Of all the policies of the Barack Obama administration – one of many which began under the Bush regime and has been continued, even expanded, by his successor – I think the use of predator drones sickens and angers me the most. Especially with the revelation that the drones also target first responders, and even people attending funerals. Imagine if a suicide bomber had attacked police and firefighters as they arrived at the World Trade Center on 9/11, or the funerals of the victims. That is essentially what the CIA’s predator drones are doing.
But what’s really infuriating, though not surprising, is how quiet liberals are about this, given how loudly they spoke out against war during the Bush years. Yet this is arguably worse in terms of its sheer violence and callousness: worse than Abu Ghraib, worse than the Haditha massacre. If any other country’s military engaged in such acts, they would be denounced by the U. S. government (and others) as war crimes, and rightly so. And as the rep
ort cited by Glenn Greenwald makes clear, government officials have been lying about the civilian casualties from the attacks. But from most Democrats, the response amounts to at best a shuffling of feet and an uncomfortable silence. In fact, most of them support the use of drones, and even keeping the Guantanamo Bay prison camp open, according to a Washington Post poll. This despite Obama’s campaign promise to close Gitmo. I guess Democrats suffer from memory loss as much as Republicans do.
How anyone can vote for a man who gives orders to commit mass murder is simply incomprehensible to me. And please spare me the counterpoint that the Republicans are just as bad. Of course they are. That just further proves the point that the major parties are virtually indistinguishable in their lust for mass murder, bigger government, and more control over people’s lives. Voting Republican or Democrat is voting for the imperial warfare/welfare state, and all of the blood and treasure it demands.
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We could have a whole series like this, The Myth of Pro-Civil Liberties Democrats, The Myth of Pro-Market Republicans, and so on. For example the demonrats support censorship and chilling effects wrought by, say, copyright, antidiscrimination law, campaign finance law, commercial speech regulations, and so on.
And as I noted in Down with Gatekeepers: Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration vs. Internet Freedom, the Obama administration says it’s in favor of Internet freedom but of course this is just a lie–with the fedgov’s relentless push to keep increasing copyright law and its insidious effect on Internet freedom, Obama’s unconstitutional signing of ACTA, use of other trade agreements to export the draconian DMCA-type copyright provisions to other countries and other bullying them to adopt US style copyright, use of wiretaps and other legislation to curb “piracy” (and child pornography), arrest of Megauploads executives (in New Zealand!), seizures of websites to censor Wikileaks, ICE seizures of hundreds of domains in the name of stopping piracy and at the behest of the MPAA, in addition to other ICE domain seizures in the name of stopping child pornography. And on and on.
What about this one. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2004/aug/02/00025/
[“It is the wrong question since the two-party system is using the same foreign policy in place since Jimmy Carter proposed the Carter Doctrine….at whatever the cost, Americans were to protect their vital interest in Middle-East oil.
It is a shame that Barack Obama had attracted the far left (loons) as much as he did, because they make Liberals all look the same. And we Liberals are not the same that is for sure.
I support Capitalism, and the extension of Capitalism aboard, which is known as Imperialistic Capitalism.
It starts when we have a non-compliant head of state we cannot get to be accommodating to our economic system’s will – which is irrational.
The next course of action when Diplomacy fails is military action to turn that leadership around, or make a failed nation into a colony for development and investment purposes (Capitalism serves Investors).
Our economic system seeks cheap labor and an abundance of it (Nigeria is a potential emerging economic market).
It also seeks material resources and a geopolitical location to protect our vital interests and our trading partners (India, Japan).
All of which the C.I.A. has brought to the forefront with decades of planning, massive amounts of money accumulated by diversion and deception (read drug money and black market imports).
And of course this leads to atrocities, rendition prisoners, and now drones repetitive attacks, and to embarrass this nation further to violation of the Geneva Convention rules.
So when Debbie Beane (Facebook) speaks about Racketeering, with a probable cause, or proximity to the Middle East, she isn’t saying the U.S. violated the mail and wire laws, or that the internal control system is flawed in our business model.
Debbie is alluding to the fact that our “Administrative System” (read foreign policy under the Carter Doctrine) is the legal cause of extortion and intimidation of failed nations to wrest away their power from the control of OPEC (Venezuela, Russia, China, Canada, Mexico) to place it tightly in the control of the Western economic block under the oversight of a solo polar power, the U.S..
The Drones serve this purpose because the U.S. woke up to the fact there isn’t enough oil (demand is stronger than supply), which is entirely escaping the real reality that we must develop an alternative energy to oil, and we must conserve energy and change our lifestyle. None of which we are currently doing as we turn our violent nature towards controlling OPEC’s oil so that we don’t run out of it or be subordinated because of our inherent weakness for an oil-fueled economy that grows leaps and bounds by the day.
It has little to do with Barack Obama’s far left (Loons) and desire to end the war, because they are the face of the hand that holds the rubber stamp. They know not what they do!
And for sure the GOP gun-ho attitude doesn’t see the blunder either that other steps must be taken with commitment. Ron Paul never saw an alternative energy bill he liked or voted for while in Congress.”]