I got as far as them re-litigating Joe Lieberman

  • FourteenEyes [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    Ordering the execution of a 16 year old American citizen via drone strike, carried out while the target was eating at a cafe in Jordan. The missile killed him, his cousin he was eating with, and seven more people who just happened to be there

    Wait nevermind it was when he said not to put ketchup on a hot dog

  • balderdash@lemmy.zip
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    First thing that comes to mind is he used a fuck ton of drones overseas. But in the years before his presidency, more and more drones were being used.

    Second, Obama was pro-whistle blowers when he ran for POTUS. But when Edward Snowden told the world that the NSA is spying on Americans, suddenly Obama took his pro-whistle blowing stance off of his website.

    • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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      As to drones, would you rather use live soldiers to carry out missions given the possibility of their death? As a followup, do you believe that drone warfare would have existed in any case?

      As for Snowden, what makes him any different from Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen or many more? Just because you claim the high ground doesn’t mean you own it.

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        The choices are not either drones or American boots on the ground. That’s a false dichotomy. And we ended up leaving anyway. I can only imagine how it must feel to lose a family member as a civilian casualty of a drone strike and then the occupying country just leaves.

        I don’t see how these other example are relevant. Edward Snowden was not a double agent working for a foreign entity. He saw that a government agency was breaking the law and then told the American people. He also worked with a reputable news agency to not release unnecessary classified information. By all means, this should have been lauded by the Obama administration.

        Just because you claim the high ground doesn’t mean you own it.

        When you say shit like this its hard for people to take you seriously.

        • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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          The way we fight terrorists is to decapitate the head of their organization. Pretty soon No one wants to be boss anymore. They are the targets. Now you have a choice on how to eliminate those targets, either by combat or by a newish idea drones. But, both are not clean. More than bin Laden died in the house that night. You may argue they shouldn’t be killed in the first place, but I believe it was necessary.

          You don’t know if Snowden wasn’t an agent by the evidence. He stole intelligence and caused it it be published then went running to Russia. I don’t think a Russian intelligence agency could ask for anything more.

          • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            The way we fight terrorists is to decapitate the head of their organization. Pretty soon No one wants to be boss anymore.

            how long is “pretty soon”? 50+ years?

            also, the US doesn’t so much “fight terrorists” as it trains, arms and finances them to destabilize regions near US geopolitical rivals, and then get real shocked when all that blows back on US civilians. though it does seem to work up little baby brains into shoveling more money, bones, and blood into the military industrial complex. so maybe it’s a win-win?

            • edge [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              it trains, arms and finances them to destabilize regions near US geopolitical rivals

              Hmm, that sounds familiar ukkkraine

              and then get real shocked when all that blows back on US civilians.

              I’m sure that definitely won’t happen though.

              • Torenico [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                That’s the way al-Qaeda is now. They’re still taking out ISIS leaders every now and then.

                But that isn’t because US strikes, this is the case thanks to the massive efforts of Syria, Iraq and the Kurds. It was them who fought ISIS head-on in the battlegrounds around Tikrit, Mosul, Raqqa, Kobane, Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor. In fact, the Syrian Arab Army has been engaging Al Nusra, Al-Qaeda’s faction in Syria, for a decade now, and if it’s destroyed it’s largely thanks to Syria’s effort, all while at the same time Al Nusra quietly received weapons from a certain someone.

                Your “war on terrorism” is full of shit, brother, there is no such thing as war against ISIS from the US. ISIS, even at it’s largest extent, posed no threat to the United States, if anything their roots can be traced back to US interventions and financing in the region. Their bombings are nothing but a way to continue military occupation in said places, as evidenced in Syria.

          • FemboyStalin [she/her,any]@hexbear.net
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            How do you even argue with someone who just makes up beliefs? Like, you can and do just say whatever you want and it doesn’t matter that reality doesn’t reflect that, you have your ideology that the world must conform to and you just ignore things that make it inconvenient to believe.

            “The way we fight terrorists is to decapitate the head of their organization. Pretty soon No one wants to be boss anymore. They are the targets. Now you have a choice on how to eliminate those targets, either by combat or by a newish idea drones. But, both are not clean. More than bin Laden died in the house that night. You may argue they shouldn’t be killed in the first place, but I believe it was necessary.” Source on this entire paragraph? Proof “pretty soon nobody wants to be boss anymore”?

          • Torenico [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            The way we fight terrorists is to decapitate the head of their organization

            Wait, are you telling us the US Senate, White House, Pentagon, Lockheed Martin’s HQ, CIA HQ and Congress were bombed by US drones? Is Joe Biden among the dead?

            Ah, you mean the arab terrorists, okay, you got me hyped up for a second there. I thought that, for once, the US would take the fight against the biggest terrorist organizations but nevermind.

            You may argue they shouldn’t be killed in the first place, but I believe it was necessary.

            Israel moment.

            You see brother your logic makes perfect sense when you think about it: bad terrorist leader = target for our drones. The problem is that bad terrorist leader can be anywhere, and sometimes drone ends up firing a few Hellfire missiles into weddings and orphan hospitals. So what’s up with that? Who answers for these war crimes? Because so far no drone operator has been convicted for war crimes, “mistakes happen” as they say and they get away with it. And this is assuming the US fights this very loose term of “terrorism” at all, because some of these terrorists were previously armed and financed by the US itself to destabilize rival governments, kinda like how the US sent thousands of TOW anti-tank missile launchers to a bunch of sus factions in Syria because Assad bad, then these people turned out to be Al Nusra surprised-pika

          • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            The way we fight terrorists is to decapitate the head of their organization. Pretty soon No one wants to be boss anymore

            So you’re just making shit up from video games or tv, because this is the opposite of the truth. This is the tactic the US used in Iraq and Afghanistan, it consistently failed because there’s always someone new who can replace the head of the organization. This isn’t some leftist critique, this is what the US government learned from more than a decade of trying to make that tactic work.

          • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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            The way we fight terrorists is to decapitate the head of their organization

            That’s why ISIS, Al-Qaeda affiliates, and the Taliban no longer exist…oh wait

            This nonsense “logic” doesn’t even work in video games, it literally ignores the reality of organizations based on physically decentralized but financially centralized cell groups, not even the American War collages believe what you’re peddling

            You may argue they shouldn’t be killed in the first place, but I believe it was necessary.

            Of course you do, you probably get off on it

            • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              Nobody is blaming the US for killing terrorist[s] with drones

              I mean, I am. Most of the people they label terrorists are either their own CIA funded/armed proxies or geopolitical enemies and not really terrorists in the full jihadist sense (such as Iranian intel officers or Syrian military or Libyan government officials). It’s just a convenient excuse for the US to involve themselves in other nations affairs - fund and arm terrorists in a nation you want to destroy, then say you “have” to go in to “fight terrorism” and obliterate the nation.

              It’s all bullshit. America will never eliminate terrorism. They are the biggest sponsor of terror on Earth. There would be far less total terrorism if they never once left their borders

            • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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              People die in war, that’s a fact. But I would say it makes little difference if it’s a drone or a rifle.

          • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            The way we fight terrorists is to decapitate the head of their organization

            No, it’s to have soldiers blast an oblong opening in the head of any Middle-Easterner they get their blood-soaked hands on.

          • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            Okay so that first thing seems to be untrue? I’ve tried to look for some sources to your claim, but I’m coming up empty. Would you mind posting your references?

            That second thing seems to be speculation? I can’t seem to find anyone credible supportimg it

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        As to drones, would you rather use live soldiers to carry out missions given the possibility of their death?

        Very few people give a shit about dead foreign civilians, a lot of people get angry when the bodies of their own country’s soldiers start piling up. Replace the soldiers with remote control machines and you remove a huge (arguably the main) incentive for people to oppose war.

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        Buddy you have a lot of unexamined assumptions you need to address, first let’s start with the context of these “missions” your beloved soldiers and drones carry out

        Is murdering innocent people for oil execs and military capital something you consider necessary and noble?

      • Sasuke [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        As to drones, would you rather use live soldiers to carry out missions given the possibility of their death?

        yes, personally i’d love to see more dead US soldiers actually

        gigachad-hd

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        As to drones, would you rather use live soldiers to carry out missions given the possibility of their death?

        1. Why are you automatically supporting these “missions” in the first place? They shouldn’t be carried out at all.

        2. Yes I would rather have live soldiers doing it. Dead bodies means less people will support doing these “missions” that shouldn’t be done in first fucking place.

        The US is literally the Empire from Star Wars and this thread is basically you doing “empire did nothing wrong” but unironically.

        You are the bad guy.

      • CarmineCatboy [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        As to drones, would you rather use live soldiers to carry out missions given the possibility of their death?

        Don’t know what to tell you but people being invaded don’t tend to hold american soldiers’ lives as sacred.

      • WhyEssEff [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        As to drones, would you rather use live soldiers to carry out missions given the possibility of their death?

        turnabout is fair play shrug-outta-hecks

      • radiofreeval [any]@hexbear.net
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        would you rather use live soldiers to carry out missions given the possibility of their death

        If you’re going to be a murderer, don’t be a coward about it. A person with a rifle knows what they did, a drone has plausible denyiblity. Plus it’s harder to convince people to send people to do the killing as opposed to robots.

  • SexMachineStalin [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    2011 Invasion of Lybia and the subsequent overthrow of Gadaffi - Slavery, refugee crisis, Boko Haram

    2014 Invasion of Syria - Ongoing refugee crisis, ISIS

    2014 Invasion of Yemen (Saudi-led) - Humanitarian crisis, ISIS

    2013 Euromaidan Coup in Ukraine - Azov, Crimean secession, Russo-Ukraine War

    2015 Sanctions on Venezuela - Economic crisis, threat of warfare, hyperinflation

    2009-16 Support to ETIM - Terrorist attacks throughout China, especially Xinjiang, ETIM+ISIS collaboration, development of “Uyghur genocide” narrative

    2013 AFRICOM - Increased US military presence in Africa, drone strikes in Sudan, Somalia and Lybia, growth of Boko Haram and ISIS

    2009 Honduras Coup

  • betelgeuse [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    In terms of body count, bragging that he made us the #1 producer of natural gas and choosing to not address climate change because it, along with healthcare, would expend too much political capital.

    • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      Closely related was his pretending to be very concerned about the violence facing the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline but also allowing a national law enforcement response that I have to presume was coordinated by his FBI.

      This is the focal point for my personal hatred of Obama.

    • LaughingLion [any, any]@hexbear.net
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      all those people who had the sheriff show up to evict them is top me, one of the largest examples of state enacted violence against the people in modern history and it was mostly non-white people who were the victims which is amazing to think it was the first black president who resided over this

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    This isn’t the worst thing he did but it’s the one that made me see him for what he is: drinking the water at a press conference in Flint.

  • Zuberi 👀@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    Ending occupy wallstreet and kicking the can down another ~20 years or so.

    When the markets implode, just know there were signs

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      his presidency really did put the nails in the coffin of liberal progressivism for me. before it was possible to believe that the inequality and bigotry ingrained in the American social order could be rectified with bourgeois democracy and representative identity politics. a black “community organizer” telling us out of one side of his mouth that he’d roll back the excesses of the christian nationalist that came before him and then just maintaining them while giving us nothing was too obscene to ignore.

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        you give him too much credit because he didnt just maintain christian nationalism in so many ways he advanced it along with white supremacy in general too

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      all presidents are bastards by virtue of the bourgeois class dictatorship; this is axiomatic of the US form of government. Obama merely proved through practice what was already known in theory.

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    It’s not the worst thing in sheer killing or war crimes, but he made no-oil 's education “reforms” WORSE and actually amplified the harm they did.

    As an educator, I will curse Arne Duncan’s name forever. guts-rage

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        no-oil had “No Child Left Behind” which forcibly dismantled public schools by punishing underfunded schools in impoverished areas by tying future funding to standardized testing performance.

        obama-socialism made that worse with “Race To The Top” and a few related programs which more aggressively accelerated that process. Many private “academies” replaced those impoverished schools in a growing cancer of privatization that started under “No Child Left Behind” but actually expanded and got worse under “Race To The Top.” Also, “Common Core” while superficially nice sounding was just a normalization of the modern teacher’s obligation to spend 90% of class time humoring whatever textbook companies want to drill students with, often deliberately wanting them to fail or give up so even more schools can be privatized.

        Also, Arne Duncan got the job under obama-socialism because, according to obama-socialism , Arne Duncan played a mean game of basketball. joker-amerikkklap

  • Farman [any]@hexbear.net
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    When he gave the ok to the saudis to start a war in Yemen.

    Then the Syrian war.

    Lybia.

    Rember he greatly scaled the international sanctions program.

    • neo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama did this? Say it ain’t so!! That sounds like the opposite of peace promotion!

      Perhaps it was for the greater good. liberalism