From Buchanans mag The American Conservative: “Pro-Life Means Anti-Drone”
Sometimes I just find the world so strange. During the last presidential debate, the drone issue wasn’t really even debatable because both candidates basically agree. It takes a magazine on the fringe to go “you know…maybe we shouldn’t make a US policy of killing foreign children with remote controlled death machines?” That’s apparently
a fringe idea now.
I see the reasoning behind drone attacks. I just find it do weird that the idea is basically not even “debatable” between Obama and Romney when they’re supposedly so different.
On foreign policy Obama is already pretty far to the right. A true left-wing candidate would oppose drone strikes. I am somewhat surprised that a right-wing publication is opposing them, though. I thought the right wing position was “Fetus’s lives matter; but once they’re born, to hell with them.”
This is where we can clearly see the limitations of a two-party system – it’s not much of a choice when both candidates agree.
I encourage you to read the latest on the drone strike program, from the Washington Post, if you haven’t already: a three-part article on our rapidly-expanding counter-terrorism initiatives.
It’s pretty crazy what’s happening, and reminds me of Bush’s implementation of radical new policy (the Patriot Act) at the behest of the so-called War on Terror.
I’ve been waiting for the conservative pro-life people to get seriously behind the idea that maybe we should stop killing people for any reason but self-defense, but yeah, if they’re willing to jump on the idea that we should stop killing them remotely, it’d be a start.
It’s not debatable because all pf the alternatives would be more costly in human lives, wight the possible exception of us pulling out and coming home…and the reality there is we’d just not hear about all the folks killed in the continuing civil war. Guess it would be comforting to some to go back to our collective ignorance about what was happening to the civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan after we are gone.
Or they’d choose different targets. Give, say, a far left leader drones and I doubt he’d refrain from killing people with them, but he wouldn’t be using them on the same people we are. I can just see some hypothetical communist regime with drones using them to try to blow up corporate CEOs or exiled dissidents.
Things have gone to hell ever since we invented guns and bullets. And I’m not completely sold on bows and arrows either. I say bring back the days of swords and clubs so we can kill people the moral way - up close and personal.
And when you think no one is out to get you all self defense looks like aggression.
I read a book published in 2000 or so which was a collection of things that THEY don’t want you to know. One of the articles was about how bin Laden was not a bad buy, and the evil power structure was making up stuff about how he was dangerous in order to have an excuse for weapons.
Sometimes they are out to get you.
Now there’s a splendid idea. Why don’t we shape national policy after what’s happened to ourselves recently. I haven’t used the bus recently; lets do away with public transportation. I haven’t been to the doctor recently; let’s do away with public health care. I haven’t been killed recently; lets do away with the police and legal system.