Posted on 05/31/2012 5:03:21 PM PDT by Starman417
With an election looming, Barack Obama is politicizing everything under his control- including programs which would best be kept quiet. Drones have become the new plaything for Obama. They offer are seemingly cleaner approach to war. Drones were developed under the Bush administration and expanded under Obama. A recent NY Times article disclosed a surprising amount of information, including one stunner- that it is Obama himself who decides who dies. Our President personally authorizes the assassination of persons believed to be involved in terrorist activities.
It was not a theoretical question: Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.
Keeping them alive is bad, killing them is better
They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing.
Just wars and Christian philosophers
...echoing the president’s attempt to apply the “just war” theories of Christian philosophers to a brutal modern conflict.
Aides say Mr. Obama has several reasons for becoming so immersed in lethal counterterrorism operations. A student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, he believes that he should take moral responsibility for such actions. And he knows that bad strikes can tarnish America’s image and derail diplomacy.
Terrorist bombs and drones are not so different and drones are new Gitmo
Drones have replaced Guantánamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants; in his 2010 guilty plea, Faisal Shahzad, who had tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square, justified targeting civilians by telling the judge, “When the drones hit, they don’t see children.”
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss
Mr. Craig assured him that the new president had no intention of ending rendition — only its abuse, which could lead to American complicity in torture abroad. So a new definition of “detention facility” was inserted, excluding places used to hold people “on a short-term, transitory basis.” Problem solved — and no messy public explanation damped Mr. Obama’s celebration. ......A few sharp-eyed observers inside and outside the government understood what the public did not. Without showing his hand, Mr. Obama had preserved three major policies — rendition, military commissions and indefinite detention — that have been targets of human rights groups since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The innocent death toll is low because if you're dead, you're deemed guilty
It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
Which won't be of any help if you're already dead.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
With his personality type (sociopath) it makes one wonder if he doesn’t get off on deciding who lives and who dies.
His first assasination was Churchill’s bust. Highly symbolic and representative of his ideals. Truly puts his aspirations of a post America into perspective.
Anything and everything contrary to our heritage and culture.
Let’s hope you are right. Do we really have enough boots on the ground to determine who our enemies really are in some of these places? Or are we being used by rival factions to take out their adversaries? This type of action without good intelligence could be counter-productive.
Wasn’t there a HUGE law passed in the 70s(I think) that forbid assassinations of foreign leaders??
“these people ought be considered for what they are; the common enemies of mankind . “
Yes, terrorists must be killed with extreme prejudiced. Kill them now before they nuke our cities. That is the only sane policy in the age of WMD.
It is also a lot less expensive then going to war.
Amen.
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