I’m not aware of any evidence that Obama has supported or allowed torture.
But I voted for Obama in 2008 knowing that he was a moderate who planned to aggressively go after terrorists. I knew, with that vote, that an Obama presidency would try to kill people in Pakistan, likely with drones, and that some non-terrorists would be killed as a result. I hope in his next term this policy is stopped, or at least more effort is made to ensure “collateral damage” kills are minimized.
You’re telling me nothing new here unless you have evidence that the administration has been secretly advocating torture.
I tend to think this way as well. The apparent meaning of the policies is completely at odds with the way Obama seems to think based on things he’s written and said over the years. It seems like every new president ends up basically continuing the military policies of his predecessor. I think there are pressures (political probably but maybe some otherwise) up there that we don’t know about.
I think it’s pretty simple- Obama’s national security team has convinced him that this is the best way, with little risk to American lives, to kill terrorists who are planning to kill Americans and our allies, and that the collateral damage is an acceptable, if unfortunate, consequence.
Past elections and the subsequent political situations would not seem to bear your desired belief out. It seems like the ones who win tend to act as though their win had been a total blowout.
How exactly would a vote for a third-party candidate help anything? If candidates A and B both want to do things that you disagree with, but candidate B wants to do even worse things in addition, how does voting for candidate C who has no chance of winning help anything? Candidate B will not say, “Oh, C pulled a vote away from A, so that means that I should thank the voters for their suggestion and change the voting system.” On the contrary, B will secretly laugh and laugh at the voters’ gullibility and then announce that the votes for C were really votes for him, since he intuitively knows that those voters really disliked A more.
The only way to change the Presidential election system to make it possible for votes for third parties to have any contribution to the system is to both eliminate the Electoral College and also to have some form of preferential ballot for a direct election, where each ballot asks the voter for a preferential ordering of the candidates and there are repeated rounds of counting the votes using those ballots, eliminating the lowest-ranked candidates on each round. Do you think you can get that passed? If not, you accomplish nothing with your vote for a third party.
Grumman: are you urging people to vote for third party candidates because you believe they might have some long-shot route to the White House, or because you believe it is important to have a clear conscience when one votes for a presidential candidate? If the latter, do you consider yourself a single-issue voter?
And what do we do if we strongly disagree with both major candidates? I don’t think I could agree with either major party candidate on more than 25% of the issues, and yet I agree with almost everything the third party candidate I plan to vote for, Gary Johnson, and the couple things I don’t agree with completely, I still agree with more than what the major party candidates suggest. I don’t think one major party candidate, based on what I can tell, would be more disastrous than the other, it’s just a choice between two different wrong directions.
And I have to disagree with the idea that we can’t change things. I live in swing state, Virginia, and it seems like the majority of the people I know feel, as you do, that they don’t like the candidate they plan to vote for and would like to vote third party but are afraid of the other guy winning. Other than posters on this board, I don’t personally know anyone who thinks Obama or Romney is the best answer.
And I actually think voting third party in a swing state will have more of an impact. Let’s imagine for a moment that one of the candidates loses the election because they failed to carry an important swing state by a point or two. In their analysis, they realize if they could persuade a few Libertarians or Green Party or whatever voters to vote for them, maybe they’ll adjust their future platform. That’s really more of what I’m hoping for. I don’t expect that my candidate has a real chance of winning, but maybe if the voting bloc for the third parties is big enough, the major parties will take notice.
For instance, if Romney loses, as it currently looks like he will. A quick Google says 48.7 to 45 and Johnson, Stein, and Goode are running 2%, 1%, and 1% respectively. Let’s say that on election day the final results have Obama win Virginia by less than 3% with those third party candidates getting roughly what they have. I’d think that if the Republicans were to then look at why voters voted for Johnson and Goode (I don’t think anyone voting Stein would be reasonably within the range of voting Republican) and adjusted their platform a bit accordingly, they could pick up at least some of those voters next time. Hell, I think with a bit more of a real small government approach, rather than just talk, and a candidate that was that had even a little bit more charisma, though I may still not vote for him, he’d probably be polling ahead here.
So, yeah, I’ll agree that actually thinking the third party candidate has a chance is foolish, and while I can hope for it, I’m realistically voting to hopefully draw more attention to the issues that they differentiate themselves on from the major parties. Maybe if enough people start voting third party, even if it’s for different parties, that they start to consistently make up 5-10% of the vote or more, those issues will start getting looked at. And I think it’s actually quite a bit larger than that, people just need to be willing to speak with their vote. As long as they can count on +95% of the people to vote for the lesser of two evils, they never have to really address those issues, just convince people that the other guy is worse on them.
Edit: The thread’s starting to take off, so I apologise in advance if I miss any questions.
This view of Obama as giving these orders with a heavy heart just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
First, the War on Terror should make him less likely to endorse these actions. This is not about whether or not the ends justify the means, because both the ends and the means are bad. As I said in the OP, killing and terrorising innocent people serves the purposes of the enemy, by alienating our allies and bolstering the enemy’s ranks. That’s not realpolitik, that’s gross incompetence.
Second, if he was remorseful about his administration’s use of drones to murder and terrorise innocent people, he wouldn’t make jokes about it.
And third, the only reason the indefinite detention of American citizens without trial is even on the table is because the Obama administration wants it. It is the Obama administration who talked Carl Levin into putting that power back into the NDAA2012, and it the Obama administration who challenged the judge who ruled it unconstitutional.
I expect politicians to meet at least a basic standard of decency. I would not vote for Gary Johnson if he murdered and ate his running mate, but it would be misleading to describe myself as a “single-issue voter” because of this. Obama’s willingness to murder and terrorise innocent Pakistanis is a similar deal breaker for me, and for similar reasons.
Why? What if we assume that my first post is accurate, and that his legal advisors have assured him that even if it’s shaky ground, he’s extremely unlikely to be challenged for it?
I think this is the simplest explanation- he thinks it’s actually helping to protect the country, and he thinks he won’t get in any trouble for it.
I’d expect most Republicans to support mass murder, kidnapping and torture (although probably not under those names). The usual complaint I hear from the Right is that we aren’t brutal enough.
No, that’s pretty much it- that and the fact that he is ultimately responsible for national security. During the campaign you’ll recall that he said he would use tools like this: he said he would be willing to go into Pakistan to get Bin Laden, and I don’t recall him ever criticizing the use of drones (although I don’t think anyone expected he’d use them this much). Whatever flaws there are in the program it’s been very successful.
I think it’s better to criticize these policies based on their actual failings instead of pretending they’re terrorism (oh, the irony!). They aren’t. It’s not close.
It’s incredibly unlikely that my vote for Obama is going to make any difference in the election. So maybe it’s just as rational that I stay home (ignoring the rest of the ballot for the sake of argument). But of course if everybody thought that way, then it would make a difference. So I’ll go and vote for Obama. Sort of a categorical imperative thing.
But doesn’t the same reasoning apply to a third party candidate? It’s astonishingly unlikely that my vote for candidate X will help her get elected. But if everybody voted for candidate X, then it would help her get elected. So I should do the thing I want everybody to do, and vote for candidate X.
I agree that President Obama is indeed a terrorist. Those that work to get him elected are providing material support for terrorism. I hesitate to throw the average voter into this group. In a sense they are being extorted to vote for either of the two major terrorist groups.
What I don’t understand is that if everyone realizes that they are just voting for the lesser of two evils, why do they hate the other side so much for voting for the other evil guy instead.
Terrorists directly target civilians of a country in order to terrify the population of the country into pressuring their government to change their policies.
The Obama administration targets suspected enemy fighters in a country in order to terrify other enemy fighters into leaving off their fighting, and in order to prevent the targeted enemy fighters from fighting any more.
It is, and thank you for saying this very well for me. I’m sorry, but a military operation undertaken to disrupt a terrorist organization - however flawed that operation might be - is not the same thing as a terrorist attack. Different goals, different way of working. The only similarity is “killing people,” and if that’s all that is required then we need to rewrite a lot of other policies. Here’s another significant different: Obama is an elected politician and he’s thus accountable to voters. If voters decide they don’t like him and don’t like the drone program to the point that someone else can run a successful campaign that includes doing away with that program, it goes away. I’m pretty sure Al Qaeda does not work that way.
In means or ends? They are killing civiliansby the handful. Including those who attempt to rescue victims of previous drone attacks and those who attend funerals of drone victims. The CIA is targetting civilian activities that may or may not have enemy fighters in attendance.