General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The Martin Luther King that Obama does not want you to remember [View all]TiberiusB
(485 posts)Saying drone strikes are better than the alternative excludes a lot of potential choices and, worst of all, assumes the decision to bomb a foreign sovereign power should be entirely up to us. See, Yemen, we could totally invade you and kill you all if we wanted, but we're awesome, so we'll only kill some of you. Awesome, right! How about focused police and military investigation and restricting strikes to legitimate targets, not "signature" profiles, teenage boys, and funerals. Isn't that supposedly how we got bin Laden? I've advocated for a "drain the swamp" approach before, so I'll just say "Google it" on that subject.
As for the nonsensical "war" on terror, that's the joke. Define terrorism. Really, try. You can't fight a tactic, particularly one with a definition so broad, it could encompass virtually any act of violence. Remember the Tiller murder by a right wing nut case? Was that terrorism? The U.S. used a virus to screw with the Iranian nuclear program. Isn't that practically the U.S. definition of cyber terrorism? Bin Laden rose to power thanks to terrorism..wait, I mean heroic resistance...wait, no, I mean freedom fighting...whatever terrorism is when we fund it. Remind me, who was it that funded and supported him and the mujaheddin? Who undermined democracy in Iran and installed the Shah? Who supported Saddam until he suddenly became a liability and then transformed over night into a WMD mastermind and al_Qaeda kingpin? Who has absolutely no problem bombing civilian populations despite no recognized authority to do so? Shall we get into the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?
Help me out here, 'cause there just might be a connection between 9/11 and U.S. policy in the Middle East...or it's all just a big bag of coincidence...or whatever.
Talk about strawmen. Nobody is saying that military action is never on the table. Only that it should be reserved for the rarest of circumstances and only when it is clear other options have either failed or are not available. Keeping everything hidden away from the American people is certainly not a good place to start.