Posted on 05/13/2014 4:04:19 PM PDT by robowombat
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Ping.
Thanks, Nully and Nachum.
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Define Terrorism:
The Unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and Intimidation in the pursuit of of Political aims. O.E.D
So Congress has authorized the use of Drones to kill person or persons unknown, without a court appearance both domestic and abroad , have they?
If Yes, this is an undeclared act of War against a sovereign nation.
If No, these are acts of Terrorism.
To give an example:
I use the web site known as FreeRepublic.
This in Obummers eyes is “counter Revolutionary” .
He gives the CIA the nod to launch a Drone attack.
Success or failure somebody is now Dead without due process of Law, in a country where state execution has been outlawed for 50+ years.
If my country hasn't authorized this action, which it legally can't ,it is an act of War.
As far as i’m concerned it is Terrorism, either way.
Now install this in an unstable middle eastern mind.....
Aiding and abetting the illegal actions of obarry is a terrorist action, by definition.
Use of Drones in a field of combat is one thing ,to use them against unarmed civilians going about their lawful business is quite another.
See how easy it is for an out of control ‘Terrorist in chief’ to create a whole new world of hurt for the American people.
Death without trial by a foreign totalitarian regime....charming.
No telling what else the cia/nsa can do.Wonder if they do this? Supposedly, this is from Snowden. I just picked it off of today’s American Thinker.If nothing else it sure makes you think.
“Worse than you think.
Hawaii, December 31, 2013
Transcript Courtesy Edward Snowden
VALERIE JARRETT: We’re arriving at Dulles around noon with your double, Barack.
OBAMA: A shame we gotta play these games just so I can kick back on the beach another week with the family.
JAY CARNEY: Reporters returning to Washington with us haven’t tumbled to the switch, sir.
JARRETT: Just received word, Barack. The Service has finished establishing a 25 square mile exclusion zone around the beach compound. Locals were temporarily relocated to Oahu as a, uh, precautionary measure to ensure privacy for Michelle and the girls during their extended stay without you.
JAY CARNEY: The Oval Office mock-up in the spare cottage
is set, sir. Later on, you’ll deliver that three minute statement I prepared about the need for everybody to be reasonable about the budget.
OBAMA: I can handle that.
CARNEY: We’ll pass out stills of your lookalike pacing the floor in the Residence, phone in hand, working legislators. At my press
briefings, I’ll say you’re reaching out to the principals in an effort to keep fiscal disaster at bay.
OBAMA: I am?
CARNEY: Sort of, in a secondhand way. Your impersonator will place dozens of calls to Boehner, McConnell, Cantor, Reid, Hoyer and others, breaking the connection before any substantive discussion ensues.
JARRETT: Jay, call Jill Abramson at the Times. Tell her the president wants an editorial next Tuesday about GOP unseriousness.
OBAMA: The losers. Hey Miche, how about another Blue Hawaii, easy on the vodka. Forget the little umbrella.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/05/inside_the_obama_frat_house_comments.html#disqus_thread
IOW, they’re keeping score cards on us and send in the drones or Breitbartize those who reach a certain score.
Americans who go join with them in attacks against the U.S.A. are traitors.
We're no longer in a universe our grandparents would recognize and you're trying to force a naive template upon a crazed medieval situation.
There are several problems — one is how the label terrorist is applied, and by whom.
Another problem, particularly WRT drones, is that they are not an accurate weapon (as opposed to snipers) and incur collateral deaths. (You may think that a terrorist's friends and family deserve to die by virtue of their relationship to the terrorist — I do not; moreover I view such as an excuse to murder innocents.) In addition to this, metadata is being used to flag people as terrorists, but to act on this w/o verification [i.e. HumInt] it violates the gun safety rule of being sure of your target.
Third, there is the problem that the mechanics of point #1 could be altered so that, for example, protesting or disputing government claims [such as the recent militia standoff in Nevada] would be deemed de facto proof that those people were terrorists.
Given the recent revelations of Fast & Furious, the NSA's domestic espionage program, the IRS's politically-targeted molestations, and the general willingness to ignore the Constitution:
is it reasonable1 to trust the government with the ability to end life without trial?
1 — Leaving aside active the battlefield.
The Crazed Medieval template does hold water, however us behaving in an uncivilised manner promotes the growth of terrorism.
The Medieval mind is not seeing their actions as evil, only ours, we are seen as the aggressor.
We must take the high ground and cease behaving as if we can kill with impunity , without due process , this make us as bad as them and this must not be the case against civilians.
How long before this ‘kill because i can’ attitude is turned on the American people themselves. How long before 85 year old Mr Smith in his pick-up truck is Hellfired for the ‘Common Good’ for speaking ‘out of turn’.
It will happen.
Yes ,those who join them are Traitors and must be dealt with as the legal system deems fit.
This is the central question on the issue — anyone who has not asked it is simply not thinking things through.
A thought that is very easily missed in the Fog of Obarry.
“... us behaving in an uncivilised manner promotes the growth of terrorism.”
Really!
What do you think caused 9-11?
I think you’re full of bovine excrement.
He didn’t say that; in fact he said nothing about causation.
He said that our acting in an uncivilized manner “promotes the growth” of terrorism — in order to promote growth of something, that thing must already be present.
1 I said: growth.
2 Now the name calling has started ,the conversation has just ended.
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The problem I have is that the US government is increasingly not the government of the American people. If Ronald Reagan were President I would agree with your propositions. He is not and the United States has changed in ways none of us who grew up in the 50’s or 60’s could have possibly imagined. Much of the upper levels of the permanent governing class firmly believe that regular middle class Americans are much more of a security concern than any foreign terrorist. These people are very comfortable with data mining Americans and using robot planes to patrol the skies of the United States. To them the Tea Party is a manifestation of something far more dangerous than any Muslim terrorist group. This is no exaggeration but a conclusion that I come to based on reading the products of the professional security community and listening to what ‘security academics’ say in their coded language at a number of meetings. A government that promulgates FACTA and desires to have de facto abilities to track and when it decides to eliminate American citizens is to be feared far more than any foreign entity. In the past I would dismiss Ron Paul’s remarks that when the government decides to be serious about closing the US Mexican border it would be aimed at keeping Americans in not illegals out as paranoid thinking. Today it seems mordantly correct. This is not a fantasy but a logical extension of what is currently underway. Some day some sort of committee that officially doesn’t exist will decide some ‘domestic terrorist’ is an eminent danger and ‘exigent circumstances’ will necessitate the ‘terrorists’ ‘neutralization’. The sky over the United States is growing very dark. I personally do not know how the combination of a security state lurching out of control combined with a political and security class penetrated by people and ideas that see the traditional moral and political codes of the US to be the real enemy in the ‘transformative struggle’ can be combated. We, the people that populate this site are becoming the enemies of the United States in the eyes of the people who control the data mining and the robot planes. At the least we need to disabuse ourselves of notions that we are considered anything but a revenue source and loose change and pests to the people in suits and uniforms that we see parading themselves before us on television.
“... (the more you kill the more enemies you make). ...”
Yet another way to get it all wrong.
If we kill enough of them, the survivors will lose their nerve eventually. Or their fatality rate will reach 100 percent, after which they are no longer a threat.
It is a mistake to think that we can render ourselves so amiable and inoffensive that no one else will want to attack us or take our stuff.
It is likewise a mistake to think we can “lead by example,” by being so good and wonderful that enemies will be so awed by our moral stature, so dazzled by the magnanimity of our behavior, that they will stop attacking us or stop trying to take our stuff.
To live is to have enemies: a truism unwelcome, perhaps, to the American character. Anyone who cannot accept it, or who shrinks from the consequences, becomes more of a hindrance than a help.
You are still utterly missing the point. What is your war on terror victory condition? At what measurable verifiable point will you declare we are done? By what objective criteria will you know we have reached that point? And don’t say ‘they stop attacking us’ because that will not happen. As long as we drive around third world hellholes someone over there will be willing to take a shot at us. How will you know they ‘lost their nerve’? As long as they can still plant a roadside bomb why would they stop?
“You are still utterly missing the point. What is your war on terror victory condition? ... why would they stop?”
I posed two victory conditions, but TalonDJ cannot bear to contemplate them, apparently.
Just to reiterate:
1. If an enemy is eliminated, they will stop attacking us (they will also stop attacking everybody else, but let us set aside universality, at least for the moment). My sense of neatness tempts me to favor this one; it’s like capital punishment. Recidivism rate is pretty small.
2. I included “until an enemy loses interest” only out of a sense of practicality. There are many situations in history where what TalonDJ dismisses with such self-righteousness, certainty, and scorn, has actually happened.
And it is useless to attempt to specify in advance criteria like “terror victory conditions.” It might even be counterproductive: gives away too much.
Winning is of more importance than staging a debate, most of which will be carried on between people who don’t know what’s going on, or who insist on arguing over aspects of no importance, nor even any relevance.
What is metadata?
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