this is where you're wrong and as always, lump me into a column that I do not belong in.. this idea that I am so extremely left, when I'm not.. I'm two steps to the left of center on many things and one step to the right on others.. just as I agree with the death penalty and guns, I do not think killing a terrorist (or enabler) the likes of Al Awlaki is a bad thing. IMO he gave up his right by becoming a high ranking AQ terrorist..Sure, many liberal and libertarians disagree and I understand that, I just don't agree with them or you... it has nothing to do with (R) or (D), it's an extreme case that is judged on it's own merit.. whoever the president was, IMO, was well within his rights to do what he did..does that mean I'm for it 100% in all cases? nope. but in this one.. yep.
Bush and Cheney illegally spied on us citizens.. who knows why. what evidence did they have to give for the wire-tapping? oh yea, none... they took people they thought might, could be, maybe, possibly, know a terrorist because the neighbor who owed him a goat said he was.. and threw them into hell and left them there to rot.. not the same as killing a known terrorist who will kill you... Al Awlaki was the true ticking time bomb scenario and as I've said many times, I'm good with whatever needs to be done in that scenerio. Just do it and own it, don't lie and let your chief of staff take the fall for you..
I get that stuff like that blows your mind because you have never been able to venture into the 'grey' area.. but not being married to an ideology, and being able to look at things as they are and judge them, has it benefits and this one of them..
The hypocrisy from you (which I suppose I wasn't explicit on), is that you felt indefinitely detaining foreign enemy combatants was unconstitutional and against international law. But you had no problem with Obama targeting American citizens for assassination. Clearly something doesn't compute here. This is a subject in which we wasted quite a lot of words over the course of years over at the
Muche. The two comparable issues from the Bush era were Hamdi and Padilla; both American citizens who both were in military detention and eventually shifted to US courts because they were US citizens. That was an action I agreed with for that reason. You however, wanted every captured terrorist shifted to US courts and given due process of a US criminal defendant. Except of course for US citizens who can be assassinated. So while agree that Al Awlaki was a bad guy, and I've shed no tears in his passing, I don't know the basis in law or the constitution that allows us to target him for death in that way. There is certainly a legitimate case to be made that he was guilty of treason, or even that he had taken up arms against the US, which would have made his killing in a fire fight perfectly legal and legitimate. But an assassination list of US citizens isn't. Don't pretend that if Bush had been the one signing that death order you would still be supporting this action. We both know better.
blah blah... McCain wouldn't have done it any differently and you know it... what happen was going to happen regardless. No president was going to let the American auto industry die.. not a single one...and no president was not going to try a stimulus.. the only difference McCain would have done was he might have gotten more money since he was (R).. other than that, Obama did what any president would have done, and thats everything in their power to stop the fall.. and he did. why you can't give him credit for that and realize no one would have done any different proves your hypocrisy more than any 'libs' you think you've outed.
It's hard to know what McCain might actually have done in office, I can only go by his platform. And on that, it was far superior. His healthcare plan was fairly good. I had some quibbles with it, but compared to what we actually got, McCain's plan was 100 times superior. McCain's economic plan was a 300 billion plan to fix the housing market. I thought then, and still think now, that getting the housing market fixed was key to economic recovery. Unless you call this recovery, in which case, everything is fine, nothing to see here. Obama has done a few on the edges programs on housing, but nothing big. He threw all his eggs in the stimulus basket and promptly lost interest in the economy to play in the healthcare sandbox for over a year.
I guess I don't believe
any President would have done the same stupid things that Obama did. I mean, I knew Obama's plan wouldn't work and why, and I'm not even the only one. As small as this board is, I'm not the only one who saw what was going to happen. So why would I think any President would have come to the same conclusions as Obama?
