Posted on 07/23/2013 12:09:11 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Why isn't Obama outraged about a drone war based on profiling?
President Barack Obama surprised the White House press corps on Friday when he preempted the normal daily briefing to offer his unscripted ideas on the Trayvon Martin case.
Obama departed from his usual reluctance to talk publicly about his personal experience with racial bias, reminding viewers that African-American men -- including him, before he became a senator -- experience prejudice based only on their appearance, not their personality or behavior. He added that the African-American community was interpreting the outcome of the case through a "set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away." And he noted that, while the African-American community is not naïve about violence involving its young men -- they are "disproportionately both victims and perpetrators" -- that fact is no excuse for different treatment under the law.
It is striking to compare Obama's deliberate and thoughtful commentary about the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin with the military tactic that will forever characterize his presidency: killing people with drones. The president posits that it is wrong to profile individuals based upon their appearance, associations, or statistical propensity to violence. By extension, he believes that, just because those characteristics may seem threatening to some, the use of lethal force cannot be justified as self-defense unless there are reasonable grounds to fear imminent bodily harm. But that very kind of profiling and a broad interpretation of what constitutes a threat are the foundational principles of U.S. "signature strikes" -- the targeted killings of unidentified military-age males.
The use of signature strikes began in early 2008, when "instead of having to confirm the identity of a suspected militant leader before attacking," the New York Times reported, drones were permitted to "strike convoys of vehicles that bear the characteristics of
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
because he’s targeting Christian and non-Islamist Pakistanis for drone attack. Obama only cares about CRIMINALS. Those are his fellows!
What a moronic statement. Meet a man in a dark alley and you're supposed to judge whether you're in danger by his personality? What can you possibly know about it?
What can you base your judgment on other than appearance?
I’d also like to point out that males, as a group, are profiled far most strictly than blacks. The male/female disproportion in prisons is much greater than the black/white one, relative to percentage of population.
Yet this profiling and discriminatory punishment doesn’t seem to bother anyone.
Possibly that’s because most of us recognize men commit most of the crime, especially violent crime, so it’s reasonable more of us will be in prison. For some reason, when race is the factor rather than sex, lots of us can’t reach the same logical conclusion.
Huh?
There are hardly any Christians in Pakistan, and the last place they would live are in areas such as the FATA or the tribal areas.
Most are clustered in Karachi, Islamabad or in the rural areas of Punjab
Well Obama is probably hoping to hit one or two regardless...
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