Talk Elections

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/25/ralph-nader-says-obama-is-war-criminal-worse-than-george-bush_n_1914154.html

Oh and someone posted in this in the DU thread where everyone's ripping him to shreds now, shows how much of a joke and a tool he is: http://www.mediaite.com/online/ralph-goes-rogue-nader-gives-sarah-palin-props-for-populist-speech/

Obama's not a war criminal in my opinion but he has been aggressive and Dubya-like in many ways.  He's certainly not the kumbaya President libs wanted.

While I do believe his mind has begun to slip him, I'd argue that he's not wrong in accusing Obama of being a war criminal, who is worse than Bush on that in certain aspects (such as drone plane bombings).

He's exactly the president I wanted and nothing like Bush Jr. Jrwas all about sending hundreds of thousands of ground troops in at great cost, both financial and human. Obama is like a surgeon, sending in high tech drones as needed and finally getting Osama bin Laden, in Pakistan, a place the GOP was too afraid to touch.

High tech drones which have killed tons of innocent individuals, including targets wrongly accused, also including at least one American citizen.

how is this even controversial?

Dunno, because it's pretty clear Obama is at very least a war criminal.

it's just what liberals do.  when it's "their guy" they're more than willing to excuse the most magnificent crimes.

And that's what irritates me about the left in this country.  Wiretapping under Bush?  Everyone wigs out.  Practical evisceration of the 4th Amendment via the NDAA under Obama?  Weak justifications, or they look over it.

I seriously just don't get it.

Personal I think it's quite simple; the election 2000 showed the price of ideological purity and the whole argument that "the lesser evil is still evil". It got people 8 years with George Bush's cronies, policies and wars.... and no matter how much a corporate stooge the left find him, he's still preferable to Bush. So yes they could play it up, but it would make them nothing more than useful idiots for GOP.

It's what our friend memphis just did.

So basically let the Democrats get worse and worse, without holding their feet to the fire, because it's politically convenient at that moment?

Honestly, I used to believe there must be a point where Democrats draw the line on their Presidential Candidate, but after NDAA - I seriously believe their candidate could be a proto-fascist, but as long as the Republicans pose someone further to the right, they'll continue to support them.

I have to say I never found targeted drone strikes as being on the same level as an invasion. Since we don't get any cooperation from the Pakistanis, drone strikes are the best way to kill Al Qaeda targets hiding there.

As well as innocent people we think are worthy targets when they aren't.

Likely but I think people focus  the wrong places if the left want to change the Democratic Party, they shouldn't focus on the president, but on the states and the legislative branch. In blue states the left should try to push to the left, while it may mean some may be lost, the republicans who could win in such states, will have to be more moderate and that will mean that they will pull the Republicans to the left. It's the tactic which the far right have used to transform GOP.

Yes, that needs to be mitigated. I don't know what the statistics are on the percentage of time we have the wrong target, but if it is too high, we should require better intelligence before we use our drones. In any case, getting them on the ground would be the best option. If only the Pakistanis would stop double crossing us. Bin Laden could have easily been captured by Pakistani authorities since he was living in an affluent suburb of the capital, but Obama had to send in Seal team 6 because there was no way we could have trusted them. Obama made the right move there.

BRTD will be surprised to hear this but I reckon Nader jumped the shark a loonnngggg time ago... he needs to retire from whatever the hell he actually does now.

I find it strange that the only people I'm agreeing with entirely in this thread are both I-NY.

I love the idea that recent U.S. presidents are war criminals. It's very cute and I'm sure y'all will win many elections running on that.

Who the heck is Ralph Nader?

I'm sure that we have no trouble imagining that an experienced lawyer who has dedicated his life to consumer activism and who has testified before congress on multiple occasions is shaking in his boots at the thought of being ripped to shreds by the intellectual giants who live in their parents' basements and populate DU.

Hah. Wake me up when Obama launches an invasion based on a lie.

LOL@clearly not knowing the demographics of DU.

Fatigue from the Bush administration. People are burned out being irate at the government, especially over things that, looking back, were largely non-factors in determining their quality of life. You can still motivate people when their ability to download music and movies and porn is threatened, but not over things like the NDAA or events happening 7000 miles away 

Sure, because letting terrorists kill people is a lesser crime....

Perhaps than that is making Obama a war criminal, but it would be a worse crime of letting the terrorist kill people. Too bad than this forum is filled with naive people who think than talking and doing nothing can improve them. If they are our future, it's a disaster.

Which raises the question, Spanish Moss, how SHOULD Al-Queda be engaged? Or shouldn't they be at all?

"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged." - Noam Chomsky

While I strongly disagree with hanging ANYONE, this is a factually correct statement.

Me too.

Fascism seems pretty tame to me.

I wasn't saying the candidate is proto-fascist, I'm saying that if in 2016 they could run a virtual (literal) fascist and as long as the Republican is more (literally, not hyperbolically) fascist, most people will still vote for them.

I mean, after NDAA, upping the war in Afghanistan and drone bombing (which included killing an American citizen who was a MINOR), as well as climate holocaust going on and having no meaningful alternative ("clean coal" is b.s., and nuclear energy produces tons of waste at a risk not worth taking) - what does he have to do to actually lose the vote of liberals?

PEBBLE. BED. REACTORS.

The safe future of fission nuclear power.

Hashemite likes this post.

Also, Nader has gone completely cuckoo. Heaping praise on Sarah Palin? Seriously?

Your point?

As someone on the left he is entirely unacceptable for me to vote for and bad enough that he's not worth conceding to for my vote.

First of all, the NDAA (more accurately two specific section within the 2012 NDAA) is a kooky internet libertarian strawman attack on Obama, and it's disappointing when smart people fall for this nonsense. The bill is a gigantic defense department funding bill, which includes pay and healthcare costs for soldiers. No president is ever, ever going to veto that, especially over two provisions (in a massive, $700 billion bill) that don't really change the law and which won't be enforced. Acting like this bill was some proto-fascist power grab is ridiculous.

Second, for opponents of drone attacks, what else would you propose we do? I see three options: put soldiers on the ground, use drones, do nothing. The third is obviously not happening because we are a sovereign country and we have the right to defend ourselves and our people. If there is actionable, trustworthy intelligence, then we should kill or capture enemies. That's how being a country works. The long list of Al'Qaeda leaders killed in the last four years should make it clear that Obama isn't traipsing around the world blowing up whatever he wants, unlike his predecessor. Yes, there is unfortunately collateral damage and unfortunately innocent people die. But there is much less of both when you use drone attacks versus putting boots on the ground and invading a country (not to mention of course fewer American soldier deaths, which like it or not should be the U.S. president's first priority).

The point is that 1st degree murder is bad.

Was the bin Laden raid 1st degree murder? Is an accident 1st degree murder?

Define "everyone?"  I definitely thought Bush was a war mongering imbecile but I certainly didn't care about the wire taps.  If Cheney wants to listen to my boring conversations with my girlfriend that needs AT LEAST two phone calls a day even though nothing has happened let him.  Why should I suffer alone?


Who cares?

LOL.

If you consider that 1st degree murder, pick up a law dictionary.

Premeditated and willful killing of an innocent man is 1st degree murder, and state-sanctioned death without trial/jury/lawyer/judge is a very large step towards fascism.

Calling out those two sections as unconstitutional is not a straw man against Obama, its calling two badly written sections out as what they are. Obama wasn't even part of the friggin criticism until he signed it into law.

Also saying he only signed it becuase of what it was a part of and him not enforcing it do not change the facts that it was ruled to be in violation of the 1st and 5th amendments. Despite that his justice department appealed the rulings. He could have just let it die right there and ended it but didn't.

So you're saying that Obama is premeditating and deliberately ordering the murder of the innocents who are among those killed in these strikes?

That's about as crazy a conspiracy theory as I've hear...

The NY Times is known for being prone to conspiracy theories, yes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&)

Was killing Bin Laden first degree murder?

People are killed all the time in this manner because we have to protect this country. Deal with it, buddy.

I wasn't talking about bin Laden, I was talking about people like al-Aulaqi, who was senselessly murdered for doing things that threaten the security of this country like having a blog and a Facebook and making YouTube videos.

I'll ask the question again... who cares?

Not many people, because it can't be sensationalized and inserted into pop culture. Doesn't mean it isn't deeply disconcerting.

     The state is ultimately a collection of people who have taken the authority to rule. They demand a monopoly on violence not because they have any right to one, but because they know that none will have the courage or the means to oppose them. The apologists that emerge in their defense are merely icing on the cake.

you've gotten to a point where you actually believe this crap?

Amusing how the Democrats have absorbed neocon "logic" now that their man is on the throne.

Post of the week, easily.

Does someone want to answer what we should be doing instead of drone attacks?

Of course not, Lief. Reality is a messy distraction to internet idealogues.

     We get attacked because we involved ourselves in that region's politics. We never should have done so and we should hope to extricate ourselves from that mistake. I don't see the need to kill people when alternatives can be considered, but that's just me.

No.  People don't care because the guy was afforded EVERY opportunity to stroll into the nearest US Embassy, Consulate, or military base and give himself up.  Had he done so and coughed up a few of his Al Qaeda chums he would have been "punished" by having to attend a few terrorist rehab classes in Saudi and then free to live his life in peace.  He chose to aid terrorists and live on the run with Al Qaeda in Yemen.  People don't care because even with the war monger Bush in office it was pretty easy for 99.99999% of Americans to avoid getting droned.  Not hard.  Really you should be more concerned about lightning strikes.  Objectively they are a far greater threat to you than Bush/Obama drones.  Other than crazy terrorists who lays awake worried about stuff like this?

Did the Taliban made a fair trial of all people in the WTC and in the planes before launching planes into the twin towers?

This is a war and a perfectly justifiable way of protecting ourselves, which is the first duty of the state, protecting its citizen from attacks by foreign entities.

Again, it's amusing how neocons try to justify their actions by holding themselves to their enemies' standards, despite all the nonsense about how their enemies are simply evil.

Aside from that, even your facts are incorrect. The Taliban did not launch any terrorist attacks against the United States prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, that would be al-Qaeda, the organization whose leader the Taliban offered to extradite (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/05/afghanistan.terrorism3) before Clinton "convinced" them otherwise and again after the United States failed to provide evidence of his guilt (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/11/world/main310852.shtml).

Some of what you say may be very true, but the question is what is your alternative?

Not to mention the growing possibility that Americans could eventually be on the receiving end (http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/05/nation/la-na-drones-testing-20120805) of a drone strike.

You didn't read this...

Avoiding hornets' nests? While ending drone strikes would stop killing potential terrorists (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/) (and civilians (http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/09/drones),) it would also stop creating them (http://www.reprieve.org.uk/media/downloads/2012_09_24_PUB_Stanford-NYU_LIVING_UNDER_DRONES_Final-embargoed.pdf).

So you accept the principle that the government can decide who gets to live and who gets to die? And you don't anticipate any potential for abuse of that power whatsoever? Martin Niemöller would like a word with you.

I believe we are in the process of "avoiding hornets nests."  And we are striking people who have been threatening us.  We are not randomly launching full scale war on Iraq.  Trust me I would like nothing more than for us to extricate ourselves from the middle east.  But to somehow look at the Obama administration and say it is in any way the equivalent of the Bush administration tells me some people are not interested in progress.  This is a big country.  It cannot turn on a dime.  Progress takes time.

If the President of the Unites States picked out at random two perfectly innocent people a year and had them executed that would have zero impact on the general populace.  Fact.

Now the one US citizen that I know about who was executed was not a "perfectly innocent" person.  We can quibble about the process but that guy getting his ticket punched was not the beginning of a slide down a mythical slippery slope.  Honestly.  The president whether it is Bush or Obama is busy enough they don't have the time or inclination to just randomly pick a name out of a hat and kill the person.  Why would anyone in the Oval office want to do that?

Like I quoted Chomsky, if we followed the Nuremberg laws, Obama wouldn't be in the Oval Office right now.  I'm wholly against capital punishment, but not against his removal from office.  He has done great damage to our Constitution (continuing in the strain of Bush), and is internationally acting so reprehensibly that the fact people are actually defending him alarms me.

Where do you draw the line on how many innocent civilians are okay to execute? Is James Holmes all right in your book since he only had 12 victims? Also where do you get the idea that only 2 civilians have died from drone attacks? You realize the number is more like 10 for each militant killed (http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2009/07/14-targeted-killings-byman)?

If this was McCain instead of Obama, a whole lot more Democrats would be flipping their lid.  Party loyalty is destructive to justice.

So his options were either stay out there and possibly live or turn himself in and be handed over to the gentle hands of the Saudis? Anybody would take freedom and possible death over torture and possible death.

For those opposed to drone strikes against terrorists in Pakistan and Yemen (as opposed to large scale invasions of counties that didn't attack us), do you also oppose the war in Afghqnistan? If it was a targeted campaign as opposed to nation building, would you still oppose it?

I agree that a lot of terrorists have been created by previous US actions but that does not mean we don't go after the converted. To prevent future terrorists we should clamp down on adventures like Iraq (both times)and Libya as well as not attacking Iran and not giving Israel a blank check. Our policies towards Israel creates infinitely more terrorists than some drone strikes.

Mondale says something sensible for once.

Errr... the Saudis are not "torturing and killing" people that are sent through their terrorist reform program.  It's a pretty relaxed deal.


Link. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1547396/Saudi-Arabia-hails-project-to-reform-fighters.html)

Which libertarian nut job gave you a car and a job?

I oppose the War in Afghanistan. The supposed casus belli was to go after the perpetrators of 9/11. Now that that has been accomplished, there is no point in staying.


The two positions are not mutually exclusive. However, given that I believe in the rule of law, extrajudicial killings are out of the question for me. If you insist on going after foreigners for thought crimes, at least capture them and let them have their day in a court.

Of course the behavior of partisan hacks is key to understanding the "differences" between the two parties. Democratic hacks have no ideological principles and thus can oppose perpetual war under Republicans and support it under Democrats. Republican hacks are consistently supportive of perpetual war and thus have to conjure an alternate reality where Obama isn't a hawk in order to justify their opposition.

I do acknowledge that non-combatants have been killed? Obviously it's bad that innocent people are killed in drone attacks. But innocent people always die in wars, this is not some new thing that Obama has started. Every president has given orders that have led to the deaths of innocent people. But compared to his predecessor, Obama's method of fighting terrorist groups results in significantly fewer civilian casualties.

the major problem is the general framework you're buying into.  that the president has the authority to designate what and what isn't a 'terrorist group', that the president has the right to kill members of those 'groups', that the US with its hundreds of military bases half a world a way is acting on 'defense' when it bombs the world into submission.

http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2010/nea/154472.htm (http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2010/nea/154472.htm)

^ Basically this.

It's not like I (or anyone else defending drone strikes) is happy that civilians are being killed - of course we're not, not being sociopaths. But I don't think there's a better option out of the set of really bad ones that the United States has on this issue, and it's pretty much beyond dispute that drone strikes have been instrumental in decimating Al-Qaeda.

Posts like this don't exactly help the case, either -


Please. ::)

Reading this thread lowers my already low opinion of libertarians and far-left-wingers.

Lol.  So you want to address the free jobs and cars getting handed out?  Sure people in this country have been beaten and killed by the police.  I doubt there is any medium to large size country on this planet that hasn't had someone's civil rights abused by a policeman.  That doesn't mean you should never turn yourself in.  Frankly turning yourself in is usually the best way to avoid a beating when the law finally catches up to you.

So I'll ask it again which Libertarian demagogue is handing out free cars and jobs?


Hyperbole much?


Why?  Do you need the president of the United States to take time out of his day to explain to you setting off a bomb dropped from the sky in a place full of people might hurt them?  I mean if that kind of thing was totally benign they would end police chases with Hellfire missiles.  They don't.  I'll leave it up to your imagination why.




And to all the people saying all Dems dumped on Bush you all are smoking crack.  Plenty of Dems stood behind Bush until we found out Iraq was an awful lie.  And even after that I thought nothing of the wire taps or drone strikes.  Sure I'm going to give Obama more of a benefit of the doubt than Bush.  For f-ck sake Bush lied and started a war for no reason.  I would have to be retarded to give him the same benefit of the doubt as any other president in my lifetime.  How in the world does Bush's behavior not cost him the benefit of the doubt?  If that's the case we all should just get rid of our sense of discretion.

Nader's been a douchebag all his life. Look at his history:

-Buys stock in competing auto companies to General Motors.
-Writes a bunch of lies and slander about the Corvair, one of the best cars ever produced in the US, in that pile of sh!t Unsafe at any Speed.
-Gets rich off hordes of "activism" designed to fatten his wallet and feed his gigantic ego.
-Lie about Al Gore and be a general douchebag.
-Say more lies about John Kerry and start attacking people like Michael Moore and the Greens for abandoning.
-Attention whore to keep his face in the news despite no one caring about his any more.

A truly despicable individual.

you've got the wrong choice of an enemy my man.

hardly one of the most egregious cases, if it is at all.

Your caricatures of Nader make me like him even more. Furthermore, I'm surprised that a music fan such as yourself would care so much about the reputation of the man who helped bring about the PMRC.

Al Gore 2000 was quite different from Al Gore 1988, and the PMRC was a bunch of a handwringers freaking out over bad mainstream music and stupid shock rock, rather than what I listen to. Anyone familiar with scene music knows that unlike metal and shock rock and rap and all that crap it has a POSITIVE message.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_hardcore

I have a question to Spanish Moss and the other libertarians/chomskyites. How would you stop terrorism. Lief is right. You've either got invasion, killing them, or nothing.

The things people need the president to do so they can get to sleep at night.

One of the biggest problems we have is the voting populace refuses to act like adults.  The man was a terrorist and we had no reasonable way to arrest him.  He got what he deserved.  Bombs are not sniper bullets.  Everyone above five knows that.  I voted for Obama.  I've been to his campaign rallies.  He seems sane to me.  I think it is a safe assumption that most sane presidents care when a bomb that is addressed to a terrorist also maims an innocent little girl who happens to be in the vicinity.  I don't need to listen to a bunch of carefully choreographed platitudes.


That is the question.  None of us like this drone business.  And we all want it to stop.  But these people are terrorists and we have no way to arrest them.  I want us to get out of the Middle East as much as possible to limit our contact with these crazies as much as possible.  But in the meantime we must deal with people who threaten us.

Sometimes life is messy.  If there is an alternative we would all love to hear it.

We can't stop terrorism any more than we can stop murder, so I wouldn't stop terrorism. As for reducing terrorism, I would target the root causes, such as US troops being stationed in the Middle East and ridiculously high US support for Israel. A cessation of foreign interventionism would go a long way towards stopping terrorism. Additionally, taking some measures against treatment of Muslims in the US would help too. Of course, taking environmental measures could do some to reduce terrorism. "You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries."--OBL.

Ralph Nader has always been a massive HP.

Basically saying "My problem isn't in the bombing of Pakistan but in how someone acts about it" seems pretty childish to me. I suppose those well to the left of Obama and libertarians might think he's some type of sociopath who just laughs hearing about non-combatants killed, but I doubt that's the reality. However there are plenty of political reasons why that can't be admitted, seriously can you imagine how the Republicans would act if Obama made such admissions or how terrorists would use it for propaganda?

Now the bombing of Pakistan is actually probably the most problematic thing about Obama's actions to me, certainly moreso than the killing of al-Aulaqi (seriously acting like that guy is more important than non-combatants in Pakistan is pretty disgusting.) However it's also pretty obvious that it would be happening under anyone who has a realistic chance of being President right now (this does not include Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich.) Furthermore it's worth asking what would be happening if the US did not do so but rather successfully put pressure on Pakistan to militarily deal with the terrorist presence instead. There probably would not be less civilian casualties, ground forces have shown that not only are they often as indiscriminate as to who is a "combatant" or not as remote drones but that they can go on more of a rampage. See US in Vietnam, Soviets in Afghanistan, all sorts of militaries in Central America, etc. Furthermore the incursion of the Pakistani military in a region like that would probably just result in more uprising against the government and rebellion thus resulting in more conflict and combatants.

Above all that, what is the purpose of the attacks? Pakistan doesn't have oil, and even if it did remote bombing it doesn't give access to it. Unlike Bush's little adventures you can't argue this is about some type of imperialism as opposed to actually trying to combat al-Qaeda. The intentions and motivations here are close to indisputably good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWKG6ZmgAX4


Obviously I concur. However, there is no reason that opposition to killing innocent civilians of a foreign country and opposition to killing a citizen without trial must be mutually exclusive.


That seems to be more an argument against everybody "who has a realisti chance of being President right now" than against us supporters of anti-imperialist candidates.


Again, you present a false dichotomy to legitimize your argument. We anti-interventionists don't believe the U.S. should be strongarming the Pakistanis into conducting our war either.


Intentions matter little in matters of policy. Consequences are the important aspect. Is killing innocents as revenge somehow morally superior to killing innocents out of greed?

If anything, this thread shows the left can be just as autosarcogaphic and self-defeating as the right.

I am. autosarcophagic. autosarcogaphic. Are those spelled the same? I guess I did make it up. I find it a very useful word.

I've used it before:
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=156200.0

Very straight to the point. Of course I use it to mean "self-destructive/self-defeating/harmful" as opposed to the literal meaning.

That it needs to be stated that any strategy that one knows will result in innocent civilian fatalities is wrong - absolutely wrong - and should not be pursued, is more than a little disconcerting.

So the preliminary bombings that the Allied forces did to soften up Nazi defenses prior to D-day shouldn't have happened because some French civilians were killed in the process?!  I've never even heard the French complain.  This is new.

Personally, I dislike the use of drones due to the amount of collateral damage they've caused, but to call Obama a war criminal is a bit much.  It's not like he masturbates to the sound of civilians getting blown apart with missiles or anything.... 

Because every war the United States has ever fought (and particularly the ones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia) are exactly like World War II in every way, shape, and form.  ::)


I'm pretty sure blowing civilians apart with missiles is the war crime. Masturbating to the sound of it would be a sadistic sexual fetish, not a war crime.

Well it's not his intention to kill civilians, which is what I meant.  If it was, there would be justification for calling him a war criminal, but it isn't.  Calling someone a war criminal is not a term that should be thrown around lightly (like calling anyone who's ever waged a war as a war criminal would be an incorrect statement). That terminology is more historically used for commanders who have evil intentions.  I really don't see how Obama is evil.  Incompetent or ignorant on this issue, perhaps,  but not actually a bad person.

My thoughts exactly.  Though for praising Palin like that, I think he's really starting to loose it. 

Chomsky has also praised Sarah Palin for her mocking of Obama's hope/change shtick in 2008.

Well honestly, that's all it was.  A shtick.

Some people are so overly partisan they don't even have their own ideology.
So Nader was consistent in his view of opposing these interventionist tactics. So he defended someone who is right winger once because they made comments he agreed with.

Here's a tip, just because you generally disagree with someone politically, maybe even dislike them as a person, doesn't mean everything they ever say is automatically wrong. Heck I am sure there are times Obama and Bush have said things I agree with, despite my extreme opposition to their corporatist warmongering anti-privacy economically destructive political views.

Truth.

If anyone here were to comb through everything Sarah Palin or Vladimir Lenin has said on public record, I'm sure one could find something they agree with.

I've seen people on my side of the aisle (and liberals too) criticize drone use, and they make   some valid points (civilians get killed). But, I do believe that at certain times they are vital to fighting terrorism.