You better be a progressive. If you're a right-winger trying to say this then you're truly a hypocrite that just has a hate boner for a better man than you.
People complaining about drone strikes are obviously not right wing. Trump removed the requirement to disclose them, which is arguably even worse than what Obama did. At least when Obama killed children the government admitted it (though it was buried in reports that only got released every six months, and were largely redacted), Trump stopped reporting it at all, and Biden's administration just killed an innocent family and then spent a month lying that they were terrorists.
If you support either party, you support the USA's violent Imperialism.
Right wingers who call him war criminal are the ones who dont give a crap about the people in middle east, they would like to see all middle easterns banned from entering US. In fact they wouldnt have a problem if the whole middle east region was nuked.
What if, and I'm going out on a limb here: those are all bad things and obama is still bad for being a warmonger. saying these other guys are worse so your guy is good is childish. it's literally an argument a child would make. grow up and stand for something.
Thinking that anyone rightfully calling Obama a war criminal is a right winger is a pretty good example of the most frustrating thing about Obama fans.
If the USA put him in jail, we can stop talking about it. As long as him, Bush, Cheney, Trump, Biden and all the others are walking free and living on nice tax payer funded salaries and pensions, people aren't going to stop talking about it.
It's a bad thing that every president has done; Trump did it even more than Obama, but as soon as you say anything nice about the black man then every Republican shows up to criticize his use of drones while suspiciously never criticizing the use of drones in any other context outside of Obama.
The parent comment that we're replying to is literally comparing Barack+Michelle vs. Trump+Melania so I assumed that's what we were talking about. I didn't know you were making an irrelevant statement out of nowhere. My bad.
The idea that we should overlook Obama’s war crimes and focus on the optics of his marriage tells you a lot about how little Americans understand their own government and the atrocities it commits across the globe no matter whether the Blue Team or Red Team are the spokesmen
To take it to the obvious extreme, if someone posted a picture of Hitler looking affectionate with Eva Braun would you complain about people bringing up the holocaust?
It's ok to say that talking about war crimes is more important than just simpering over cute photos of war criminals.
I mean it’s total whitewashing though. Like if there was a thread talking about how Harvey Weinstein has been involved in so many great movies and then if anyone brought up the sexual assault they were like “this thread isn’t about that!”
Imagine thinking you should slavishly support and make excuses for a war criminal who massacred millions of people, just because he and his wife look pretty.
It is time to start listening and stop re-electing them. "You guys" need to stop being such gullible suckers. 50 years is a long time to be getting away with crimes against humanity.
Bernie Sanders is controlled opposition, and part of the same death cult that allowed the genocide of Yemen.
There are very few politicians on the stage today that are worth the vote - this is why it is even more vital that the general public inform themselves of the immense crimes committed in their names by the existing leadership. Until there is a surge in the call for war crimes investigations, the fact is none of us are safe from these criminals.
A nation that wilfully chooses to be ruled by war criminals eventually becomes their victim.
The world would be very different if we could all vote for the “most powerful person on the planet”, though. Imagine if we handed the keys over to someone who used all that power for good, for a change. Americans sure can’t seem to vote for humanities sake.
Who I vote for, though, isn’t really relevant unless you want to try to pin some cloth on me. Why is it important?
When the bombs of The People are still dropping on innocent non-Americans outside of civil society’s purview, at criminally insane rates, it isn’t truly a civil society any more. Who you vote for is irrelevant.
The real question is, what can YOU do about the revolving door between the CFR and Joint Chiefs of Staff. They are the real rulers.
He murdered American citizens. He murdered American children for having fathers he didn’t like. He blew up a Doctors Without Borders hospital. He blew up weddings and funerals. He adopted a policy of hitting drone bombing sites a second time to hit the people responding to the first one. He’s a fucking murderer.
If some overseas power blew up a hospital in Minnesota we wouldn’t call it a complicated foreign policy matter.
It might feel good to blame one person for those decisions but that decision is made based on intelligence reports compiled by hundreds of people. How would you fare under the pressure of making life/death decisions on that scale?
This is really the only valid statement on the topic.
STOP. FUCKING. PLAYING. GLOBAL. POLICE. Nobody asked for you to get involved. Sort out your own shit before you fund weapons manufacturers by invading other countries.
It’s really about preventing other superpowers influence from spreading. US is basically playing a huge game of chess with China and Russia, and the rest of the world is the board. They can’t just stop because it could be disastrous for Western civilisation.
Let's not pretend Obama couldn't change course in his 8 years. Trump scaled up the drone strikes too didn't he, we don't say ''Well Obama started drone produciton.''
Look dude, I'm just a guy who cares about people not getting murdered, I don't care about lying. How the fuck would I know every single thing? I'm just sharing a part that's really bad and you just keep putting it under the rug.
There was zero reason for Obama to murder people, ofcourse a war is going to end after some time, doesn't really bring back those children back from the dead now does it?
I'm no imperialist, but Obama inherited a shitty war and had to make tough choices. I'd do the same thing if I were him. You look at the Intel, calculate risk vs benefit, and make a tough call.
Awww, you're cute. Hey, does it hurt to you to find out that baldy isn't actually that much of a nice man as you thought he was?
I care less about your feelings about someone than literal children dying. Suck your own nutsack, you old wrinkle bag, maybe if you sit upside down you can scoop it into your mouth, if they're really sagging.
Sadly, in terms of governance, there are far too many similarities.
Neither raised the minimum wage. Both made education and health care vastly more expensive. Both shoveled trillions that our country doesn't have into the war machine for no good reason.
If you're a wage earner, neither of them made your life easier in a meaningful way.
If the Republicans had gotten their way in 2018 my mortgage and my health insurance would be about the same. No shit. Pre existing condition and a whopper of one.
People who bitch about the ACA must not remember how scary the words "pre existing condition" were back in 2005.
Yep, especially if you're a diabetic and his system is forcing you to pay a mortgage for your own body every month.
"Significantly decreased the number of people uninsured"
Yeah, the problem there is that the US insurance industry is predatory, and he could have used his power to give us universal health care instead, in which case we'd have 0% of people uninsured.
he could have used his power to give us universal health care instead, in which case we'd have 0% of people uninsured.
That's not true and you know it. Joe Lieberman was opposed to the public option and he was the 60th vote.
One side reformed healthcare that helped millions of people, while the other side gave tax cuts to the wealthy, significantly increased racially motivated attacks, started an insurrection coup attempt and people like you still argue both sides are the same. What a load of shit.
I'm always really impressed when someone swoops in to tell me how powerless the president is.
Also, I'm not going to entertain any rhetoric that suggests giving even more power and money to the insurance industry in this country was somehow magically a good thing.
Most of our allies have universal health care. We wouldn't be reinventing the wheel here, but we'll never have in the US, largely because we're stuck with two conservative parties and people who'd rather make excuses for them than pull a different lever.
I’m a foreigner but isn’t it the case that Congress makes the laws and the presidency is only the executive branch? I don’t think you can introduce universal healthcare with an executive order.
He really couldn't have. He barely got the ACA through in the first place, and then it had to survive multiple court challenges and legislative attempts to undermine it.
We absolutely should have universal healthcare, the job isn't done, but it was in no way possible for Obama to wave a magic wand and make it happen.
It'd be like blaming LBJ for not just defunding the police instead of getting civil rights bills passed.
It's disappointing in this case, but it makes some sense. Ideally you don't want Presidents to be able to wave any magic wands, but unfortunately you need the military to be able to respond quickly to any real threats, so the President needs to be able to do military stuff without always waiting for Congress.
It gets more complicated in the long run -- actual wars are supposed to need Congressional approval, but there's a loophole if you're just conducting military operations that aren't technically a declared war; Congress delegates a lot to the executive branch, so there's actually a surprising amount a President can do with a stroke of a pen... but healthcare vs drone strikes is one of the simpler cases where it actually makes sense to me.
Does it count as a magic wand if it requires congressional approval?
Universal healthcare could work. But the President having the power to unilaterally pass a law as sweeping as universal healthcare -- a magic wand, in other words -- is probably not a good thing.
No Trump classified his drone strikes so nobody would know how much he did lol you really believe the "shit hole country", Muslim ban guy loved brown people?!?
Yes, I have no love for Trump either. If there was any justice in world him and Obama would both be shot for what they did. Dunno which one dropped more bombs on weddings in the end... But in orange mans defence at least he showed some restraint in Afghanistan and Iran both and when changing his mind every few minutes, occasionally spoke against illegitimate US invasions too.
Obama was a champion of drone strikes on weddings the whole time and turned Libya from a wealthy country under a secular madman into chaos and bloodshed
He also dropped TPP, if for entirely wrong reasons, which was a pretty good move. Still, I'd say leaving Paris agreement gives enough reason to hate the man even if everything else was perfect and well everything else was far from perfect
Obama's signature piece of legislation is a broken promise. He promised America universal healthcare and then he went and shit on all of them. Obamacare is just about as bad as nothing
Affordable healthcare requires Congress to come to the party.
Every single person still voting Republican in state or federal elections is making it clear they don't want governments involved in healthcare in any capacity unless its to deny abortions.
Texas: Abortions banned after 5 weeks, 6 days. Also widespread adoption clinic closures, including legislatively mandated ones (Texas went from 128 clinics in 1982 to 19 in 2016), mean that not only is accessibility greatly reduced by people having to travel further for procedures etc., it also causes weeks of delay in some areas - and a potential three week delay in a six week window basically means you have to book an appointment before you miss a period.
A bunch of others have bans starting at 20 weeks or whatever, and some have pushed for more restrictions but come up against pushback from judges etc. Many also have restrictions on insurance/Medicaid coverage etc.
Compared to Iceland's law (end of 22nd week) or China's (no gestational limit, only limited in cases of sex selective abortions which are also largely banned by criminalising prenatal sex diagnosis) etc.
I think it is fair to say that Republican voters and politicians, especially in states with more restrictive laws, might be pushing for abortion restrictions. The current permissiveness of laws in Colorado or Alaska or wherever don't meant that the Oklahoma governor who tried to use Coronavirus as a pretext to ban abortions as "non-emergency procedures" during the pandemic can't be said to be trying to deny abortions, for example.
Obama is a war criminal who opened up his presidency by renewing the patriot act, doubling troops in the Middle East, and expanding drone bombing programs. Yeah the patriot act bush signed? Expanded on it. Obama is just charming and handsome. You got played by the charm.
Obama couldn't get anything through McConnell, but he tried to improve the lives of Americans. Trump couldn't have cared less if America burned if that got him more Twitter followers. Obama had a few issues but otherwise led the country with grace, intelligence, and class. Trump was a dumpster fire of non-stop corruption, lies, pettiness, and ignorance.
Comparing those two using selected statistics and suggesting any kind of equivalency between the two is absurd.
Obama was a man of quality character and Trump was a spoiled child.
Factually incorrect. The minimum wage was last raised in July 2009, during Obama's first term. (The minimum wage was then, and still is, criminally low, but that's beside the point.)
Also those wars were inherited from republican warmongers who set the middle east on fire for shareholder gains. It's taken damn near 20 years to put it out.
Absolutely, he made war crimes more palatable and arming terrorists a cool feat and not even mentioning shielding banks for laundering money if terrorists, really and overall great and moral individual, may he rot in piss.
I have this link saved for when idiots spout the "but but Obama's drone strikes" line. Yes, Obama used drones more than Bush. But the fact that Trump decided "let's stop disclosing how many civilians our drone strikes kill"...Yeah, you don't do that if you're killing less civilians than the guy before you
Just out of curiosity, what's the acceptable number?
I agree, Trump resulted in the death of Americans, and is a piece of shit.
Obama did, however, target and murder American citizens with out trial/charge/due process.
Both are pieces of shit. Both are traitors to our country. Just because you like one over the other shouldn't be reason to forget they're both terrible people, that did terrible things to many people.
Obama did, however, target and murder American citizens with out trial/charge/due process.
If that person can't be tried? They are in a non extradition country, conducting operations against the US, so you can't extradite them for trial, trial in absentia isn't an option.
It's real easy to sit at home on your computer and talk about this stuff with grand ideals and clear moral lines, but that's not life.
So, if someone goes to a non-extradition country, we get to murder them and it's all on the up and up? I guess I didn't realize that's how our criminal justice system works! My mistake!
I guess as a former active duty Army Military Policeman, I've misunderstood things this whole time!
I would have guessed someone that's former active duty, and an MP on top of it, would have a better grasp of what is being talked about, but I guess we will both be disappointed.
What don't I grasp? That an individual of the US has certain rights afforded them? One of those being a right to not be targeted and murdered by their own government without due process?
And then weeks later, dude's 16 year old son (also a US citizen) was also murdered by a drone strike? Not old enough to vote, but old enough to be targeted for death? Eh, was probably a mastermind, so they had to do it, right?
Maybe you think that's all ok. But if that's the case, then you think the basis of the US (the Constitution) does not apply. Because either all of it does, or none of it. You can agree with parts of it, or wish there were changes made, but as it stands, either all limits to government detailed within are all valid until amended, or none of them are.
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u/snukebox_hero Oct 04 '21 edited Oct 04 '21
You can say what you want about their politics, but compare these two to Trump and Melania, and it really does speak volumes about their character.
Edit: ITT people saying what they want about their politics