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Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

This phrasing is incorrect:

> [there are x persons] President Obama ha[s] authorized U.S. special operations forces to assassinate

US special ops are the President's weapon. It doesn't make sense to say "yesterday I authorized my gun to kill a man"; what you want to say is "yesterday I killed a man".

President Obama didn't "authorize targeted killings" or whatever you want to call those.

He (and Bush before him) assassinated people, assassinates them without trial or due process, while smiling and holding babies and making jokes at the White House correspondents dinner, and complaining about the gun culture and mass killings.

The same day of the Umpqua College shooting (10 dead), US drones in Afghanistan targeted a hospital and killed 22 people (12 staff, 10 patients including 3 children).

If Obama really wants Americans to get rid of their guns, maybe he should start with his own.

But of course he won't, so forgive me for not listening to whatever he has to say.

View on HN

The same day of the Umpqua College shooting (10 dead), US drones in Afghanistan targeted a hospital and killed 22 people (12 staff, 10 patients including 3 children).

Deplorable though it was, the Kunduz hospital strike was done by an AC-130, not drones. Also, it was not, by any stretch, a "targeted killing" in the sense of the attacks targeting specific individuals that the article addresses. It had absolutely nothing to do with that program, in fact.

If you want to hyperbolize, make apples-to-oranges comparisons, and beat your chest about things you can't really do much about from behind a keyboard, that's fine. But please try to get your basic factual narrative straight.

Shrug, the actual detail of the Kunduz massacre not being a drone is utterly irrelevant. The actual detail of using a drone rather than another type of airstrike is also irrelevant. The systematic and intentional killing ("collateral damage") of tons of civilians for an endless war is relevant.

Look up all those times we droned weddings, killing dozens. Certain people at those weddings were targeted, not that it mattered for the attendees.

So comparing a terrible mistake in an active war zone to a purposeful killing of civilians is..what exactly?

You need to understand how this game works. The word mistake does not mean what you think it means, just like "collect" and "interrogate" doesn't mean what you, and everyone else, thinks it means.

How convenient that it was a "mistake". Reminds me of the time the US "mistakenly" bombed Al Jazeera's offices. [1]

So the US will offer full support of the MSF's calls for a War Crime tribunal investigation?

What really amazes me is that no matter what information comes out, no matter how stark the facts, how brutal the reality, how corrupt the politics, how illegal the tactics, there is always a band of American apologists ready to step up justify cold blooded murder.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_bombing_memo

> What really amazes me is that no matter what information comes out, no matter how stark the facts, how brutal the reality, how corrupt the politics, how illegal the tactics, there is always a band of American apologists ready to step up justify cold blooded murder.

Well, that's not so much an American thing, it's very general. I wouldn't even restrict it to nations only, it's a general "tribe" thing. It can even apply to video games and music, sports, and so on.

The worst part to me is that conflicts can very well be driven where people on all sorts of sides "reason" (it really has to be put in quotes I think) this way. With the result that attempts at fairness, any objections to double standards makes a person a perceived traitor to everybody deeply invested on the self-delusion of any of the sides.

From "Notes on Nationalism" by George Orwell: (as most if not all of his writings, it's available on the web and well worth a read)

> The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English Russophiles. Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own antisemitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness. In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one's own mind.

Yes, "patriotism" (a mind disease) is endemic to the US, and it produces legions of useful idiots who are unwilling to admit grotesque/gaping faults in their motherland. These are the same people you see on the TV reading the news and playing the role of "topic expert".

Funny how military action causing completely foreseen and accepted civilian deaths is categorised as a "terrible mistake", and contrasted with a "purposeful killing of civilians". Drone strikes on weddings or bombings of hospitals are as calculated and purposeful as can be, and the fact that innocent civilians will die is accounted for, if not an explicit goal. It's just that we can slap the label "collateral damage from targeted precision strikes" on them.

The MSF hospital bombing was pretty clearly not a "terrible mistake", but was in fact "purposeful killing of civilians"

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/06/why-bombing-kunduz-hospi...

Your summary is not commensurate with the story you linked.

Something can be both a “terrible mistake” and also a violation of international law.

At a high level, it seems unlikely that American military leaders would intend to bomb a hospital, considering the horrible human toll and subsequent political and public relations disaster.

Perhaps the investigation will turn up a more complete story about why the hospital was targeted.

They don't really feel the blowback of a PR disaster when 1. most are uninformed, and 2. of the few informed there are enough people like you who will cover for them and give them benefit of the doubt. If a hospital on US territory is bombed, it would be out of the question whether it was simply an oopsie. But if in the carriage of justice and liberty some humanitarian workers find themselves collaterally damaged, it was a "terrible mistake", which the men with grave furrowed brows, clean suits, and heavy burdens to bear no doubt weighed against imminent national security concerns.

I’m certainly not “covering for them”. The bombing of the hospital is a violation of international law, and whoever made the call to bomb it should be court-martialed and held accountable. On the other hand I don’t think it is reasonable to presume that the hospital was targeted deliberately by someone in the US military without further knowledge of what happened. US military leaders aren’t all sadistic cartoon villains sitting around twirling their mustachios and cackling about civilian deaths.

If it is true that some of our “allies” on the ground in Afghanistan directed the US military to bomb that location, as was reported somewhere I read, then that is no excuse for such a colossal fuckup – especially considering that the MSF had previously told all sides the hospital’s coordinates – and whoever in the US military took that information at face value should take proper responsibility, and whoever directed them should also be dealt with.

If instead it was, as themgt speculates, a deliberate choice by someone in the American military to target the building with full knowledge that it is a hospital, then that person should be tried for war crimes.

perhaps Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction

perhaps we didn't create Al-Queda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnLvzV9xAHA [Hillary Clinton]

perhaps we're not involved in training/funding ISIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxDKmM8npBQ [John McCain]

or maybe there's something seriously wrong with the traditional narrative - http://naplay.it/763/41-47

> it seems unlikely that American military leaders would intend to bomb a hospital

while I'm not 100% sure about that (it seems unthinkable for a human being, but people's judgement can get pretty out of whack in wrong environment), let's assume for the sake of argument that your military leaders are sane.

even then, all it requires is the bare minimum of military leader people closing their eyes for just long enough.

and if you believe they wouldn't do that intentionally, then we'll disagree about that. you don't get that position without the ability to look the other way with laser-sharp focus. it's part of the job (and it's disgusting).

but they would say "you don't know what it's like". meditate on that for a bit. this world, huh?

The AUMF declared the entire globe an active war zone.

The US is not at war with anyone so it's impossible for Afghanistan to be a war zone

> The US is not at war with anyone

Yes, it is. A Congressionally declared war, even.

People tend to get hung up on the mistaken idea that Congress's power to declare war requires the use of magic words in the legislation in which it is exercised (e.g., that it has to use the words "declare" or "war"), but this is not the case. A Congressional "Authorization for the Use of Military Force" is a declaration of war (perhaps -- as was the case with both the 2001 open-ended 9/11 AUMF and 2003 Iraq AUMF -- a conditional declaration of war conditioned on a determination to be made by the executive, but a declaration of war nonetheless.)

Thanks for explaining that, who are we at war against then?

Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists[1]:

"IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

The wording is vague, however it would be most commonly interpreted as a war against Al-Quaeda. It could possibly but improbably be interpreted as a war against anyone.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milit...

So, what's today's interpretation of the word "harboring"? The 9/11 terrorists lived in Germany, this could mean that Germany is considered fair game.

Just giving another indication on how vague this wording is.

Not really. The 9/11 terrorists (those who participated in the actual hijackings) did not live in Germany -- or anywhere -- after the acts, so Germany clearly wasn't harboring them.

At the time they lived in Germany (before the attacks), the officials in the country obviously did not know of their plans.

The key words are "the President...determines"; the condition in the AUMF is not on an activity on the part of the potential enemy, it is a decision by the President.

Given that, any other vagueness is fairly irrelevant; its pretty much a blank check no matter what things like "harbored" mean. Which is why even President Obsma has said it should be repealed.

That's interesting: surely almost none of the state violence still being committed under this law is aimed at persons who had anything to do with 9/11, right? As for organizations, isn't Al Qaeda just a brand now?

The obvious intended consequence of that wording was for the enemy to be an abstraction, to be extended as needed. It's much easier to justify going to war once, and simply readjust who exactly you are warring against as required.

> That's interesting: surely almost none of the state violence still being committed under this law is aimed at persons who had anything to do with 9/11, right?

Its all being targeted at people or organizations the President -- whether Bush or Obama -- has determined have the requisite relationship to 9/11. The accuracy of that determination is immaterial to the AUMF, which isn't contingent on the actual relation of the targets to 9/11, but on the President's determination of the relation.

The only "mistake" about it was the failure to contain the blowback.

They are if you prefer to live in a world where fact and spin are indistinguishable, and of equal value. To each their own, I guess.

Why can't fruit be compared?

The huge false equivalence you are making is Obama is waging a war against a truly evil organization. But the college shootings are senseless violence purposely used on innocent people.

You can throw in the hospital attack. But that attack obviously wasn't purposeful. It also wasn't a drone. It was ground support strike, something Obama wouldn't be involved in.

You can blame Obama for keeping us in the war. In that respect he is responsible. But the hospital was bombed during a major battle against the Taliban, who were attempting to take the 5th largest city in Afghanistan.

Obama is trying to kill people to make the world better. People like the Umpqua shooter are killing good people to make the world worse, on purpose.

You're right in that's a false equivalence; but the response of Obama about the two events that happened the same day was striking.

He has no control whatsoever about crazy people who shoot other people on campuses; and yet that's what he chose to talk about.

He has a lot of control about what targets US armies bomb, drones or no drones. And yet he has almost nothing to say about that.

But my point is not even this. My point is Obama actually loves guns... when they're his own.

Everyone who uses guns thinks they're doing God's work -- and nobody is.

"Evil" is just a point of view when used as an epithet. The only thing that separates us from true evil is certainly not the assertion that one is right and the other, wrong.

It's the rule of law. Get rid of due process, and evil is everywhere, or nowhere at all.

Obama talks about military issues all the time. He talked about them today, explaining why he's decided not to withdraw troops from Afghanistan for the time being (meaning during his tenure). To expect him to talk about the issues you care most about to the exclusion of all others is simply childish.

It's the rule of law. Get rid of due process, and evil is everywhere, or nowhere at all.

The US is, by law, engaged in a militarized conflict with radical Islamic groups. If you actually care about this issue as you profess to do, then you could try urging Congress to rescind the Authorization for the Use of Military Force which legally invests the executive branch with the power to carry on such activities.

Personally, even if the US withdrew into its own boundaries like a tortoise tomorrow I would not expect global peace to break out as a result. there are other actors with geopolitical interests of their own who would cheerfully move in to fill the resulting vacuum (and arguably this is already happening in Syria, where Obama has opted to minimize US involvement). As military options go, our drone policy minimizes harm while being consistent with our existing objectives. Of course it minimizes harm for Americans more than for the populations of places where drones are deployed, which creates a significant political surplus that may actually worsen radicalism. On the other hand, if we were to eliminate that surplus by putting an equivalent number of American lives at risk by deploying them instead of drones, experience suggests it would result in significantly greater harm to non-combatants, based on how badly things have turned out for people in Iraq.

> there are other actors with geopolitical interests of their own who would cheerfully move in to fill the resulting vacuum

So the argument for perpetual and unwinnable warfare is - if we don't someone else will? You think that's worth the live's of US service members and the inevitable collateral damage inflicted in war zones? I feel like I'm missing part of the picture.

Personally, a better way of combating radical islam has less to do with drones and more to do with education and opportunity.

There are degrees of warfare, and the sort we are conducting at the moment is pretty mild compared to things like carpet-bombing Viet Nam ~50 years ago. I do favor a soft power strategy involving education and opportunity but civic societies are not things that come into being overnight, they can require decades or even centuries to take root. It would help, of course, if we didn't maintain alliances with semi-totalitarian states like Saudi Arabia.

On the other hand, I don't think that peace and enlightened democracy are necessarily the natural state of mankind - I favor Hobbes over Rousseau, and think the latter's glorification of primitive society rather facile, notwithstanding the fact that he meant well.

As hands off as the war is it still costs more than it's worth. The benefit is not only zero, at the end of the day we have more enemies than we started with - along with all the human collateral. Obama could literally have taken that entire operations budget, spent it on hookers and coke, and we'd still be better off.

I'm not sure what the natural state of mankind is, but the increasing flow of information is forcing us to act rationally and remember we have a public reputation that may follow us forever. Accountability is quickly becoming forced on us by the internet and smartphones so it'll be interested to see how this all turns out.

As hands off as the war is it still costs more than it's worth

That's very hard to measure. ISTM that in international relations things tend to either muddle along rather badly with gradual incremental improvements that roughly track economic growth, but when they go bad (ie resulting in war or massive political change) they tend to do so quickly and catastrophically (in the sense of a major discontinuity rather than mere badness, although more often than not it's bad).

And while I share your reservations about the US as a global hyperpower whose policing of international relations can frequently result in backlash (not unlike its internal policing culture...) I'm also inclined to look back at the era prior to the formation of the US and note that when there's no clearly dominant actor on the scene you have endemic peer conflict.

the increasing flow of information is forcing us to act rationally

I'm more pessimistic than you about this. It is easier then ever to make rational decisions thanks to all that information and accumulated insight, and I do think the US is maturing as a society. But there's an argument that irrational political behavior is rationally rewarding for voters who know they have very little influence over the political process and take their vote as an opportunity to express their disgruntlement through perversity. Bryan Caplan has a very good book about this called The Myth of the Rational Voter, if you like economics.

Boko Haram - death to western education.

Yeah, good luck with that.

>Get rid of due process, and evil is everywhere, or nowhere at all.

Ok. Bambax why don't you serve Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour a summons to the S.D of NY. I'll send your parents flowers at your funeral.

Due process has no process in combat.

  > Due process has no process in combat

The problem with that attitude is how quickly the term "enemy combatant" will be (or was) redefined to mean 'any person we don't like'

That's just a slippery slope fallacy.

Fallacy, eh? Remember when the DOJ had a secret interpretation[1] of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act: A federal court and even the author of the Patriot Act itself have revealed that the meaning of “tangible things” was not quite as the NSA had interpreted it, and the massive data collection was not the purposed of the provision[2]

1. https://www.eff.org/foia/section-215-usa-patriot-act

2. http://www.purplepolitics.com/articles/LTKEbLaSxJrMo9cRj

It's a description of what is already happening. But even the first step on that allegedly fallacious slope is an unacceptable one, so that's kind of moot.

Because the campus killings score political points and that is the only game he plays. He certainly isn't going to hand points to opponents; here or at home. He portrays a random shooting as an epidemic while totally ignoring the violence in minority areas of US cities where far more die than in the college shooting.

Its all politics. Obama loves guns when they serve his political interest. He doesn't love those he owns, he uses those which support his position.

Yeah, I don't see how this is even a question. Politicians will pander.

Why is it obvious that the attack on the hospital wasn't purposeful?

This article by associated press indicates that they attacked the hospital on purpose.

http://bigstory.ap.org/urn:publicid:ap.org:5e20fcd92aee49e69...

> Obama is trying to kill people to make the world better...

I have no words for this. How a person can even entertain such thoughts is beyond me.

>Why is it obvious that the attack on the hospital wasn't purposeful?

Because there is no motive.

From the story you quote "It's unclear whether commanders who unleashed the AC-130 gunship on the hospital — killing at least 22 patients and hospital staff — were aware that the site was a hospital or knew about the allegations of possible enemy activity."

What is more likely. The US suddenly decided to murder a bunch of universally beloved Doctors or they fucked up bigtime?

>I have no words for this. How a person can even entertain such thoughts is beyond me.

I find it hard to believe that you can't understand why I'd think killing a bunch of Talibani is great for the world.

Doctors Without Borders has said that all sides in the conflict were repeatedly told the exact location of their hospital, yet it was attacked anyway. That makes it more difficult to dismiss as a mistake, and we will have to wait for the investigation(s) to know what happened.

Regarding the hospital: I just noted that you jump conclusions on this issue even while investigation has not been finished yet. You just hope or want to believe that the US military didn't bomb the structure on purpose.

> I find it hard to believe that you can't understand why I'd think killing a bunch of Talibani is great for the world.

Look, we all reject the goals of the Taliban, I think we're here on the same page. But the problem I have with what you are saying is this:

Military campaigns usually have political or economic goals. The US declared their war on terror as the political goal when they started the military campaign in Afghanistan. Later they added building a democracy as a political goal in Afghanistan.

For this they had to undermine their opponents ability to fight their political goals and in the process they destroyed military infrastructure, weapon caches, communication and of course people were killed.

Killing is part of operations in war, but not the main strategy or goal. Whenever it is, you'll usually see genocide, ethnic cleansing and the likes.

Like the Jihadists raging in Syria right now. They are killing the "unbelievers" right now for a (in their distorted view) better world. And once you are killing for a better world, why not celebrate the act of killing by inventing new cruel ways of killing and even filming it? (like ISIS does)

I can't read the US presidents mind, but I'm absolutely sure that he would reject your line of thinking for the exact same reasons. He probably thinks about it as a way to undermine the terrorists capabilities of achieving their harmful goals. I for one reject the means he is using to achieve HIS goals, but I do not believe that he is a crazy person believing in killing for a better world!

It's not that there was no motive, it's that you don't know enough of what's going on to see the possibilities.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-06/did-obama-bomb-doct...

The motive is actually obvious. MSF treats all patients regardless of what "side" they are on in a conflict. The Afghans/US felt/believed that MSF were treating wounded Taliban and decided to destroy the hospital as an act of reprisal/total war.

Wow, I guess people out there really do think reality is as predictable and simple as a movie plot.

> I have no words for this. How a person can even entertain such thoughts is beyond me.

Being condescendingly naive doesn't make you a better person

I do not care if I'm a better person than someone else. I'll leave that to you.

They attacked the hospital purposely, but (it is claimed) because their Afghan allies were taking fire from there, not because it was a hospital. Now if they (or anyone) bombed a hospital in order to lower morale and inconvenience enemies by preventing any medical activities from taking place, that would indicate a very different purpose.

If we are to believe the US government, they should release the recorded video from the AC-130 gunship so we can all make up our own minds.

I have no objection to their doing so, but it won't shed any light on the motivations of the people who ordered it into action.

Yes it would.

>> Obama is trying to kill people to make the world better...

> I have no words for this. How a person can even entertain such thoughts is beyond me. reply

Let's apply your lost of words to WWII. Do you believe it was unjust or unfair to kill Germans in the service of stopping that war? Are you still at a loss for words?

You don't torture.

Torture is wrong and evil. Defending it is wrong and evil.

I'm at no loss for words, but you may be in need of a soul.

Nice straw man (or change of subject). No one, until now, has said anything of torture.

And your final sentence... just wow.

That is just your opinion. Almost all US military intervention since 2001 has resulted in a lot of evil and this evil is continuing to this day and will do so for a very long time. You actually created the power vacuum which IS is exploiting.

This is just my opinion.

Never mind creating & funding both Taliban and ISIS in the first place.

The US has fought ISIS from day one, and before Obama left Iraq they had been reduced to nothing more than a few armed mafioso collecting protection money and robbing banks. And if anyone created the Taliban, it was the ISI. The worst the US did was join a Middle Eastern and Pakistani coalition to arm and train them against a brutal Soviet occupation.

>The US has fought ISIS from day one

http://www.infowars.com/you-do-realize-that-the-u-s-funded-a...

"Obama is trying to kill people to make the world a better place."

I wonder if that's why he was given the Nobel Peace Prize.

That's interesting. Wouldn't that logic excuse the "weapons" though? A common nazi excuse after WWII was that they were just obeying orders. That excuse seems to have been wildly disregarded.

Edit: Yes, I am very aware both parties should then be considered morally responsible.

The Nuremberg trials established that 'just obeying orders' is no excuse, that acting as the tool of another does not absolve a person. That doesn't mean the person giving the orders isn't at least as guilty as the person who carries them out.

That's right, but it does mean there is a totally valid distinction between "authorizing" killings, and carrying them out yourself. The top level comment is blurring lines that shouldn't need to be blurred.

A leader ordering murder is both a murderer and someone ordering murderer. Someone fulfilling that order is a murderer.

Usually, the general use of language tries to hide this. Presidents "order killings", and people "pull the trigger, but the orders come from elsewhere". Nobody involved feels like a murderer, opposed to all of them.

If you hire a hitman to kill your spouse, both you and the hitman are guilty of murder.

> If you hire a hitman to kill your spouse, both you and the hitman are guilty of murder.

That's generally because of laws which explicitly make procuring, soliciting, etc., a crime that is actually committed an offense for which the perpetrator can be punished as a principal of the solicited, procured, etc., offense; that is, the law recognizes that the acts involved is meaningfully distinct, but assigns the same culpability to those distinct acts.

So, the analogy to law sort of undermines the idea posited upthread that it doesn't make sense to distinguish the act of authorizing from the act of performing what has been authorized.

The law isn't an intelligent being that makes its own choices. It is an artifact created by humans, who have a reason for making it such. Humans have considered, in the US, that hiring a hitman to kill a target is murder, so they have ensured the law reflects such. Since an entire rewrite of the law isn't possible for every change, it sometimes means that the law will have to have less than perfect patches applied. But to suggest that the way it is reasoned about in law is the way it is meant to be makes as much sense as looking as a kludge and saying that the kludge is what was wanted, ignoring all the factors that lead to the genesis of a kludge.

Testing susceptibility to peer pressure in an individual mind is very a interesting idea.

Unfortunately, we can't accurately test it _yet_. A huge amount of data and tests -along with massive improvements in the understanding of the human brain- would be required to make a complete snapshot, without which testing isn't possible. We can't eve be sure this theoretical test is possible.

This alone wouldn't prove that their hands are clean, just that they wouldn't be as much to blame as someone who didn't succumb to social pressures and had more of a choice in the matter.

> This alone wouldn't prove that their hands are clean, just that they wouldn't be as much to blame as someone who didn't succumb to social pressures and had more of a choice in the matter.

I don't think this is the real deal behind that decision. We've established that people are generally pretty susceptible to authority and peer pressure. Moreover, military training exists primarily to increase it. But the effect that legal clause has is that it counteracts this susceptibility by removing any doubt you could have that you'll be on the hook if you follow orders telling you to commit atrocities. It reduces the effect of peer pressure.

I have trouble with that phrasing, but I also have trouble with the phrasing that you suggest, too.

I have trouble with the word "authorize" because if he authorized the assassination, then (to me at least) that implies that the operator could choose to act or not. Was the operator able to choose? If not, then it's more than an authorization.

Maybe "ordered" is more correct, but I have my suspicions that word goes too far in the other direction.

This is just nitpicking. You "just" kill a person with a gun, but you don't "just" kill a person with a missile. Any complex weapon system will require you to "authorize" the launch. Similarly here, "authorizing to assasinate" should be read as "deployed a very complex weapon". Obviously, in no way this absolves one from responsibility.

> He (and Bush before him) assassinated people, assassinates them without trial or due process, while smiling and holding babies and making jokes at the White House correspondents dinner, and complaining about the gun culture and mass killings.

Reminds me, when I saw him interview with Jon Stewart a few weeks back, I was thinking "look at him, he's trying! such a nice man" (actually he was mainly avoiding making excuses).

Then I thought of the character of the Smiler in Transmetropolitan, and remembered.

Yesterday, part of a Nine Inch Nails lyric sprang out at me, and I had to think back of that scene:

"Don't try to tell me that some power can corrupt a person, you haven't had enough to know what it's like."

A lot of powerful people explain away the cognitive dissonance between their promises and their actions with some variation of the above, in different words. And the others, I fear, are just clever enough to not say it out loud. And what are they supposed to do? Have you ever listened to the raving rationalisations of a heroin junkie? If you think that's of a fault in their person instead of a product of their environment, then I suppose you haven't had enough to know what it's like.

We should treat addiction and abuse like the health problem it is, not a criminal problem. And we should start with the power elite.

Agreed entirely; drone strikes are called "signature strikes" much of the time specifically because of how unified their political and tactical appendages are.

Sure, the swipe of the pen or an "okay, go for it" is a few steps divorced from lasing the missile yourself, but it's part of the same causal chain, and that is how responsibility should be assigned.

When Obama says something meaningful, you can assume that it is a lie... like stopping the militarization of local city police forces with MRAPs and such (or not renewing the (un)"PATRIOT" Act..

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