Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/11/16/here-are-the-devastating-capab.html
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Technically he can’t DECLARE ware without congressional approval. He merely CONDUCTS war without congressional approval. At some level, congress would rather not be forced to vote on a declaration of war, so it instead votes on broad authorization to use military force. The last time that congress actually declared war was June 5, 1942, against Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.
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Obama did it. OK, got it.
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They’d blame Obama for bad weather, so meh.
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Yep, remember the power you give the government or allow it to have is theirs and applies to whomever comes into power. Some times the “slippery slope” argument doesn’t hold water, and some times it does. If the law is ripe for abuse, even if the present person only plans to go so far with it, that might change 4 years, 8 years down the line.
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Obama’s the worst. He’s the worst. We all know he is. Look at him. I mean, look at what he’s done. He’s been terrible, just terrible.
That said, President Trump’s got a bunch of names to add to Obama’s Kill List.
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I will never understand the American mindset that killing foreigners is somehow not as serious as killing your own people.
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Because it is framed as a war.
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Aren’t a lot of these things the result of people in the Obama administration and the “intelligence community”, rather than Obama himself?
And isn’t that “intelligence community” largely comprised of people that Trump will have nothing to do with?
EDIT: This is not to imply that Trump et al. will be unable to do anything bad, but I reckon the incoming crowd may lack the skill to properly wield the “weapons Obama will leave behind”, at least not without making utter fools of themselves.
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Papasan, come on. Liberal Democrat politicians commonly appropriate “deplorable” policies of Replublicans. That’s why Obama will leave the White House with the US still at war in Afghanistan despite all his ‘anti-war’ rhetoric during his election. That’s why the depredations of banking institutions were too big to prosecute. That’s why he’s deported more people than all previous presidents combined. That’s why the state domestic surveillance apparatus under his administration grew cancerously with explicit walk-backs on his campaign promises to check the abuses of corporations like AT&T.
Yes: Obama did some not progressive things. Whether or not you are a fan of the Dems, you need to hold them accountable just like you do the GOP.
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And who hired those people (or the people who hired them), and who had the authority to ask for their resignation?
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Helps that they are brown.
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—Because they don’t vote in US elections… Of course assassinated people don’t vote in anybody’s elections, so perhaps they are less likely to have family voting in US elections.
Trump feels no apprehension to commit humanitarian crimes against the weak and minorities. Deport 11 million people? No problem. Pin crescent to every Muslims jacket? No problem. So what does he do when he has a real problem with a person. Is that person arrested, tortured, or raped? Does that persons family suffer the same? Trump is a monster and the question is by how much?
If Obama cares about the nation at all he should unilaterally dismantle the systems of surveillance and control by the most expedient measures possible. I would support him 150%.
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I will never understand the American mindset that killing foreigners is somehow not as serious as killing your own people.
It’s a legal mindset; the Constitution definitively provides for due process for US citizens and people within the US borders; one can make a credible argument that the legal protections weaken in the absence of US location or citizenship.
Noting this fact doesn’t excuse it or validate it. It it incontrovertible that previous administrations were bound to extend a high degree of protection in law to US persons (citizens and residents), and that Obama eroded those protections. Thus, the number of people safe from US overreach has declined by about 300 million.
The same empathy that says Americans should be upset if their government attacks non-US persons should also deplore an American assertion that the US state can attack US persons. If you believe people should be safe from state overreach, then you should mourn the erosion of protection for US persons.
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The superiority complex plays a large part too. If you think of yourself as the best/greatest (country in the world) all the other have to be ‘lesser’. This is a very dangerous mindset.
Related to this is the usual argument I got from US citizens before Trump when I argued about the slippery slope of things like NDAA or extrajudicial killings: “can’t happen here”. If you think of yourself as superior or better you’re less responsive to criticism and willing to change. Why change or improve the system if you think you’re the best?
Usually things run well in a system where checks an balances are based on the compliance of uncodified values because everyone participating is following the same unspoken rules - until the system glitches and a ‘bad actor’ becomes involved.
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I do – my point was more that a country should take assassinating someone without due process at least as seriously if they do it to a foreigner on foreign soil. If Americans are willing to do it anywhere else in the world, without declaring war, they should at least have some skin in the game and being American or on American soil shouldn’t protect someone. If the government could “double tap” an American wedding by mistake, people would be less likely to accept extrajudicial killings (with a certain amount of collateral damage) as reasonable.
On the other hand, over 1000 people have been killed by police in the US so far this year, so who knows…
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Huh. I just learned Lincolns suspended Habeas Corpus.
Fortunately, it was a temporary thing, only to last during the Civil War, because that power would be terrifying today.
how to classify wars? depending on the PoV the number of wars with US involvment is 0, 5 or 134. I tend to agree with the last figure, though most of them are silent enough that they can be ignored - Trump is most likely less discreet, Obama managed this quite good (if “good” means that the plebs is not alarmed)
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Yep - I use this thought exercise whenever my Team Red/Team Blue friends go all-in on unchecked authority and executive rule-bending. The Obama administration has been AWFUL in regards to so many things: deportations, drug-prosecutions, un-Constitutional kill-lists, “military actions”, whistleblower prosecutions, FOIA denials, private industry special favors, spending, etc etc etc. And he’s gotten minimal, token resistance from the people so swept up in the general cult of leadership.
NOW, though - all those awful abuses of power are going to be in the hands of a pure jackass. And suddenly Democrats all rolled out of bed on Nov 8 and re-discovered their love of governmental checks & balances, and Constitutional limits. Hypocrites.
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