Drone Wars

[guido911]

Drones suck, says....brother of killed terrorist.

The attack is likely to fuel an increasingly fierce debate about the legality and morality of the drones, which have become one of the chief U.S. weapons against al Qaeda but which opponents say stretch the definition of the legitimate use of lethal force.

"The United States talks human rights and freedoms for all, but the method they used to kill him is savage," Abu Bakr al-Qayed, brother of al-Libi, told Reuters on Wednesday in a telephone interview.

"The way the Americans killed him is heinous and inhumane," he said, speaking from the town of Wadi Otba, south of the Libyan capital. "We are in the 21st century and they claim to be civilized and this is how they take out people."

"Regardless of my brother's ideology, or beliefs, he was a human being and at the end of the day deserves humane treatment," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/06/us-usa-qaeda-drone-idUSBRE8551B820120606

Now, altogether...  "AWWWWWWWWWWW".  I wonder how ol' bro would have felt if this guy took out that terrorist sh!t stain.

[TeeDub]

If you look at drone strikes, Obama looks tough in the war on terror.

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=111611283754323549630.00047e8cdfc55d220dee7&ll=33.100745%2C70.444336&spn=4.41699%2C7.03125&t=p&z=7&source=embed

[guido911]

If you look at drone strikes, Obama looks tough in the war on terror.

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=111611283754323549630.00047e8cdfc55d220dee7&ll=33.100745%2C70.444336&spn=4.41699%2C7.03125&t=p&z=7&source=embed

I have no problem with this approach to the WOT.

[nathanm]

I have no problem with this approach to the WOT.

Perhaps you might let Romney in on that. He might raise Obama's foreign policy grade from an F to a D. I think that was one of the most legitimately clueless things he's said the entire campaign. The gaffes merely reflect either straight misspeaking or a certain cluelessness about how to communicate with the not-wealthy, not anything particularly substantive policy-wise like his talk about Obama's foreign policy.

[Gaspar]

I'm not against this, but I do have a problem with how it's being carried out.

It's just funny that the Left would get so upset at his predecessors for capturing terrorists, interrogating them, and holding them with out due process of law, but has no problem with lobbing hellfire missiles at them along with any innocents that happen to be in their vicinity at the time.

Seems like a bit of a stark double standard, but then again, I understand liberal positions on liberty are more aligned with the maintenance of power than real convictions.

The only problem that I have is that by using a nonmilitary entity to carry out these strikes the president has essentially escaped any scrutiny by congress.  In fact, he alone is able to essentially wage a war beyond the constitutional constraints that protect us and others from the abuse of this kind of power.  In fact, according to the NY Times, they meet in his office every Tuesday for "Terror Tuesday" meetings to decide who to kill.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?_r=1

Here's the legal/constitutional conundrum, If he is making decisions on established military targets to kill, and using a civilian force to kill them (the CIA) without first gaining permission from the military, he and his civilian advisor, David Axelrod, have a great deal of freedom without any oversight on who to kill, and how to prioritize the killings.  Slippery slope.  What if we opt to adopt this policy in other sovereign countries, or domestically?  It's an exercise of war powers, without approval.  There are over 1,000 killings that we know about, but I guarantee you that we don't hear a word about the mistakes.

It's just strange to see a liberal supported administration take this action.  Even stranger to see liberals defend it.  Sets quite a precedent for the future!

[guido911]

Perhaps you might let Romney in on that. He might raise Obama's foreign policy grade from an F to a D. I think that was one of the most legitimately clueless things he's said the entire campaign. The gaffes merely reflect either straight misspeaking or a certain cluelessness about how to communicate with the not-wealthy, not anything particularly substantive policy-wise like his talk about Obama's foreign policy.

Are you serious? Drone strikes are just one aspect of foreign policy-assuming it is even considered foreign policy. And what does any of this have to do with Romney? Obama sucks on Syria, Iran, Russia, and most recently Poland and its "death camps". Perhaps is because he was speaking Austrian or something while asking for "space" with Russia until after this election.

 

[heironymouspasparagus]

Perhaps you might let Romney in on that. He might raise Obama's foreign policy grade from an F to a D. I think that was one of the most legitimately clueless things he's said the entire campaign. The gaffes merely reflect either straight misspeaking or a certain cluelessness about how to communicate with the not-wealthy, not anything particularly substantive policy-wise like his talk about Obama's foreign policy.

I think Mitt taking credit for the GM and Chrysler bailouts and how well they worked is one of him most clueless....

[nathanm]

It's just funny that the Left would get so upset at his predecessors for capturing terrorists, interrogating them, and holding them with out due process of law, but has no problem with lobbing hellfire missiles at them along with any innocents that happen to be in their vicinity at the time.

You may not know this because you don't actually know any actual lefties, but the left is upset at him for the drone strikes. That may have something to do with the smaller number of individual donors Obama has this year.

[guido911]

Drone strike not exactly playing well with some:

Yet Guiora – no dove on such matters – confessed he was "deeply concerned" about President Barack Obama's own "kill list" of terrorists and the way they are eliminated by missiles fired from robot drones around the world. He believes US policy has not tightly defined how people get on the list, leaving it open to legal and moral problems when the order to kill leaves Obama's desk. "He is making a decision largely devoid of external review," Guiroa told the Observer, saying the US's apparent methodology for deciding who is a terrorist is "loosey goosey"...

Obama has presided over a massive expansion of secret surveillance of American citizens by the National Security Agency. He has launched a ferocious and unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers. He has made more government documents classified than any previous president. He has broken his promise to close down the controversial Guantánamo Bay prison and pressed on with prosecutions via secretive military tribunals, rather than civilian courts. He has preserved CIA renditions. He has tried to grab broad new powers on what defines a terrorist or a terrorist supporter and what can be done with them, often without recourse to legal process.

The sheer scope and breadth of Obama's national security policy has stunned even fervent Bush supporters and members of the Washington DC establishment. In last week's New York Times article that detailed the "kill list", Bush's last CIA director, Michael Hayden, said Obama should open the process to more public scrutiny. "Democracies do not make war on the basis of legal memos locked in a [Department of Justice] safe," he told the newspaper.

Even more pertinently, Aaron David Miller, a long-term Middle East policy adviser to both Republican and Democratic administrations, delivered a damning verdict in a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine. He wrote bluntly: "Barack Obama has become George W Bush on steroids."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/02/drone-wars-secrecy-barack-obama

Where oh where are all those Bush b!tchers today??? Not that I really care.

[Gaspar]

I wonder how this will play?

Supreme Court Declines Guantanamo Bay Cases
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/11/supreme-court-guantanamo-bay-dc-circuit-boumediene_n_1567367.html

[Gaspar]

It's working so well, lets order like a bizillian more!

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/11/border-agency-overextended-drone-program/

"The Homeland Security Department ordered so many drones it can’t keep them all flying and doesn’t have a good plan for how to use them. . ."

President Obama is even going to find a way to screw this up!

[patric]

Apparently we dont always know who we're assassinating:


The ramp-up started in 2008, the last year of Bush's term, when there were 35 air strikes in Pakistan, and escalated under Obama to a peak of 117 in 2010, according to The Long War Journal ( http://www.longwarjournal.org/pakistan-strikes.php ).

That jump in use of armed drones resulted from the authorization to use "signature" strikes, which allowed targeting terrorism suspects based on behavior and other characteristics without knowing their actual identity, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/17/us-usa-security-drones-idUSBRE92G02720130317