Oh. So that‘s what’s meant by “leading from behind”!
The New York Times had a front-page story the other day reporting that in the final weeks before the Nov. 6 election, President Obama ordered acceleration of the process “to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures.”
That was preparation in case Republican Mitt Romney won. He would then inherit a full-blown written policy for targeted killings, as every president hands down written policies to his successor for continuation, alteration or termination.
But here’s what that Times story also means that’s much more disturbing than a standard political CYA story from anonymous sources:
For nearly four years now the Obama administration has been flying unmanned drones all over the world killing upwards of 3,000 known people with no explicit set of written rules.
Kill that guy. Not this one. That guy too. Vaporize everybody in that house. But this one we’ll let stand, for today anyway.
Seriously? A president of the United States, even one from Chicago, running a classified killing campaign with no rules? The United States used to condemn Israel for such targeted assassinations.
[…]
But wasn’t it this righteous Obama guy who was so disgusted by extraordinary capture and interrogation measures that saved uncounted lives during the Bush administrations but Obama considered outside the rules?
And Obama who vowed to shutter the notorious Guantanamo Detention Facility which, of course, he hasn’t done because it was a silly promise to begin with. Although it sounded great when he said it. And it fooled many. Who can’t do anything about it now except shrug.
And wasn’t Obama the one making all the campaign noise this fall about everyone getting a “fair shot.” We weren’t thinking guns and missiles when he said it several times a day. But perhaps there was some buried meaning.
You know, it’s funny: what used to be called presidential imperialism — a thing that so OUTRAGED progressives, even when it wasn’t actually taking place — is now extolled as a winning foreign policy strategy based on determined initiative by a man whose thirst for justice is so great that he (and we) Just Can’t Wait. Rules? Posh. Those are meant to constrain evil men and women. And as progressives are, by virtue of having adopted progressivism, inherently good — I mean, come on, progress is right there in the name, duh! — the need for constraint does not apply to them.
Or, if you prefer, let me put it this way: tyrannical dictatorships are only tyrannical dictatorships when they aren’t being controlled by the Left. Because when the left controls them, they’re recast as strong administrations taking brave stands taken against the recalcitrance of rich white right wing obstructionists — a force for good, a necessary nudge, particularly given that nearly half of the country persists in voting against progressivism, that is, voting wrongly, for evil.
And we just can’t countenance that. So. Forward!
“. . . so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures.”
It’s kinda hilarious to think Obazma is concerned with the standards and procedures a president “inherits”, seein’ as he dismisses such precedent right and left, so fast in fact, it looks as though he’s never encountered them at all.
He only cares about standards and procedures other presidents inherit, sdferr.
And that he himself inherited an unfixable economic mess from George W. Bush, who is so evil he’s still making everything worse despite being out of office the last 46 months.
OT: Limbaugh’s sit-in for today has a strategy for House Republicans re the fiscal cliff: “Mr. President, you won. Show us what you’ve got.”
Lead, follow, or get out of the way, Little God-King.
I guess the question is already asked and answered with Jamie Foxx’s “Praise our savior,” silliness.
Well, at least we’re consistently embarrassing as a country now. That’s something.
Blue war and violence A-ok.
One is reminded that this reminds one that it was Clinton who balanced the budget. Which one observes was the Work of the American Ones™ writ entirely in large blue letters, went the cant from the adoring blue ones dressed all in blue back in the Nineties.
Today? Fiscal insanity and monetary madness is entirely expected and acceptable. To blue.
Oh? Don’t think so? Consider that today the markets may close a tick up. This owes to semiconductor and bank funds having been driven slightly up, if they hold, by Bernanke’s morning injection of a metric crapload of fake money.
There are no fundamentals. There is no sanity. Blue war and violence A-ok. My blue friends told me this election that they were intelligent and I was not.
The new rules will make many of the current practices illegal. They will now be slow-walked and take effect on Jan 21, 2017.
Well, when Newt forced him to by shutting down the government a few times.
Oh, to have such a man in the House now…
I say it was all Clinton, LBascom, and in the Progressive Age that opinion is bedrock.
Oppose it at your peril, racist.
Oh, and Newt? PARTY OF NO WIFE-LEAVER!
Ugh, I think that may be the worst part, JHoward. Being assured that they’re smarter than you, because, after all, their betters have told them so.
This, by the way is what Lord Acton meant by power corrupting.
Leftism is a mental disorder, which is the more charitable view. It shall always refuse accountability and reason.
At any rate, it’s best treated as a willful, pathological crime, whether intellectual or material.
Oh no! No need to be divisive! Can we please agree that it was a bipartisan compromise where naturally the president gets the credit because of his popularity with independents, and I’m not a racist? Please?
-Republican weenie
Moses threw his staff down and it became a serpent. Pharaoh had Moses arrested and charged with animal cruelty and littering, though the littering charge was later dropped for lack of evidence (nobody could find the stick).
The serpent was later adopted by a zoo and went on to become president of Egypt.
And what military issues a “high-power” rifle as a standard (as opposed to a specialized) infantry weapon?
wrong tab, wrong thread
sorry
[…] Down the Memory Hole with any suggestion that the GOP, in performing its role as the loyal opposition, doing things that Democrats did when they held that coveted role. […]