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Offline Sigz

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President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« on: April 29, 2012, 07:47:31 AM »

April 28, 2012
Warrior in Chief
By PETER L. BERGEN
THE president who won the Nobel Peace Prize less than nine months after his inauguration has turned out to be one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades.

Liberals helped to elect Barack Obama in part because of his opposition to the Iraq war, and probably don’t celebrate all of the president’s many military accomplishments. But they are sizable.

Mr. Obama decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership. He overthrew the Libyan dictator. He ramped up drone attacks in Pakistan, waged effective covert wars in Yemen and Somalia and authorized a threefold increase in the number of American troops in Afghanistan. He became the first president to authorize the assassination of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and played an operational role in Al Qaeda, and was killed in an American drone strike in Yemen. And, of course, Mr. Obama ordered and oversaw the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Ironically, the president used the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech as an occasion to articulate his philosophy of war. He made it very clear that his opposition to the Iraq war didn’t mean that he embraced pacifism — not at all.

“I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people,” the president told the Nobel committee — and the world. “For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince Al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man, and the limits of reason.”

If those on the left were listening, they didn’t seem to care. The left, which had loudly condemned George W. Bush for waterboarding and due process violations at Guantánamo, was relatively quiet when the Obama administration, acting as judge and executioner, ordered more than 250 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2009, during which at least 1,400 lives were lost.

Mr. Obama’s readiness to use force — and his military record — have won him little support from the right. Despite countervailing evidence, most conservatives view the president as some kind of peacenik. From both the right and left, there has been a continuing, dramatic cognitive disconnect between Mr. Obama’s record and the public perception of his leadership: despite his demonstrated willingness to use force, neither side regards him as the warrior president he is.

Mr. Obama had firsthand experience of military efficacy and precision early in his presidency. Three months after his inauguration, Somali pirates held Richard Phillips, the American captain of the Maersk Alabama, hostage in the Indian Ocean. Authorized to use deadly force if Captain Phillips’s life was in danger, Navy SEALs parachuted to a nearby warship, and three sharpshooters, firing at night from a distance of 100 feet, killed the pirates without harming Captain Phillips.

“GREAT job,” Mr. Obama told William H. McRaven, the then vice admiral who oversaw the daring rescue mission and later the Bin Laden operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The SEAL rescue was the president’s first high-stakes decision involving the secretive counterterrorism units. But he would rely increasingly upon their capacities in the coming years.

Soon after Mr. Obama took office he reframed the fight against terrorism. Liberals wanted to cast anti-terrorism efforts in terms of global law enforcement — rather than war. The president didn’t choose this path and instead declared “war against Al Qaeda and its allies.” In switching rhetorical gears, Mr. Obama abandoned Mr. Bush’s vague and open-ended fight against terrorism in favor of a war with particular, violent jihadists.

The rhetorical shift had dramatic — non-rhetorical — consequences. Compare Mr. Obama’s use of drone strikes with that of his predecessor. During the Bush administration, there was an American drone attack in Pakistan every 43 days; during the first two years of the Obama administration, there was a drone strike there every four days. And two years into his presidency, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning president was engaged in conflicts in six Muslim countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya. The man who went to Washington as an “antiwar” president was more Teddy Roosevelt than Jimmy Carter.

Consider the comparative speed with which Mr. Obama and his Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton, opted for military intervention in various conflicts. Hesitant, perhaps, because of the Black Hawk Down disaster in Somalia in 1993, Mr. Clinton did nothing to stop what, at least by 1994, was evidently a genocidal campaign in Rwanda. And Bosnia was on the verge of genocidal collapse before Mr. Clinton decided — after two years of dithering — to intervene in that troubled area in the mid-1990s. In contrast, it took Mr. Obama only a few weeks to act in Libya in the spring of 2011 when Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi threatened to massacre large portions of the Libyan population. Mr. Obama went to the United Nations and NATO and set in motion the military campaign — roundly criticized by the left and the right — that toppled the Libyan dictator.

None of this should have surprised anyone who had paid close attention to what Mr. Obama said about the use of force during his presidential campaign. In an August 2007 speech on national security, he put the nation — and the world — on alert: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,” he said, referring to Pervez Musharraf, then president of Pakistan. He added, “I will not hesitate to use military force to take out terrorists who pose a direct threat to America.”

That’s about as clear a statement as can be. But Republicans and Democrats blasted Mr. Obama with equal intensity for suggesting that he would authorize unilateral military action in Pakistan to kill Bin Laden or other Al Qaeda leaders.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, then a Democratic rival for the presidential nomination, said, “I think it is a very big mistake to telegraph that.” Mitt Romney, vying for the Republican nomination, accused Mr. Obama of being a “Dr. Strangelove” who is “going to bomb our allies.” John McCain piled on: “Will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan?”

Once in office, Mr. Obama signed off on a large increase in the number of C.I.A. officers on the ground in Pakistan and an intensified campaign of drone warfare there; he also embraced the use of drones or covert military units in places like Syria and Yemen, where the United States was not engaged in traditional land warfare. (Mr. Bush, who first deployed C.I.A.-directed drones, did not do so on the scale that Mr. Obama did; and Mr. Obama, of course, had the benefit of significantly improved, more precise, drone technology.)

Nothing dramatizes Mr. Obama’s willingness to use hard power so well as his decision to send Navy SEAL Team 6 to Abbottabad, to take out Bin Laden. Had this risky operation failed, it would most likely have severely damaged Mr. Obama’s presidency — and legacy.

Mr. Obama’s advisers worried that a botched raid would disturb — or destroy — the United States-Pakistan relationship, which would make the war in Afghanistan more difficult to wage since so much American matériel had to travel through Pakistani airspace or ground routes.

The risks were enormous. A helicopter-borne assault could easily turn into a replay of the debacle in the Iranian desert in 1980, when Mr. Carter authorized a mission to release the American hostages in Tehran that ended with eight American servicemen dead and zero hostages freed.

SOME of Mr. Obama’s top advisers worried that the intelligence suggesting that Bin Laden was in the Abbottabad compound was circumstantial and much too flimsy to justify the risks involved. The deputy C.I.A. director, Michael J. Morell, had told the president that in terms of available data points, “the circumstantial evidence of Iraq having W.M.D. was actually stronger than evidence that Bin Laden was living in the Abbottabad compound.”

At the final National Security Council meeting to consider options connected to Bin Laden’s possible presence in the Abbottabad compound, Mr. Obama gave each of his advisers an opportunity to speak. When the president asked, “Where are you on this? What do you think?” so many officials prefaced their views by saying, “Mr. President, this is a very hard call,” that laughter erupted, providing a few moments of levity in the otherwise tense, two-hour meeting.

Asked his view, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said, “Mr. President, my suggestion is, don’t go.”

For the president, however, the potential rewards clearly outweighed all risk involved. “Even though I thought it was only 50-50 that Bin Laden was there, I thought it was worth us taking a shot,” he said. “And I said to myself that if we have a good chance of not completely defeating but badly disabling Al Qaeda, then it was worth both the political risks as well as the risks to our men.”

The following morning, on Friday, April 29, at 8:20 a.m. in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room, Mr. Obama gathered his key national security advisers in a semicircle around him and told them simply, “It’s a go.”

Three days later Bin Laden was dead.

The Bin Laden mission will surely resurface in the coming election; the campaign has already produced a 17-minute documentary that showcases the raid. This, combined with Mr. Obama’s record of military accomplishment, will make it hard for Mitt Romney to convince voters that Mr. Obama is a typical, weak-on-national-security Democrat. And, if Mr. Romney tries to portray Mr. Obama this way, he will very likely trap himself into calling for a war with Iran, which many Americans oppose.

Mr. Obama plans to be in Chicago for the NATO summit meeting in late May, just as the election campaign heats up. He’ll arrive knowing that the United States and Afghanistan have already agreed to a long-term strategic partnership that is likely to involve thousands of American soldiers in Afghanistan, in advisory roles, after combat operations end in 2014. (The details of the agreement are still being negotiated.) This should inoculate the president from would-be Romney charges that he is “abandoning” Afghanistan.

None of this suggests that Mr. Obama is trigger-happy or that, when considering the use of force, he is more likely to trust his gut than counsel provided during structured, often lengthy, deliberations with his National Security Council and other advisers. In instances in which the risks seem too great (military action against Iran) or the payoff too murky (some form of military intervention in Syria), Mr. Obama has repeatedly held America’s fire.

This said, it is clear that he has completely shaken the “Vietnam syndrome” that provided a lens through which a generation of Democratic leaders viewed military action. Still, the American public and chattering classes continue to regard the president as a thinker, not an actor; a negotiator, not a fighter.

What accounts for the strange, persistent cognitive dissonance about this president and his relation to military force? Does it stem from the campaign in which Mrs. Clinton repeatedly critiqued Mr. Obama for his stated willingness to negotiate with Iran and Cuba? Or is it because he can never quite shake the deliberative tone and mien of the constitutional law professor that he once was? Or because of his early opposition to the Iraq war? Whatever the causes, the president has embraced SEAL Team 6 rather than Code Pink, yet many continue to see him as the negotiator in chief rather than the warrior in chief that he actually is.

I mean, there's definitely a difference between drone strikes and raids and the warmongering that a lot of republicans like to sling around, but it is rather sad how many people don't seem to even talk about this.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2012, 12:59:35 PM by Sigz »
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Offline Super Dude

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Re: Presient Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #1 on: April 29, 2012, 11:26:43 AM »
Modern day warrior, mean mean stride, today's Obama mean mean pride.

Sorry, that was the first thing that popped into my head because of the thread title. I have nothing more meaningful to contribute because I feel like people talk about it plenty; the opposition sure raised hell last year.
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Offline skydivingninja

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Re: Presient Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #2 on: April 29, 2012, 11:52:26 AM »
^^ That.  Any illusion of Obama being some kind of apologist peacemonger went out the window last year at least.  Not sure why anyone tries to argue that he's some kind of liberal pansy anymore. 

Offline Scheavo

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Re: Presient Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #3 on: April 29, 2012, 11:56:23 AM »
Depending upon my mood, I either think Obama is doing everything right, or just continuing the same ol same old, but in his slightly new way.

Honestly, it's a complete dilemma for me. I think we need to remove ourselves from most of the Middle East, but in today's age this doesn't mean we have to completely remove our ability to "police" the region. If you haven't been able to tell on this board, I'm not one who thinks violence solves anything. However, I'm not so naive as to think that everyone thinks this way. When you're the most powerful body on the planet, then, what is your role? To what degree does power, the presence of power, the show of power, promote peace? I'd be one that would argue nuclear weapons have made things more peaceful in the world. Without nukes, there would've been a direct War between Russia and the US. Proxies became the thing, and as ugly and horrendous as they were and are, they probably pale in comparison to basically WW3.

This continues to today. Conventional War against the US is basically a suicide wish, and so we see war being fought in proxies. Afghanistan is horrible, but it doesn't really compare to the atrocities of pretty much any war before WWII. Hell, it might not do well against some battles. The fact that America spends more than the next, what, 15 countries combined?, on our military, turns into a deterrent against other countries actually performing direct aggressive actions against us.

Being a measly human, and one without great resources, it's hard to know what's better. Continuing the arms race, showing power via drone strikes, computer viruses, etc, or trying to defuse the situation right now. The pessimist in me says that both are just really equally bad, that in the end, there will be enough asshole humans to always fuck things up. But since the arms race means more powerful weapons, this means one asshole can do much worse damage, theoretically. That makes me lean towards defusing he situation, or trying to.

The optimist in me says that just possibly, the arms race can actually achieve world peace. When you read neocons justifications for war, it's often admirable, if misguided. They want to spread democracy, which is saying they want to spread freedom. It's hard to conceive how us American's can say this is bad, on the basic level. What's misguided, is their failure to connect socioeconomic conditions with the possibility of stable democracies, or even stable countries. In poorly developed countries, monarchies / centralized power maintains order better than a democracy. A middle class is vitally important for a stable democracy existing, and for a moderate state coming about. This isn't something you can just give, you can't give a country a middle class. So then, what if the US did become so powerful, that it really did effectively become the World government? Historically, modernizing countries have a king, who finds himself in a Dilemma. This dilemma can cause problems, but not if the power's that be are the US, and they side with the people. In the long run, and after economic development, this could lead to more or less stable democracies, a realization of the Kantian dream, and at the very least, one of the largest Pax era's of all time.

/rant

Hopefully I was able to edit myself enough to make sense. But basically, I find myself torn between something like Obama's foreign policy - ending direct occupation (Iraq and Afghanistan), supporting democratic uprisings as opposed to our history of supporting the monarchs (though Syria is enigmatic) - and Pauls solution of getting our troops out, and trading with the reason. Economics is an important factor in considering a countries modernization, so trading is a very good long-term strategy.

Offline antigoon

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Re: Presient Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #4 on: April 29, 2012, 12:06:56 PM »
I really don't think anything comes out of our drone strikes besides breeding a whole new generation of Middle Easterners who hate America. I understand the realities of the current situation but what's going on now in Yemen and Pakistan just seems purely reckless. Kids are being killed by these bombs...and for what?

And it's not like Romney would do any better here, either. The people who are supposed to be upset by this stuff might speak up, though.

Offline El Barto

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Re: Presient Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #5 on: April 29, 2012, 12:37:26 PM »
I really don't think anything comes out of our drone strikes besides breeding a whole new generation of Middle Easterners who hate America. I understand the realities of the current situation but what's going on now in Yemen and Pakistan just seems purely reckless. Kids are being killed by these bombs...and for what?

And it's not like Romney would do any better here, either. The people who are supposed to be upset by this stuff might speak up, though.
That's not entirely true.  Drone strikes can be an excellent tactic, if you hit the right targets.  It has the advantage of being out of sight, out of mind.  People tend to notice when you've got 40,000 goons marching up and down their home turf.  They don't notice when cadres of bad actors out in the desert suddenly explode in the middle of the night for seemingly no reason.  The problem is that properly executed drone strikes get little attention from the general population.  When you blow the living shit out of Akmed's wedding party, that pisses people off, and "oops, my bad" doesn't really help matters (which we don't even say anyway since the Right views apologies as treasonous under any circumstances).   You take tiny steps forward, and every "oopsie" moves you 20 steps back.  That's the problem with the massive increase in drone strikes.  When it's every couple of weeks, you tend to be more cautious.  When it's an every day occurrence, you dramatically increase the possibility of making a very costly mistake. 
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Offline antigoon

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Re: Presient Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #6 on: April 29, 2012, 12:58:17 PM »
I agree that they have a potential to be useful given the right circumstances. It's just too much right now. Don't have the article on hand but the CIA was recently granted approval by the White House to conduct strikes in Yemen when they don't even know who they're trying to kill (they've already been doing this in Pakistan). I think they're called "signature" strikes as opposed to personal strikes.

Offline El Barto

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Re: Presient Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #7 on: April 29, 2012, 01:34:45 PM »
I agree that they have a potential to be useful given the right circumstances. It's just too much right now. Don't have the article on hand but the CIA was recently granted approval by the White House to conduct strikes in Yemen when they don't even know who they're trying to kill (they've already been doing this in Pakistan). I think they're called "signature" strikes as opposed to personal strikes.
This is what you were referring to, and it's news to me:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/white-house-approves-broader-yemen-drone-campaign/2012/04/25/gIQA82U6hT_story.html
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The expanded authority will allow the CIA and JSOC to fire on targets based solely on their intelligence “signatures” — patterns of behavior that are detected through signals intercepts, human sources and aerial surveillance, and that indicate the presence of an important operative or a plot against U.S. interests.

Until now, the administration had allowed strikes only against known terrorist leaders who appear on secret CIA and JSOC target lists and whose location can be confirmed.

Pretty fucking stupid, if you ask me.  Although it's not like I have any respect whatsoever for this dipshit administration.
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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #8 on: April 29, 2012, 09:47:34 PM »
What's sad is that Obama ran on promises like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p12cAclNCRU

He actually deployed 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan almost immediately after assuming office. The article does a good job detailing his other military endeavors. And while slightly off topic, let's not forget about his empty promises to close GITMO and abolish the Patriot Act. He's still a warmonger, even if he hasn't launched anything as dramatic as the War in Iraq. The people backing him like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger are some of the most vicious warmongers you can imagine.

Offline Scheavo

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #9 on: April 29, 2012, 11:06:50 PM »
What's sad is that Obama ran on promises like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p12cAclNCRU

He actually deployed 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan almost immediately after assuming office. The article does a good job detailing his other military endeavors. And while slightly off topic, let's not forget about his empty promises to close GITMO and abolish the Patriot Act. He's still a warmonger, even if he hasn't launched anything as dramatic as the War in Iraq. The people backing him like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger are some of the most vicious warmongers you can imagine.

I'm with you for the critique of the policy. I'm not with you in calling him a hypocrite. Any "hypocrisy" is a lack if knowledge on your part about Obama's platform in 2008. He did not promise to end Afghanistan, and that clip nicely edit outs what war he's talking about, becuase it's not Afghanistan.


Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #10 on: April 30, 2012, 12:16:13 AM »
that clip nicely edit outs what war he's talking about, becuase it's not Afghanistan.

Well my apologies. You're right in this respect because he was actually talking about Iraq. The US did send more troops to Iraq though, and Obama says he supported this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zHCobDlWMo

He's still a hypocrite. The reason I detest him is because he reneged on almost every one of his promises, which is typical for politicians, but still not right.

Offline Super Dude

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #11 on: April 30, 2012, 03:01:34 AM »
Not really. Congressional deadlock and blockage did a real good job at showing a new president what he can and cannot do. He didn't go back on his promises; he just learned the hard way that Congress wouldn't let him do it willy nilly.
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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #12 on: April 30, 2012, 06:27:29 AM »
Not really. Congressional deadlock and blockage did a real good job at showing a new president what he can and cannot do. He didn't go back on his promises; he just learned the hard way that Congress wouldn't let him do it willy nilly.

How about the fact that he personally ordered many of these attacks? The Libya invasion didn't go through Congress. The drone attacks on Pakistan and Yemen didn't go through Congress. He's shown his true colors as a puppet who used anti-war rhetoric to win over the American people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p12cAclNCRU
If you don't think this is backing out on a promise, that's just embarrassing.

Offline Super Dude

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #13 on: April 30, 2012, 06:31:36 AM »
Ah I see, a one-trick pony. Maybe some other time.
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Offline El Barto

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #14 on: April 30, 2012, 08:17:30 AM »
Not really. Congressional deadlock and blockage did a real good job at showing a new president what he can and cannot do. He didn't go back on his promises; he just learned the hard way that Congress wouldn't let him do it willy nilly.
You can't blame congress for his administrative actions; only his legislative ones.  Congress has little oversight of his role as C&C of the military.  There are plenty of things he could regarding the wars with no input from congress, but the simple fact is that he's carrying on the platform of his predecessor.  Anything he said during the campaign about it has largely proven to be bullshit.
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Offline Super Dude

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #15 on: April 30, 2012, 08:58:29 AM »
But they can block his initiatives to bring troops home and other such factors. You can't just bring troops home, one-two-three. It's a logistical and a political process, and it takes time, manpower, and micromanagement.
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Offline El Barto

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #16 on: April 30, 2012, 10:13:01 AM »
How do you think they can prevent that?  They control the budget, and they're allegedly the ones who can declare war, but the execution of that war is entirely up to the C&C.  Congress's power in that regard is pretty much limited to purse strings.  Consider the surge.  All the democratically led congress could do was throw out a non-binding resolution saying they thought it was bullshit, which Chimpy ignored.  Is it your suggestion that sending troops doesn't require congressional approval, but returning them does?

edit:  By the way, I agree that withdrawal from conflict isn't a simple matter, and not something that can be done easily.  However, Congress has nothing to do with that, and if we're to judge Dickhead on his promises regarding the war, and we shall, then I think the fair assessment is that he's a jackass for making promises that were impractical and infeasible. 
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Offline Super Dude

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #17 on: April 30, 2012, 10:38:12 AM »
How do you think they can prevent that?  They control the budget, and they're allegedly the ones who can declare war, but the execution of that war is entirely up to the C&C.  Congress's power in that regard is pretty much limited to purse strings.  Consider the surge.  All the democratically led congress could do was throw out a non-binding resolution saying they thought it was bullshit, which Chimpy ignored.  Is it your suggestion that sending troops doesn't require congressional approval, but returning them does?

edit:  By the way, I agree that withdrawal from conflict isn't a simple matter, and not something that can be done easily.  However, Congress has nothing to do with that, and if we're to judge Dickhead on his promises regarding the war, and we shall, then I think the fair assessment is that he's a jackass for making promises that were impractical and infeasible.

Or perhaps, as someone who's never been president before, like all new presidents, just naive in thinking that he can do something about it. Which is what I've been trying to argue. He made those promises because he had no idea how impractical or infeasible it would be to deliver on them.


Except for the part where he did, that is.
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Offline kirksnosehair

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #18 on: April 30, 2012, 11:09:01 AM »
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He overthrew the Libyan dictator.

Uh, no, he didn't. 

Offline Super Dude

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #19 on: April 30, 2012, 11:20:55 AM »
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He overthrew the Libyan dictator.

Uh, no, he didn't.

Also that.
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Offline El Barto

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #20 on: April 30, 2012, 11:42:09 AM »
How do you think they can prevent that?  They control the budget, and they're allegedly the ones who can declare war, but the execution of that war is entirely up to the C&C.  Congress's power in that regard is pretty much limited to purse strings.  Consider the surge.  All the democratically led congress could do was throw out a non-binding resolution saying they thought it was bullshit, which Chimpy ignored.  Is it your suggestion that sending troops doesn't require congressional approval, but returning them does?

edit:  By the way, I agree that withdrawal from conflict isn't a simple matter, and not something that can be done easily.  However, Congress has nothing to do with that, and if we're to judge Dickhead on his promises regarding the war, and we shall, then I think the fair assessment is that he's a jackass for making promises that were impractical and infeasible.

Or perhaps, as someone who's never been president before, like all new presidents, just naive in thinking that he can do something about it. Which is what I've been trying to argue. He made those promises because he had no idea how impractical or infeasible it would be to deliver on them.


Except for the part where he did, that is.
You miss the point.  He can withdraw from Afghanistan, but has decided against it.  Look how quickly he got out of Iraq once it became problematic to stay.  The problem is that he doesn't want to leave Afghanistan.  You make it sound as if he's prevented from sticking to his campaign promises.  The fact is that he just changed his mind (or was lying during the campaign). 

It's also worth noting that the only reason we're out of Iraq is because the Iraqis made it very dicey for us to stick around.  Quite frankly, Bradley Manning deserves more credit for our withdrawal than Dickhead does.  He's the one that forced their hand.  Without which, we'd certainly still be there.

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He overthrew the Libyan dictator.

Uh, no, he didn't. 

Agreed.  He had small part in a large operation to overthrow Moammar.  Ironically, it's the small amount of his involvement that actually make it one of the few triumphs of his otherwise miserable presidency. 
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Offline Scheavo

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #21 on: April 30, 2012, 12:28:42 PM »
that clip nicely edit outs what war he's talking about, becuase it's not Afghanistan.

Well my apologies. You're right in this respect because he was actually talking about Iraq. The US did send more troops to Iraq though, and Obama says he supported this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zHCobDlWMo

He's still a hypocrite. The reason I detest him is because he reneged on almost every one of his promises, which is typical for politicians, but still not right.

We withdrew from Iraq, how is that sending more troops there?

That newest video you linked to is OBVIOUSLY a mental slip of words. He obviously meant to say Afghanistan, as evidence by the fact that he mentioned Pakistan immediately afterwards. Which was part of his platform position.

Seriously, you can come up with valid criticisms of the President. I'd say El Barto is doing fine good job of that. Making up and distorting the facts like you are doesn't help your cause.

Offline PraXis

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #22 on: April 30, 2012, 02:49:30 PM »
But they can block his initiatives to bring troops home and other such factors. You can't just bring troops home, one-two-three. It's a logistical and a political process, and it takes time, manpower, and micromanagement.

They can't block bringing the troops home because we never declared these wars. It's one of the things that RP said he would do the minute he became inaugurated. Executive order to bring the troops home (as a redeployment to home since the wars were not formally declared by Congress..which the Constitution requires). From there, RP would have more military bases for purposes of R&D and national defense (not offense).

Offline Super Dude

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #23 on: April 30, 2012, 03:46:04 PM »
If RP could only be elected...ah, I'd love to see the day. He'd go back on his promises/fail to bring them to fruition so soon after election it'd make your head spin.
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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #24 on: April 30, 2012, 03:55:54 PM »
Not at all. The GOP establishment is terrified of RP, which is why the media demonizes him. The pundits mostly agree with his domestic policy (eg leave it to the states on most issues), but they go absolutely, batshit insane "OMG it's crazy Uncle Ronnie!" when he starts talking about our imperialistic (and unsustainable) foreign policy...every single one of them, be it on Fox, Talk Radio, etc. I thought MAYBE they would respond such as "well, we like to talk about how much we love the Constitution so much and RP is the only politician in decades to stick to his guns and actually make all decisions based on the Constitutionality so we can overlook or disagree his foreign policy stance, but no.. the second you question the Federal Reserve, you are an enemy of the establishment. JFK and RFK were against the Fed too. As for Obama, you might as well call him Bush III. I don't hear about those people killed in Irag, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and Syria by our drones getting trials.

Offline Super Dude

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #25 on: April 30, 2012, 03:57:01 PM »
They're not terrified of him. And I was never aware that you actually cared about the people who were killed in the Middle East without trial. To the contrary, I thought you had no sympathy for "brown people."
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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #26 on: April 30, 2012, 04:09:45 PM »
They're not terrified of him. And I was never aware that you actually cared about the people who were killed in the Middle East without trial. To the contrary, I thought you had no sympathy for "brown people."

Play the race card much?

I am against using our military to fight undeclared wars. I believe in peace through trade. If a country attacked our soil, I wouldn't hesitate to turn them into a glass parking lot. However, Al Qaeda is not a country, it's a group of crazy fuckheads. I'd rather America be an example of a true free and just society that does not intervene in the foreign affairs of other countries. You can accomplish that through peaceful means, such as trade; noninterventionism instead of isolationism. Think of it like this...a situation where no one has a reason to hate us, but at the same time, they would not dare to fuck with us. Unfortunately, we've been meddling with these "brown people" since the 50s, and they are still pissed off about it.

Now, there are bad people out there, but it doesn't change the fact that our wars must be declared formally by Congress. If our allies want to deal with some crazy dictator in some random country, let them sacrifice their own troops instead of ours. We can sell them the gear.

Offline Super Dude

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #27 on: April 30, 2012, 04:20:45 PM »
Doesn't change the fact that you're being inconsistent for the sake of having something to complain about with Obama.
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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #28 on: April 30, 2012, 04:33:59 PM »
Doesn't change the fact that you're being inconsistent for the sake of having something to complain about with Obama.

My main complaints about Obama are his legislative "accomplishments," mainly Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, NDAA, renewing the Patriot Act, and some of his executive orders. His handling of the Fast and Furious scandal is also an absolute joke. If he wants my respect he'll kick Holder's ass out of the DOJ. The overall arrogance is what really gets me.. that same arrogance from useless, theoretician academics who never accomplished anything of substance. His one accomplishment has been becoming the country's best gun salesman.  :rollin

Offline El Barto

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Re: President Obama, Warrior in Chief
« Reply #29 on: April 30, 2012, 05:01:53 PM »
Obamacare actually is an example of being hamstrung by a shitty congress, however, he should have had the balls to punt the issue when he couldn't get through something actually worth a fuck.  He took whatever he could get for the sake of getting something.  Not what a good POTUS should do.*   Dodd-Frank doesn't bother me, but I'm honestly not real informed on the matter.  NDAA, USAPATRIOT Act and those executive orders are all the continuation of Dumbass's agenda, and make him a pretty rotten POTUS in my book.

Interestingly, that also applies to Fast and Furious.  That particular manner of investigation had been going on for quite some time; well before Obama took office.  Like plenty of other harebrained government practices, they got sloppier and looser with the rules every year, culminating in the biggest debacle before the whistle blew.  Make no mistake, F&F would have happened under any president, it was already in place, and the opposition party would be acting the same way regardless of who was in power.  Honestly, I'd call it "just one of those things." The sort that happens all the time.  And like all of those other things, it has to become a political dodge ball because that's really all that's left in American democracy anymore.

 *I'm not entirely convinced that Dickhead actually expects it to withstand SCOTUS. I think it's possible that he's actually been expecting it to get shot down all along so he can try a different approach.  Sadly, at this point I fear his different approach would be something even more egregious. 
Argument, the presentation of reasonable views, never makes headway against conviction, and conviction takes no part in argument because it knows.
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