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Obama started putting US citizens on the kill list in 2010 and once they started killing them barely anyone complained so it doesn't surprise me they just assum

• __turbobrew__ 6y ago
  I’m still baffled how Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize.
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    To be fair, that was before he ordered the execution of an American citizen without trial.
    • AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      Is there a process for revoking the prize?
      • Consultant32452 6y ago
        Yes. A certain group of people chat amongst themselves and decide what will give themselves and the award the most prestige. If you want the right kind of people to show up at your cool awards party, you have to give the right kind of person the award. That's not sarcasm, that is literally the process. There's no objective measures or anything.
    • ma2rten 6y ago
      Why would it matter for the Nobel peace price committee if he killed foreign or US citizens?
      • sneak 6y ago
        There are generally accepted rules about what constitutes the differences between extrajudicial assassination by the state ("it's not illegal if the president does it"), judiciary-based civilian execution ("capital punishment"), wartime combat that results in death, and plain ol' cold blooded murder between parties not state-sanctioned in any way. I personally don't distinguish much between these (I'm basically in agreement with Einstein's stated views on the matter) but to pretend that our global human society doesn't believe in these distinctions is somewhat silly. The US president can mass murder hundreds of children (Obama did just this) and not be seen as a criminal, even by that group, provided it falls into the correct category listed above.
        • oh_sigh 6y ago
          Calling Obama a mass murderer is not a fair take on the matter. Obama didn't murder hundreds of children in one go. It was a few here, a dozen there, and so on. So he is more aptly called a mass serial murderer than a plain mass murderer.
          • dmix 6y ago
            Obama was also a shameless mass surveillance-er. He grew the NSA/CIA snooping like crazy because he was uncomfortable with the very public wars Bush was running. So he (and many others who still have positive images or direct power in the US) massively expanded the scale of the intelligence community and significantly moved it to secret courts. Of course it all started with the Patriot Act. But even looking at who keeps voting for that and keeping it alive and you can't just blame Bush either. It's like there's no options for Americans politically which doesn't involve massive "black budgets" and secret courts doing who knows what. It's bipartisan and even plenty of the worst Iraq war supporters all have had career revivals in recent years because the media + social media decided that only one thing was bad, the current president. All bad deeds in the past were forgotten for the old set. Endless "Secret Wars" seem terribly undemocratic and dangerous to me - for the obvious complete lack of public courts, true due process, or war crimes laws that normally are adhered to. And I also see no proper reckoning in the relevant future either as long as these same "good guys" are back in power. So I guess we're stuck with it.
    • syndacks 6y ago
      Ehhh, he also "modernized" the US nuclear arsenal right before he won the award, too.
      • xxpor 6y ago
        Nukes have have been the biggest force for peace since ww2, so I don't really see a problem with that.
        • omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
          They have been, and will continue to be, until they aren't.
      • Perceval 6y ago
        Obama did not modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal. He promised to modernize it in exchange for Republican support in the Senate to pass the New START arms control deal. But he let the nuclear enterprise fall into such disrepair that a major scandal emerged in 2013, leading to a major DOD effort to repair the enterprise after a review in 2014: https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-19-29 https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-19-29. He kicked the can down the road on modernization of the arsenal itself until the very tail end of his administration, so that it was up to Trump in 2017 to follow through on the promise Obama made back in 2010. All of this occurred after Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize.
        • monocasa 6y ago
          "Nuclear arsenal" doesn't typically evoke images of power generating nuclear reactors, but instead the nuclear warheads.
    • roenxi 6y ago
      > To be fair, that was before he ordered the execution of an American citizen without trial. He'd became president January 20 and was awarded the prize on October 9 - he hadn't really had time to do anything meaningful for international relations. The only way to interpret the prize was as a rebuke on former president George Bush for gleefully upping the ante from a localised tragedy in America into annihilating two countries, countless deaths and destabilising half a continent. It was a passive aggressive "well we can't stop you America, but we saw what you did". There was a lot more to those invasions history-wise, but the basic message was clear.
      • xienze 6y ago
        Not sure why you’re getting downvoted, except that perhaps there’s a lot of younger folks here who don’t remember just how utterly despised GWB was. He was Trump before Trump — both “literally Hitler” and the dumbest man on the planet at the same time. Obama’s Nobel prize was most certainly a “congratulations on not being Bush” prize. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Biden picks up one this year.
        • jldugger 6y ago
          Trump has done precious little in the war department, so I don't think Biden will pick one up without actually doing something this go around.
          • TheCoelacanth 6y ago
            Maybe he can shoot for the Medicine category instead.
        • dehrmann 6y ago
          > both “literally Hitler” and the dumbest man on the planet at the same time I never got how Bush was supposed to be both an idiot and a mastermind.
          • stretchcat 6y ago
  • 1cvmask 6y ago
    Obama only killed non-whites and blacks. The Nobel committee is white Swedes.
    • krona 6y ago
      This committee is Norwegian, actually.
      • 1cvmask 6y ago
        White Norwegians then.
  • corty 6y ago
    The Nobel Peace Prize does have it's share of madmen, dictators and terrorists on the list of nominees and holders. Obama is by far not the worst on that list. Doing something for peace is not dependent on being a universally good person. You can still save more lifes than you have butchered.
    • rmrfstar 6y ago
      Obama isn't even the worst American on that list. Henry Kissinger has one.
      • Perceval 6y ago
        At least Kissinger ended a major war. Obama ended none and started U.S. involvement in more.
    • Apocryphon 6y ago
      If anything, some winners seem to dive into bad behavior after they're awarded. Aung San Suu Kyi and Abiy Ahmed being two recent examples.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • baskire 6y ago
    Especially since Trump actually brokered more peace deals/treaties.
  • Triv888 6y ago
    Obama was a good speaker but his actions were quite a bit different... maybe that's why. At least with Trump, you know what you're getting because he appears to be brutally honest.
    • bilekas 6y ago
      > because he appears to be brutally honest. Being ignorant and loud at the same time, does not make someone honest.
      • Triv888 6y ago
        For a politician he was honest about what he wanted to accomplish.
        • mav3rick 6y ago
          Being honest about doing terrible things is not a virtue.
          • StavrosK 6y ago
            It's better than being dishonest about doing terrible things, though...
            • mav3rick 6y ago
              Here you go about trump's "truths" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poxvEir-HWA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poxvEir-HWA
            • mav3rick 6y ago
              Comparing him to horrible doesn't make him great.
              • StavrosK 6y ago
                I'll never get used to people reading more into what I said than what I said. No, they're both horrible, but one is slightly more horrible than the other.
  • fwip 6y ago
    Nobel invented high-yield explosives, so there's a bit of poetry there.
  • dimensi0nal 6y ago
    by being black?
  • cortesoft 6y ago
    It was clearly an f-you to Bush... Obama had been in office for 9 months when he got it, he hadn't don't anything much at all.
  • beamatronic 6y ago
    Peace, Through Superior Firepower
  • Technically 6y ago
    Obama indicates in his recent autobiography he was baffled, too.
  • justicezyx 6y ago
    After reading Obama's recent biography, it comes to be that Obama saw that as a push for him to be able to achieve results that merits the medal. Then after a series of complicated political decision making, he started more. And there are always perfect legitimate reasons, as judging from Obama's perspective and described in the book, that make those things happen. After a while reading the book, I started to see how futile it has been for US to truly behave as the nation aspires to. Without a equal counter weight, there seems no possibility for the nation's political machine to follow common sense, it's always enemy or ally, and dealing with enemy always involves military power.
  • xwdv 6y ago
    Some will say it was just to spite George Bush, but I remember the atmosphere at the time and that wasn’t it. Back then, being the first black president was a big deal, and Obama’s campaign inspired a lot of hope for the future in many Americans and the world. Hopium levels were still high when he was awarded the prize and the doomsday clock I believe even went backward a bit, remember that when Obama was a senator he worked to secure loose nuclear weapons around the globe. Unfortunately, things started taking a more sinister turn as the years went on, so it seemed the prize had been given too prematurely.
• h0l0cube 6y ago
  Human rights including freedom of press should really be a non-partisan issue. I don't think any political party in the US has made this a strong part of their policy platform in recent times.
  • AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    It's a structural failure. Whoever is currently in power only violates the human rights of the people they don't care about, and the party out of power at a given time may care about them but isn't contemporaneously in power to stop it. The next time they play musical chairs the people being violated may change but the incentives don't. You might imagine someone having the forethought to consider that someone else might be in power at some future point and put mechanisms in place to constrain their abuses. Modern politicians appear resistant to this logic.
    • h0l0cube 6y ago
      The upholding and expansion of human rights becomes a serious part of any policy platform if voters make it a priority for whom they choose as their elected officials. In this space I would argue there is room for independents to steal votes from incumbents. As long as everyone sticks to red and blue teams, there's no way to fight entrenched conflicts of interest.
  • caseysoftware 6y ago
    That's an interesting idea but "freedom of press" is a relatively new right by historical standards and is not widely accepted even now because it's counter to many governments' interests. The very concept is based in "Natural Law" (stemming from Aristotle, Roman tradition, etc) so not universal. Therefore, the argument would be that it's not a "human right" but mostly a "Western right" I'd bet on it getting worse from here.
    • pm90 6y ago
      > That's an interesting idea but "freedom of press" is a relatively new right by historical standards Literally the first amendment (1789): > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
• daenz 6y ago
  Isn't there a process of removing citizenship from someone who has committed treason? Why not at least go that route, vs blatantly killing citizens?
  • Miner49er 6y ago
    Cause then they would actually have to prove the person they killed committed treason.
    • sonotathrowaway 6y ago
      I’m more interested in hearing why you believe Anwar al-Awlaki hadn’t committed treason.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • orhmeh09 6y ago
        Shouldn’t you explain what he did that qualified as treason under US law?
        • monocasa 6y ago
          Or, if it's so incredibly obvious, why can't he be tried and sentenced by the normal process of law? "Oh he was on foreign soil so we couldn't get to him" doesn't hold a lot of water when children in the region are known for having clear skies as a PTSD trigger from the number of drone strikes we've done in the area.
          • dragonwriter 6y ago
            > "Oh he was on foreign soil so we couldn't get to him" doesn't hold a lot of water when children in the region are known for having clear skies as a PTSD trigger from the number of drone strikes we've done in the area. That only would seem to follow if the argument was that we couldn't get him by a drone strike, which obviously is not the argument, as drone strikes don't really do a good job of hauling people before a court.
• bilbo0s 6y ago
  As horrible as this sounds, there will always be fewer complaints about the government killing American citizens when those citizens come from certain demographic groups. Until those groups complain, you will probably hear very few objections to the practice.
  • lldbg 6y ago
    Which demographic groups would that be?
    • 1cvmask 6y ago
      If you write non-whites you will get downvoted.
• nsajko 6y ago
  So currently the "logic" is that CIA can kill anyone (even a US citizen) using drones as long as it happens somewhere far away like in Yemen or Pakistan? Am I getting this right? I wonder if POTUS has to at least sign all the kill orders. EDIT FOLLOWS: The problem is (independently) verifying that the targeted person was a combatant and in a war against USA. If anybody can be a combatant, CIA can kill anybody. See the following, regarding the Obama presidency: > It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent. The obvious questions are: * Does belonging to Al-Qaeda or similar make you eligible for a drone strike? I don't really think of (potential) terrorists as combatants. * What about another organization designated as "terrorist"? The executive branch unilaterally puts organizations and people on that list. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_State_list_of_Foreign_Terrorist_Organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_St... * What oversight and control should there be over the decision to kill someone? Another interesting point is that it seems that only a fraction of persons killed in drone strikes were intended as targets: https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-comp...
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > So currently the "logic" is that CIA can kill anyone (even a US citizen) using drones as long as it happens somewhere far away like in Yemen or Pakistan? No, the logic is that the US government may target enemies in war by all the means lawful against enemies inwar, even if those enemies are US citizens, anywhere in the world, including within the US. And there's plenty of precedent for that. There may be good reasons given the nature and mechanisms of modern warfare to establish some additional limits on that now, but we can't have the discussion effectively if we start with a false premise about the rationale and the false idea that prosecuting war without special limitations when some of the individual enemy combatants are citizens is novel. > I wonder if POTUS has to at least sign all the kill orders. In general, no, the President is not required to personally sign orders to kill enemies in war, regardless of their citizenship.
• jayd16 6y ago
  I'm not saying this is an ideal solution but what would be a better way to handle enemy combatants that happen to be US citizens?
  • jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
    Have the accuser face the accused in court and prove to a jury of 12 people beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime has occured. After which, if the jury finds the accused guilty, a judge will determine what the sentence should be based upon guidlines provided by the law (which is written by congress). We used to have a system like this. I thought it worked pretty well. Sure it wasn't perfect, but I liked the transparency.
    • jshen 6y ago
      That’s never been the standard for people fighting against America during a war.
      • jkaplowitz 6y ago
        For US citizens who are accused of doing that? It absolutely has been, historically. This is especially important in those cases where the accusation is not well-founded, or where the jury would find that the circumstance warrants a lesser penalty than death.
        • jshen 6y ago
          Not in combat. We can debate what “in combat” means, but that is a different issue. If an American picks up a gun, in a war zone, and starts attacking American forces, they can be killed. Full Stop
          • jkaplowitz 6y ago
            Oh yes, I agree in the case of your hypothetical scenario - and lethal force would be allowed as well to law enforcement in any domestic gunfight where they start shooting the cops. But the citizen in the article we're all discussing is a journalist, not a gunman. The other famous example of a US citizen targeted for a lethal military strike, Anwar Al-Awlaki, was also in a role that did not personally involve direct engagement in physical violence. Nothing I'm saying is defending the actions of the citizens in question, only criticizing the propriety of the executive branch unilaterally killing a US citizen without due process outside of situations like your hypothetical where dangerous direct physical violence against American forces is involved. If the government had instead forcibly arrested them and kept them in custody while putting them through the criminal justice system, I'd have no criticism, assuming they had adequate evidence. I'd also want them to release the accused in the unlikely event of an acquittal (since government accusations can be wrong), but the regular courts are very good at convicting people who actually do stuff like this and federal prosecutors are very good at their role.