't care how expedient and effective the procedure is - it has nothing to do with principles.
 
I would surely be Republican if I lived in the US... Like Obama though. Would vote for him.
 
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel prepared a lengthy memo justifying that extraordinary step, asserting that while the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process applied, it could be satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch.
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Classic.
 
Brainster said:
It's easy to tell he's not a Republican. If he were, this thread would be 57 pages long by now.
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Probably. Where have all the people concerned about the erosion of civil liberties under Bush gone? How military actions in other people's countries are making them sympathetic to the terrorists? The creeping borders between "counter-terror" and "war"?

Personally, I was never too focused on those things, but I recall lots of people were.
 
I'm not sure where to stand on this. On one hand, that's not a very good definition of what constitutes 'due process'. I'm not comfortable with it. On the other hand at least there is a process that's being used and only in a very limited number of cases. It's harder to get more high up review than from the President himself.

On one hand it feels like an erosion of civil liberties, but on the other hand, what else is to be done?

I want to hate this, but I also want to be alright with it.
 
theprestige said:
Indeed. I'll judge Obama harshly on a lot of things, but this won't be one of them--neither for the targets he should have included but didn't, nor for the targets he shouldn't have included but did.

I also want to emphasize that I really don't have enough information to judge any individual decision. That information may never be made public in my lifetime. But I do approve of the process, and I fully support Obama in using this process and taking these steps. Everything I've heard about it so far supports my interpretation that Obama is doing a hard thing well.
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I think it points to strong leadership ability. He is willing to make the hard calls, and accept the complete responsibility if it goes wrong. No matter what side of politics you are on, that is a strong indicator for selecting a good President
 
Apart from Obama's foreign policy decisions, I love the Michael Corleone-esque move of ordering the OBL hit, and then attending the Correspondents' Dinner and laughing it up and telling OBL jokes with an unsuspecting audience.
 
It still beats inventing an excuse to invade and destroy another country just to get a couple dozen dangerous whacktards.
 
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