Annie
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Yeah, I know there's x number of threads already. This is one more. Not a 'reliable source,' but a conversation I think worthy to have. There are links aplenty, but enough her for discussion, I'd think.
Bookworm Room » The worst thing about those drone strikes is Obama?s moral preening and hypocrisy
Bookworm Room » The worst thing about those drone strikes is Obama?s moral preening and hypocrisy
The worst thing about those drone strikes is Obama’s moral preening and hypocrisy
Bookworm on Feb 06 2013 at 4:35 pm | Filed under: Barack Obama, Muslim violence
There’s been a lot of upset in the conservative blogosphere about Obama’s drone strike policy. The way the administration phrased it, as “legal,” “ethical,” and “wise,” got a lot of hackles up, especially when Michael Isikoff let slip how little oversight there is — including oversight over decisions to kill American citizens.
A lot of people are very worried about this, because they see a government that feels unfettered by the protections accorded citizens under the Bill of Rights. The problem, as conservatives see it, isn’t so much what the administration does, but the attitude it has when it does it. Thus, the administration manifestly refuses to acknowledge that the rights stated in the Bill of Rights are inherent in all citizens and that the government has the burden of proving good cause to implicate or limit those rights in any way.
Instead, in every instance, the Obama administration takes the position that government has the inherent power to impinge upon and limit citizen’s freedoms, or even take their lives, leaving citizens with the burden of proving that the government has overreached. To the extent that the attitude inverts both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, people who care about those documents and the unalienable rights they establish and protect are going to view anything the administration does with a jaundiced eye.
Rusty Shackleford, however, who knows as much about Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremists as anyone else on this earth, tells conservatives not to get too uptight about those American citizens that the Obama administration targets for drone killing. These people aren’t just any old Americans. Instead, they are citizens who have deliberately thrown their lot in with al Qaeda, thereby taking upon themselves enemy status:
If you think it’s unconstitutional or immoral to kill a member of a terrorist organization living abroad then you and I have very different readings of the Constitution and very different sets of moral standards.
Moreover, it’s just basic common sense that in warfare you don’t stop to ask the person you’re about to shoot for a copy of their passport. Who gives a rat’s ass if bin Laden was Saudi or if he was born in Colorado?
Please, go read the report. Nowhere in it is there even a smidgen of a hint that drones could be used against Americans … in America.
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Bottom line: there are few things more loathsome than someone who yells at you and humiliates you for doing something, then does the same thing himself, and, if you call him upon it, says that the mere fact that it is he who’s doing it, not you, makes it all right.
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