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Comment by thraway2016 | Hacker News Reader

thraway2016

I am consistently baffled how a political party can make so many decisions that are objectively wrong and still garner support of roughly 50% of the population.

Same way that "the other side" went from a staunch antiwar position to incessant apologetics for Obama's wars, extrajudicial drone murders, deployment of a massive panopticon surveillance state, and sabre-rattling against Russia.

It's always okay when my guy does it.

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I hear that often these days, but in the past 8 years conservative pundits constantly ridiculed Obama as "apologist" for talking to Iran, talking to Cuba, pulling troops off Iraq, not bombing Libya after Benghazi, dissenting with Israel's stance on Palestine, and other issues.

Maybe it's me, but I feel it is only very recently that most Republican supporters started to criticize Obama for "saber-rattling against Russia." Coincidentally, that timing roughly matches the rise of Trump.

Suddenly Russia is cool, and you are supposed to make friends with them, otherwise you are a warmonger. (But apparently not China---it's still cool to be hostile toward China.)

Trump has reversed his 2014 position on sanctions against Russia, and how dangerous it is [1]

It's a moot point whether Russia owns him or not, because he now behaves as you would expect if Russia did own him [2]

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/16/politics/kfile-trump-russi...

[2] http://observer.com/2016/08/yes-american-spies-really-think-...

I have argued on behalf of the Obama administration's choices many times, in the context of ongoing historical events. Don't pretend that the world was a harmonious garden of Eden until Obama came along and fucked everything up, because that's counterfactual bullshit. there are things which I would also defend Trump on where there is a good argument for the preservation of the United States' national interest.

Your choice to use a throwaway account, combined with several demonstrably false claims, suggests a predisposition towards arguing in bad faith, given the wide latitude that prevails here.

Obama was the first President to have a war going for the entirety of his two terms. At best, I think he was completely spineless. So many times he could have stood up to the banker class and the war mongers, but he failed to do that. Now Trump is going to take them on.

Just for the record, Obama never wanted anything to do with Syria and Libya. And when he got involved, he did so reluctantly, and under pressure from the likes of McCain and Hillary.

As for Russia, remember the Reset button? That was Obama's idea, one that was counter to what the war machine wants. The disagreement between Obama and the military regarding Russia wasn't a small matter. At the end of the day, he lost that battle.

Now we have a Republican administration that's even closer to Russia than Obama will ever be.

Who's going to win this time. The White House or the military?

The concept of a President being pressured into waging war in Libya by a Senator and the Secretary of State is just absurd. Obama was the Commander in Chief. He could have said "no" at any time. No one forced him into it.

If you understand the forces at play, the absurdity disappears.

Our agents were already creating "facts on the ground" that the President had to act on. But beyond that, Libya was at some level, Nicolas Sarkozy's war. France saw that Iraq was very profitable for the US military industrial complex and wanted the same for itself in Libya.

Like Bill Clinton used to say, "It's the economy, stupid".

And the leader of an empire that refuses to wage war when an opportunity presents itself is not going to be very popular.

This is just conspiracy theory nonsense, a plausible seeming narrative assembled after the fact. The reality is that you have no idea why President Obama chose to act as he did. If he had decided not to intervene in Libya you could construct an equally plausible set of reasons about why that was inevitable.

Not the parent, but the geopolitical reasons why Obama chose to intervene in (say) Syria and not in (say) Saudi Arabia or Kuwait when those nations chose to machine-gun their Arab Spring protesters are pretty clear. Syria is Russian-aligned, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are US-aligned.

So, too, are the reasons why the US refuses to act against Saudi-backed forces, or in favor of Syrian forces, or most blatantly by refusing to assist secular Kurdish forces (and risk pushing Turkey into Russian arms). Killing civilians has nothing to do with it, again see the Saudis or the Kuwaitis.

Or again, see how the US backed the military coup in Egypt, as they too brutally suppressed dissent. Gotta keep Israel safe, too.

From the US perspective, the whole area is a quagmire, which is why Obama didn't actually put troops on the ground. There is literally no one who is ideologically acceptable to everyone and actually stands a reasonable chance of winning the war. We backed our allies as far as necessary, including to the extent of brutal suppression of dissent if necessary, but no farther.

Obama's decision was that we're not going to get bogged down in another unwinnable war. Realpolitik at its finest. And all the while, the power vacuum continues to turn Syria into a bloodier and bloodier meatgrinder. Not that I have any solutions either - other than "don't mouth the slogans about democracy if you're not willing to back it up".

But again, all of this has been pretty clear for a while. It's really, truly no secret what Obama's position on this has been.

The US has intervened many times in Russian-aligned countries, so your theory doesn't fit the historical facts. I suspect the actual decision making process is far more haphazard and lacks a consistent set of rules.

I don't think you read clearly what the poster was saying, which was that the U.S. intervened in Syria and not Yemen because it was aligned with Russia and especially Iran. However, we only went so far because Obama didn't want U.S. troops on the ground and couldn't order more airstrikes, for example, without having to risk a larger conflict with Russia which supports Assad.

You're making the assumption that we all have to be on one 'side' or the other, which isn't true at all. In fact it's very harmful.

We traded having US army divisions on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan for a few flareups in North Africa, so as far as "Obama's wars" I'd say that's progress. The surveillance is definitely rolled back from Bush, but regardless this and drones are both driven by Congress, which hasn't changed that much overall. The President's job is to "faithfully execute" the laws, which were passed by Congress that wanted more surveillance and wanted fewer U.S. troops in harm's way (even if that means more drones).

The democratic party has not had any sort of antiwar position since at least as far back as 2000. In fact, in 2004 they had an overt pro-intervention plank. 1

I submit that "both sides" do not, in fact, "do it". The modern republican party seems to be uniquely off of the rails.

1) http://www.antiwar.com/zunes/?articleid=3254

When exactly was the Democratic Party "antiwar"?

2001-2009

I don't think anyone was opposed to invading Afghanistan, and the dems largely supported Iraq in 2003 (granted, the country was fed false evidence). I'd say they only turned visibly anti-war shortly after the invasion and the capture of Sadat Hussein.

The War in Afghanistan was supported broadly by both parties.

Afghanistan was a sweep. Only one person -- Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) -- voted against it in Congress.

Iraq was a Republican President's war. In Congress, the Republicans voted for the war by 48-1. The Dems voted for the war by 29-21. The Independent voted against.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/107-2002/s237

You know, you say that, but there really isn't much of anything to back it up.

"I am consistently baffled why people are fans of sports teams that always lose!"

Chicago stuck with their non-winning team for a hundred years. Don't expect Republicans to change their minds any time soon.

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