3 ms·

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.
  - chaps 6y ago
    Check out the Wikipedia definition of "mass murder" [1] and then compare that list to [2]. Many of his approved drone strikes' civilian deaths exceed the "mass murders" on the wikipedia list of mass murders. Quote from Obama [3]: "Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_murder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_murder [2] https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-said-hes-really-good-at-killing-people-2013-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-said-hes-really-good-a...
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    There's also a difference between an assassination and collateral damage.

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.
- chaps 6y ago
  Check out the Wikipedia definition of "mass murder" [1] and then compare that list to [2]. Many of his approved drone strikes' civilian deaths exceed the "mass murders" on the wikipedia list of mass murders. Quote from Obama [3]: "Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_murder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_murder [2] https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-said-hes-really-good-at-killing-people-2013-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-said-hes-really-good-a...
- dehrmann 6y ago
  There's also a difference between an assassination and collateral damage.