The Glade 4.0

Are you seriously claiming that there is any level of equality to targeting Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian believed to be a senior operative in Al-Qaeda and actively targeting an innocent American citizen?

Attacking targets in foreign countries is combat. The fact that the target cannot effectively fight back does not change that. Combat is not about fairness.



No, we're not.

We are, however, dealing with people who simply cannot understand that everything the government does is not some authoritarian power grab, and who hide behind idealized language in order to avoid the pragmatic realities of the situation.

Every thread always ends up with the same screaming about "rights" and "tyranny" and pretending that there are no legitimate considerations other than adhering to libertarian principles and political ideas. It's, for all intents and purposes, a board Godwin's law. As soon as you guys start talking about tyranny, I can tell any hope of reasoned discussion is over. The same thing with "rights". It's just a contest to see who can make the most over-the-top accusation of moral horribleness at anyone that doesn't jump on the bandwagon.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

DE I like ya man, and I'm not Libertarian by any stretch. However it still bugs be that it took so much to get what should be a simple answer to a simple question. Yeah it's probably politicians being political, but the concept is so bad that it bears some notice

What really bugs me is that the current government has eroded so much good will in the way it operates that we would even consider they would act this way.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

That's quite an assertion. So the only criteria for acceptability of a lethal action is that someone be designated a target and not on US soil?

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That's funny. Any time you start denying that tyranny can happen, and that our government's structure is integral in preventing it from seizing power and wielding teeth, I stop reading threads, too.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Pretty much. That makes it an act of war, and within the purview of the government. The only real other limitation is that a U.S. citizen themself can't be the target, but if they insist on associating with people or going to places that ARE targets, that's on them. We went over this the first time we discussed drone strikes on a USC outside the borders, and everyone was pretty much in agreement that no, you cannot use the fact that a USC is outside the country to attack them with impunity. That issue was put to bed.

If Jane Fonda had been bombed just for doing what she did, that would have been unacceptable. If she'd been killed as part of a regular bomb raid.. tough ****.



That's hilarious, because if you don't think that, tyranny will always be just around the corner. You'll never be happy. You will never invent a government where tyranny cannot happen. People have to do that, and those people are not idiots running around with assault rifles screaming about "rights" and "tyranny" because someone else can get their own band of idiots with assault rifles to scream about "racism" and "economic exploitation" just as easily.

Except you will, because you'll never experience it. You'll still be typing happily away on your computer at home, raging at the government just like you rage at EA for it's asinine behavior.

It's doubly funny to me, because I almost always agree with the libertarian bent on economics, taxes, gun rights, and a few other things. Even in this thread, I said right up front, an assassination is an assassination and doing it with a drone is a total side issue. No one picked up on that. Instead, everyone just got all upset that I think the Senators were purposefully trying to maneuver Holder into looking like he wants to do drone strikes. I think Holder is a douche, but I think the senators in question are douchebags too.



That's because our entire political debate in this country has turned into screaming about the evil of the other side. To many liberals, even the slightest shift to the right means women barefoot and pregnant, blacks back in slavery, war with every little country out there for the sake of war, huge masses of the very poor drinking radioactive water and eating spoiled meat, and no one else except people that can't feed their kids and the super-rich that own everything.

I can go to liberal boards and find the exact mirror of the fears here, except it isn't Obama that's going to do it, it's the next Republican who gets elected president, and Democrats are bad because they aren't liberal enough and Obama is a traitor for not being enough of a leftist. Trust me, they have their people making their snarky comments about "people who like to be told what to think" and think they're absolute geniuses and everyone else in the nation is an idiot for not being sufficiently liberal.

It isn't the government that's eroded; the only area the government has really eroded is in spending way too much money. Frankly, our government does a lot less underhanded and corrupt **** than it did in earlier times. Credit Mobilier anyone? Indian wars? The Bonus Army? Japanese internment camps? What's eroded is the people. We have gotten this idea that we need to outlaw opposing viewpoints, or at the very least, recognize only their right to speak and try to use the Constitution and the concept of rights to bludgeon the other side into irrelevancy because both sides have convinced themselves the other wants to trample all over both.

We, the people of this country, regardless of political viewpoint are a bunch of whining, spoiled teenagers complaining that our life is ruined.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It isn't about Obama or Bush, it isn't about R or D. It is about the Executive believing it can kill anyone it wants, for whatever reason it wants, and not telling anyone about it. Our government is not to be some secret entity that lurks in dark alleys killing anyone it wishes in secrecy.

That you believe this is a liberal - conservative issue just further shows how disconnected you happen to be from reality.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Sorry, but this response makes me ill.

It basically boils down to "we have to trust our leaders to kill people for us because there are scary people out there." and "There has always been some level of this behavior, so it's ok (governments will be governments, after all)."

Horrifying positions.

Way to not get the point at all.

It's even more scary than that. He only has the current position becuse his boy is in office. If this were Bush, or anyone with an R after their name...he'd be all up in arms and this would be the end of the world as we know it.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

I've never really found this to be a very compelling criticism. Pure, unadulterated partisanship is obviously a bad thing, but it doesn't strike me as unreasonable for people to have more trust in those leaders whose character and ability they respect and whose worldview they generally agree with than in those leaders they don't respect or agree with. Yeah, I trust Obama's judgement and morality in matters of war more than I did Bush's and more than I would have Romney's had he been President. That's why I voted for Obama in the first place. That said, I wouldn't trust my own mother enough to grant her the unreviewable power to order secret assassinations, and besides, when granting or conceding powers to President X, you have to be aware that those same powers will inevitably be available to President Y, so it shouldn't matter who the particular person in office is when you evaluate the wisdom of granting those powers to the President.

Gitmo is still opened.

There are still U.S. Soldiers on the ground in Libya, despite countless assertions otherwise by our President and his administration. I know because the the support units keep getting cycled in and out of the airbase near my home.

Afghanistan isn't over.

Iraq isn't over.

Homosexual's are leaving the military faster post DADT than they were when it was illegal for them serve openly.

Taxes were raised on EVERYONE in January.

You guys keep believing him; keep respecting and trusting a President who openly deceives you more than the previous Administration or Clinton's combined.

After all, he's the poster-boy for a transparent government ...

You guys repeatedly answer facts with bare assertions; you defend his policies and positions when they are openly and patently illegal; and then you have the audacity to say this isn't about bias?

You two are posting like the Excommunicated One.

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I would add, that no, my position isn't because Obama is in office. Do I trust him more than I did Bush, yes. However, the basics of what's going on would be the same regardless of who was in office.

For some reason Nitefox thinks that I believe Obama is infallible, despite numerous times where I've stated that I'm not happy with particular positions he has. One of which even in this thread.

Because Republicans in Congress prevented it from being closed.


Links to these assertions? Last I checked (Fall 2012), the Administration was saying the opposite - that troops are being sent to Libya.


When did Obama say it would be? He campaigned in 2008 on increasing our presence in Afghanistan. He campaigned in 2012 on gradually withdrawing over the next two years, and even then he hedged his language.


Greater specificity is needed in this critique. What does "over" mean? What exactly did Obama promise on this, and how have his actions differed? I have no idea what accusation you're making here.


And this is Obama's fault how? Might it have something to do with a decade of being on a war footing and the toll that takes on soldiers and their families?


Primarily because Republicans forced a deal that, contrary to Obama's request, let the payroll tax break expire.


Indeed. And I have been nothing but critical of him on that point.


I oppose his position on the lack of judicial review for detainees and drone targetting of US citizens; I oppose his position on wiretapping; I condemn his Administration's penchant for going after whistleblowers; and I think he should be impeached for his failure to investigate and prosecute the war crimes committed by the prior Administration. What more do you want?

No, I got your point. I'm just simplifying it. The bottom line is, you want to be kept safe, and you need a way to justify controversial actions. The justification you are latching onto boils down to "it's always been this way", and this allows you to be comfortable in your support of such action. Even more comfortable if...



... you don't have to face it.

On this I agree. It's not that he didn't want to close it - it's just hard You know the saying, "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."



Oh, crap - he didn't sign that? I thought he did.

No, actually you don't, but keep on making up stuff, it's actually more interesting that way.

My comment about it being this way was refuting your assertion that every modern government has had some type of judicial oversight on all killings. That statement is patently false, as you should well know unless you've been living under a rock. It does not mean that I like it or even approve of it. In fact, in this very thread I stated that I wished there was more transparency on our actions in this regard.

1. The Pentagon confirmed the presence of U.S. ground troops in Libya back in September; the President denied ground troop presence until the Embassy situation blew up in their face. You're confusing the President's Marine deployment from September with the fact that Air Combat Support has been on the ground since we started dropping bombs in Libya.

2. Keep blaming the Republicans, that's all the rest of your post amounts to, RangerDave -- "It's not HIS fault."

3. And on the issue of the payroll tax increase, the Republicans didn't let it expire; the Democrats just never offered an extension. It expired precisely when it was supposed to -- the month before Obama's successor took office, as was written in the Democratic Party's ramrodded legislation from when it was passed.

Nitefox's observation was that you display an inordinate amount of bias toward Obama. Your response to my statement that NF was right about the bias ... to demonstrate your bias as clearly as possible.

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So 29% = 100%. Interesting.

More transparency, yet you're perfectly happy not knowing about it.

You do understand the difference between discussing a specific vs. discussing a generality right? My comment about not having to have known anything about the specific case of this kid was that it was a perfectly understandable, if very unfortunate, outcome of having a shitty father who was a terrorist. I realize that my liberal bleeding heart should be crying out in anguish at this bright soul who was unfairly snuffed out by the big bad tyrannical government of the west, but **** that. Look it's a shitty situation all around, but unless we're going to completely hamstring ourselves in going after organizations like Al Qaeda, there are going to be some times where innocent people get hurt. It sucks, but that's reality.

Again, all that said, I do believe there should be more transparency on the list of targets. But frankly, this issue really isn't that important to me personally so no I'm not going to dig into all the detail to play watchdog on the government. Luckily, we have any number of organizations that get their rocks off doing that kinda thing, so providing the transparency allows them to do the policing and me to get back to the things that I do give a **** about, with any really big issues being highlighted by those watchdog groups so if we get way out of whack it becomes publicly known and change can happen.

1. How about you admit he's a bad President?

2. How about you cop to the fact that he's not delivering what he promised?

3. Better yet, why do you think "Bush's" supposed war crimes are so significant, when we have proof this President has ordered the deaths of now two American citizens without due process?

Actually, let's just say this ...

Why don't you actually stop supporting him? Stop buying into the false dilemma of American Politics and use that grapefruit on your shoulders. Obama is bad; worse than even his immediate predecessor at almost everything; and that's saying a lot considering how much I despised both Bush presidencies. I mean hell ...

The fact that you think he should be impeached for not prosecuting war crimes against the previous Administration, but make no mention of Obama's own demonstrable act of treason (selling out the location of the NATO Nuclear Arsenals to Putin ...) is rather telling.

I mean, seriously, you blame Gitmo still being open on the Republicans, when he had 3 years of 59 Senators + Olympia Snow or Joe Lieberman, 300-ish seats in the house, and him to sign the bills.

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29% of what?

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2 out of his remaining 7 items had anything to do with blaming Republicans.

Not Arathain's assertion. Mine, sort of. I stated, essentially, that the advent of modern governments around the time the US was created and in the 50 or so years afterward precluded the totalitarian power of the Executive to just kill people on a whim. This isn't specifically judicial review, but any "modern" government does not allow non-combat intentional killings of people. Period.

I mean, for Pete's sake, the Magna Carta included the right of the barons to face charges. So you're looking at 500 years of common law history leading away from a unilateral executive. The drone program is the opposite.

Feel free to describe times you feel like it has happened though. I can think of some, under Mao or Stalin or Pol Pot, for example. When this type of killing occurs, it's generally considered a war crime or a human rights violation.


Now, if you want to argue the definition of "combat," as it appears is DE's point, that's definitional semantics and is a worthwhile discussion. Discussing whether "modern" or "civilized" governments allow extrajudicial, unilateral killings isn't really worthwhile, because I pretty much guarantee examples of such action aren't going to be found.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine