What Would Orwell Make of Obama's Drone Policy?

The Atlantic ^ | February 6, 2013 | Ta-Nehisi Coates

[lbryce]

On the advice of the Horde, I took up George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language." This passage seems especially appropriate today:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.

I thought of that passage while reading through this white paper (brought to us by the dutiful reporting of Mike Isikoff), which lays out when, precisely, the administration believes it is entitled to order a drone strike against an American citizen. (Read the full memo at the bottom of this post.) The answer falls short of "whenever we want," but it skirts damn close:

[lbryce]

I've said this ever since it occurred to me that Obama's use of predator drones has nothing to do with terrorists, targeting terrorists, or as some theorists suggests, he's a sociopathic sadist who loves watching the terrorist being blown up, burst into flames because it reminds him of his youth,the terrorists bursting into flames the flesh bursting a deep dark brown crispiness of his chicken and canine dinners he loved as a child.

It's really all about the collateral damage caused by the predator drones, Muslims, men women, children, whole families wiped out that despite being a Muslim offers a cheap, fun way for him to burnish the vile,vituperative hatred,Obama has for America by stoking the flames of abject revulsion for America for generations to come.\ by the local victims of his predator-drone, in a way that he perceives the launching of the predator drones indirectly actually being fired at and killing Americans in the eventual revenge by the victims to atone for the drone, that he, Machiavellian as he, is taken tcredit,pleasure for the hoped for comeuppance. for.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Well, some animals ARE more EQUAL than others. *SMIRK*

[bmwcyle]

He might cry.

[stubernx98]

The question is, what would the “media” say about Bush’s drone policy?

[Sicon]

Well, some animals ARE more EQUAL than others. *SMIRK*

See my tagline...

[lbryce]

And he is gonna cry,on the day he's out of office, on that wonderful, ecstatic day, Jan. 20, 2017 or whereabouts, perhaps sooner, he' s gonna cry when, he's gonna cry when he realizes that for the rest of his life he will be nothing more than a persona non grata.

When I think of that very special idyllic moment, when this nation, much poorer for it, but having Obama finally gone, the words of Judah Ben Hur aka Charleton Heston to Masala, his Roman adversary, continuously resonates in my mind, the feeling of uncontrollable ecstasy that Ben-Hur describes with the eventual fall of Rome to Masala, after Masala warns Ben Hur after not cooperating with him in helping to identify those jews who seek to break away, off rom Rome.

No! I warn you! Rome is an affront to God! Rome is strangling my people and my country, the whole Earth! But not forever. I tell you the day Rome falls there will be a shout of freedom such as the world has never heard before!.....

....And so, the day Obama is no more, the day Obama leaves office he will be not unlike the Wicked Witch of the West, who, in a nano-moment loses everything, ends up as a puddle of nothingness. That's exactly how I see, perceive Obama. They say, there is nothing sadder tha na former President, and all you have to do is look at Carter, look at Clinton, to see the profundity of that reality. Well, my folks, nothing, no one will be sadder a former president than Barry Soetro. And please I'm never going to buy into talk of him somehow engineering a thit term scenario

[Noumenon]

Obama and those behind him are monsters - killers without conscience.

All of them.

[Chad N. Freud]

“What Would Orwell Make of Obama’s Drone Policy?”

- he would stop writing, and hide from Obama’s drone strikes.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

:)

[Jack Hammer]

Orwell?

Orwell would be both shocked speechless and utterly incredulous at the mere fact that Obama was elected to the office of president.

And twice, at that.

[SparkyBass]

All drones are created equal.
Some drones are more equal than others?