distorte:
I am glad your guy got reelected. I hope it means good things for your friends and family and people you care about. I also hope, now that the spectre of a Republican president has been temporarily removed, that some attention can be turned toward the foreign policy of your ongoing president.
Obama has pursued a strategy of increased drone strikes on foreign soil, a new technology that has killed almost 3,000 people in the last ten years. Some of them suspected terrorists, many of them innocent adults and children. Such attacks, were they to happen in America or any other Western society, would be labelled murder, acts of war, or terrorism. But by the current rhetoric they are not acts of war, and of course Western nations are incapable of terrorism. The pentagon currently approves selling drones to 66 other countries.
He has failed to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and during his first term signed bills that have extended the base’s powers and essentially trapped dozens of men ostensibly cleared for release on the facility.
During George W. Bush’s term that president was loudly condemned by Democrats for his acceleration of the drone strike programme, for the creation of Guantanamo Bay as it is now used, for the detention of hundreds indefinitely and without trial, a serious undermining of the Habeus corpus. Such criticism has not been levelled at Obama for the retention and expansion of these policies.
I won’t pretend to understand the intricacies of your political system, but if Romney would have had the power to affect civil liberties in America, then Obama will have the power to affect foreign policy.
There were a lot of quotes knocking around the Internet in the weeks leading up to the election, the gist of which were: “If you claim to be voting for Romney for economic reasons, you must stand up and acknowledge that low taxes mean more to you than the civil rights of gays and the personal rights of women.” The unfortunate logical extension of this position would be: “If you vote for Obama instead of a third party, your civil rights mean more to you than the lives of innocent adults and children in other countries.”
Or perhaps politics isn’t a zero-sum game. I would never suggest you support endless proxy war because you voted for Obama. You don’t have to support the entirety of the man you’ve elected into office. It’s okay to say “this is wrong.” It’s okay to say “I don’t support this.” It’s okay to make noise about it.
Hope Pierce doesn’t mind me reposting the entirety of this.
