Nobel Peace Prize Nominee: Obama Asks Military Leaders If They Will “Fire On US Citizens�

[TMF]

[quote name="semiautots" post="897398" timestamp="1359308225"]There were actually 2 Americans killed in that drone strike.  The other was a web-site designer that was sympathetic to Islam.   [url=http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/30/us-born-terror-boss-anwar-al-awlaki-killed/]http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/30/us-born-terror-boss-anwar-al-awlaki-killed/[/url][/quote] Okay, if you go to Pakistan and head up into the hills to have tea with some Taliban guys, the US government will not put air strikes on hold simply because you're an American. They will say "too effing bad, he shouldn't have been there" then tell your family to pound sand. That is how it works. Best way to not get killed in a drone strike is to not stand next to terrorists that are fighting the US.

[Guest semiautots]

Okay, if you go to Pakistan and head up into the hills to have tea with some Taliban guys, the US government will not put air strikes on hold simply because you're an American. They will say "too effing bad, he shouldn't have been there" then tell your family to pound sand. That is how it works. Best way to not get killed in a drone strike is to not stand next to terrorists that are fighting the US.

 

Or, the government could legally declare war, as the Constitution states it must.  Which would you prefer?

[TMF]

[quote name="semiautots" post="897424" timestamp="1359309721"]Or, the government could legally declare war, as the Constitution states it must.  Which would you prefer?[/quote] We have to declare war on a nation to drop bombs on a terrorist organization? I didn't know that.

[mav]

But you have to admit, had we shown just a little bit of balls in the 90s and taken out bin Laden and AQ when we had the chance we wouldn't have spent the past decade spending American money and American lives. That, sir, is tangible. We forget that and bitch and moan about dropping hellfires in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, but if we were doing this back in the 90s we wouldn't be there in the first place. A stitch in time saves nine.... blah blah.

 

I used to believe that without question.  Now, not a word of it.  It is my belief that if we, meaning our federal government not the people, hadn't been meddling in middle eastern affairs over the last 5 decades we more than likely wouldn't be in  the sitiuation we are in now and would have most certainly saved a lot of lives and money.

[TMF]

[quote name="mav" post="897433" timestamp="1359310352"]It is my belief that if we, meaning our federal government not the people, hadn't been meddling in middle eastern affairs over the last 5 decades we more than likely wouldn't be in  the sitiuation we are in now and would have most certainly saved a lot of lives and money.[/quote] Maybe, but we can't turn back the hands of time. We can only adopt policies which correct our current state, not policies that correct our past state. We should have killed bin Laden and destroyed his organization when we had the chance. Instead we endured a series of attacks on our military until it culminated with 9/11. We didn't kill him and we got what we got. If we let that happen again we will have our lack of proactive measures to blame.

[Guest semiautots]

We have to declare war on a nation to drop bombs on a terrorist organization? I didn't know that.

 

Only if you intend to use the military.  Terrorist organizations generally don't have a "country".  If you use logic, if we can use our military to drop bombs on "terrorist organizations" within another sovereign country, then other sovereign countries should be free to do that within our country, too.  Or is it just one way?  We are the world's police force and we will extend our military wherever we want and expect other countries not to do the same?

Logic sometimes does not work in our favor.

[TMF]

[quote name="semiautots" post="897447" timestamp="1359311365"]Only if you intend to use the military.  Terrorist organizations generally don't have a "country".  If you use logic, if we can use our military to drop bombs on "terrorist organizations" within another sovereign country, then other sovereign countries should be free to do that within our country, too.  Or is it just one way?  We are the world's police force and we will extend our military wherever we want and expect other countries not to do the same? Logic sometimes does not work in our favor.[/quote] Well then we've fought like a thousand little illegal wars then, in your opinion. If that is your opinion then it was illegal to send folks in to get bin Laden. It was illegal to send in Delta to rescue the hostages in Iran. It was illegal to blockade Cuba during the missile crisis. It is illegal when we rescued hostages in Somalia. I could wiki all the military actions that took place without approval from congress. It would be a very, very long list. The President is the commander of our armed forces. He can deploy them as he sees fit. Declaring war is different.

[Guest semiautots]

Well then we've fought like a thousand little illegal wars then, in your opinion. If that is your opinion then it was illegal to send folks in to get bin Laden. It was illegal to send in Delta to rescue the hostages in Iran. It was illegal to blockade Cuba during the missile crisis. It is illegal when we rescued hostages in Somalia. I could wiki all the military actions that took place without approval from congress. It would be a very, very long list. The President is the commander of our armed forces. He can deploy them as he sees fit. Declaring war is different.

 

The Constitution is very clear.  You should read it sometimes.

[TMF]

[quote name="semiautots" post="897451" timestamp="1359311904"]The Constitution is very clear.  You should read it sometimes.[/quote] Okay, I'll play your game. History books, you should read them sometime. Just about every president except for Harrison has deployed troops into combat without approval from congress.

[Guest semiautots]

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/congress-the-president-and-war-powers-under-the-constitution/

 

Here is a good read.  Sometimes, power is taken by the Executive Branch that is not given.  If you read the Founders, they did not intend the President to have the power to unilaterally use military force at his own whim.  This same power is now trying, by Executive Order, to take 2nd Amendment rights.  Unless we push back, the action will be taken.  Congress did not push back against the illegal use of military force by the Executive Branch for over 50 years.  What was illegal has become the norm. 

 

The Constitution states that only gold or silver will be money.  This was never amended, but we don't use gold or silver anymore.  See what has happened?

[TMF]

[quote name="semiautots" post="897458" timestamp="1359312372"][url=http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/congress-the-president-and-war-powers-under-the-constitution/]http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/congress-the-president-and-war-powers-under-the-constitution/[/url]   Here is a good read.  Sometimes, power is taken by the Executive Branch that is not given.  If you read the Founders, they did not intend the President to have the power to unilaterally use military force at his own whim.  This same power is now trying, by Executive Order, to take 2nd Amendment rights.  Unless we push back, the action will be taken.  Congress did not push back against the illegal use of military force by the Executive Branch for over 50 years.  What was illegal has become the norm.    [/quote] Either you need to do some Constitution reading or you don't understand the difference between military action and war. We've literally, not figuratively, have had thousands of low intensity military actions since our country was founded. Only half a dozen were a declared war. Once again, do you disagree with my assessment that in order to believe what you are saying you must also disagree with killing bin Laden, rescuing American hostages abroad, blockading Cuba during the missile crisis, the Barbary war, Granada..... It goes on a thousand more times.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

 

 

TMF, on 27 Jan 2013 - 13:19, said:

Okay, if you go to Pakistan and head up into the hills to have tea with some Taliban guys, the US government will not put air strikes on hold simply because you're an American. They will say "too effing bad, he shouldn't have been there" then tell your family to pound sand. That is how it works. Best way to not get killed in a drone strike is to not stand next to terrorists that are fighting the US.

 

Yep, taint wise to climb a radio tower during a lightning storm.

 

This war is to address the intangibles. You can't scientifically measure the damage done when a people are attacked and they do nothing, but damage is done and that nation is perceivably weaker for it. We could have saved a lot of money and lives if we simply ignored the attacks of September 11th and went about our lives. Our enemy would have seen that as capitulation and might have even left us alone, for now. But what does that open us up to? What does that do to the morale of the American people, to be attacked and killed without answering back with greater violence? Our society lived in a constant state of fear in the months following September 11th. How would that have changed if we just did nothing at all?

Very few people are killed by terrorism when you compare it to other homicides, so why are people so scared of it? That is how terrorism works. It isn't about body counts, it's about using fear to cripple your enemy and demoralize his people. That was America post 9/11. We let the enemy change our way of life. We only started to relax our fears when we started shooting people in the face. We should continue to engage the enemy to maintain our way of life. I'll admit, conventional war is expensive and unnecessary. There were better ways to do this. But you have to admit, had we shown just a little bit of balls in the 90s and taken out bin Laden and AQ when we had the chance we wouldn't have spent the past decade spending American money and American lives. That, sir, is tangible. We forget that and bitch and moan about dropping hellfires in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, but if we were doing this back in the 90s we wouldn't be there in the first place. A stitch in time saves nine.... blah blah.

 

Yep there are many intangibles, along with tangibles. Dead U.S. servicemen and national bankruptcy from guns and butter policy are rather tangible. Cut tax while invading multiple nations. Yeah that was a GREAT idea in hindsight. That policy did wonders to shore up an economy foundering on the dual rocks of a burst internet bubble and national post-9/11 panic. Not.

 

I don't pretend to know the "best path". An economical reply to 9/11 might have been to chase Osama into the eastern mountains, then lay a few low-altitude tactical cobalt bombs over the eastern mountain range, then come home and dare another nation to host terrorism. Heck, we've got scads of bought-and-paid-for tactical nukes and enough cobalt that we wouldn't have hurt the market price of cobalt too much.

 

Maybe, but we can't turn back the hands of time. We can only adopt policies which correct our current state, not policies that correct our past state. We should have killed bin Laden and destroyed his organization when we had the chance. Instead we endured a series of attacks on our military until it culminated with 9/11. We didn't kill him and we got what we got. If we let that happen again we will have our lack of proactive measures to blame.

 

Many wars and projects fall victim to the Sunk Cost Dilemma--

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost_dilemma

 

We are losing the war on drugs but we've spent too much money on it to turn back now. The war on poverty was entirely ineffective and arguably counter-productive but we have already spent too much money to lose what few gains might have been made. The space shuttle was a good idea at the time but not near as economical/effective as mass-produced dumb boosters, but we've spent too much money to scrap the space shuttle system (which kept the shuttle in service at least 10 or 20 years too long). Sure we are shredding the budget and the constitution, and sowing seeds of generational feuds with third-world nations, but we've invested too heavily in the War on Terror to back off now.

[mav]

Maybe, but we can't turn back the hands of time. We can only adopt policies which correct our current state, not policies that correct our past state. We should have killed bin Laden and destroyed his organization when we had the chance. Instead we endured a series of attacks on our military until it culminated with 9/11. We didn't kill him and we got what we got. If we let that happen again we will have our lack of proactive measures to blame.

 

The point I was trying to making was our federal government created the problem, and it's current policy leads to perpetual war and a loss of civil liberties stateside. 

 

Ya know, I honestly don't know what we are actually fighting for in any one of the 75 plus countries our army or SOCOM are engaged in.  I am neither a hawk or a dove, but I seriously question whether our federal government is taking the correct course of action.  I sometimes wonder if we should disengage from the theater of war and reinstate our founding policy of noninterventionism.  Perhaps we should close all our embassies and bases in hostile countries, cut all foreign financial and military aid, and give the message that as long as you don't screw with us, you have nothing to fear from us.  I know it will never happen, but I wonder if it would not be for the best that it did.

[Chucktshoes]

The point I was trying to making was our federal government created the problem, and it's current policy leads to perpetual war and a loss of civil liberties stateside.

Ya know, I honestly don't know what we are actually fighting for in any one of the 75 plus countries our army or SOCOM are engaged in. I am neither a hawk or a dove, but I seriously question whether our federal government is taking the correct course of action. I sometimes wonder if we should disengage from the theater of war and reinstate our founding policy of noninterventionism. Perhaps we should close all our embassies and bases in hostile countries, cut all foreign financial and military aid, and give the message that as long as you don't screw with us, you have nothing to fear from us. I know it will never happen, but I wonder if it would not be for the best that it did.

This IS the real solution.

[Guest semiautots]

Either you need to do some Constitution reading or you don't understand the difference between military action and war. We've literally, not figuratively, have had thousands of low intensity military actions since our country was founded. Only half a dozen were a declared war. Once again, do you disagree with my assessment that in order to believe what you are saying you must also disagree with killing bin Laden, rescuing American hostages abroad, blockading Cuba during the missile crisis, the Barbary war, Granada..... It goes on a thousand more times.

 

We'll just have to agree to disagree.  I take the Constitution literally, and let the Federalist Papers guide my interpretation.  The Founders were non-interventionalists. 

We are decidedly interventionalists now.

[TMF]

The point I was trying to making was our federal government created the problem, and it's current policy leads to perpetual war and a loss of civil liberties stateside.

Ya know, I honestly don't know what we are actually fighting for in any one of the 75 plus countries our army or SOCOM are engaged in. I am neither a hawk or a dove, but I seriously question whether our federal government is taking the correct course of action. I sometimes wonder if we should disengage from the theater of war and reinstate our founding policy of noninterventionism. Perhaps we should close all our embassies and bases in hostile countries, cut all foreign financial and military aid, and give the message that as long as you don't screw with us, you have nothing to fear from us. I know it will never happen, but I wonder if it would not be for the best that it did.

Well that delves into the category of national interests. Can we afford to write off our "allies" on the Arabian Peninsula? I would like to say "yes" but our economy runs on oil. Fix that problem and the Middle East will go back to being an irrelevant collection of cavemen fighting over dirt farms, just like they were the first 150 years of American foreign policy. Look at Africa. There all kinds of atrocity and extremism going on there. We could care so little we leave it to the EU. Why? No oil producing allies.

I don't expect to know everything there is to know on how our country remains strong, but I do know that if the oil dried up tomorrow our country would be in deep doodoo. If we can correct that problem it will correct all the others.

As for your comments Lester regarding the amount of money spent over the past decade, I agree. We could have stayed out of conventional warfare very easily. Afghanistan gets no better the more troops you put there. We owned the warlords from the start. It would have been a lot cheaper to continue to buy them off while using drones and SF to knock out concentrations of bad guys. We could have funded that for less than what we spend on research grants studying the mating habits of field mice. Edited January 27, 2013 by TMF