To quote Andrew Sullivan:
To rid the world of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and Moammar Qaddafi within six months: if Obama were a Republican, he'd be on Mount Rushmore by now.
To rid the world of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and Moammar Qaddafi within six months: if Obama were a Republican, he'd be on Mount Rushmore by now.
How many who voted for Obama (or at least against John McCain) would expect their vote would elect a President who would violate the sovereignty of Pakistan with a special forces operation, murder an American citizen without due process, and enter into armed conflict with Libya without the consultation of Congress and eventually assassinate a sitting head of state?
I still very much admire his propaganda ability. His campaign was amazingly successful. Yes, Bush being Bush helped a lot, but still. The disconnect (even among the intellectual liberals who rabidly supported him) between the perception of who Obama is and who he really is, is amazing (even after all this time).
Nobody denies that it is easy to lead and brainwash ignorant masses with fears of 'terrorism', 'communism' & 'homosexuals' but one has to admire the ability to brainwash relatively liberal and intelligent people. Looking back at Obama I will mostly remember him winning the AdAge 'Marketing Campaign Of The Year' award.
http://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-market...
He put Apple, Zappos & Nike to shame.
And then him getting the Nobel Peace prize. That was just the cherry on top.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/05/flashback-2008-mc...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-20/french-air-power-be...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/world/africa/qaddafis-deat...
/sarcasm
Not likely.
I would rather Qaddafi had been brought to trial and punished accordingly.
That's what they said on TV, didn't they? Must be true then.
In other words - how do you know? How do you know the picture you are being fed by the media is accurate enough to assign him a "violent death" as a proper punishment? And without a public trial at that.
Critically analyzing media portrayals is good. Dismissing any conclusions reached as, "well nobody can really say" is facile and lazy. It's what people who don't have anything to add to the conversation say in an attempt to sound smart.
This applies to literally every comment on this page.
It is not "well nobody can really say" dismissal. It is a matter of media feeding made-up facts since current conflict started. You must've missed the photos of insurgents storming strongholds in their flip-flops, the same guy posing dead in more than one position and other marvels of staged photography. The fighting was there, but it was not done by "insurgents" photographed by the press. Whatever was coming out of the tube was an A grade orchestrated bullsh#t. That's what's depressing. If you are comfortable cheering on his death provided with such accurate and transparent media coverage, who am I to spoil the fun.
Therefore the past 30 years mean nothing?
His crimes did not begin and end with the NATO operation. He was notorious for decades, in particular when certain Western governments were all too happy to offer him hospitality and (military) trade deals knowing full well what he sanctioned against his own people. But who cares about such trivialities when they're our friends, right?
At some point you will have to trust something - you can't even be sure of what you see with your eyes as shown by numerous studies of false eye witness testimony.
On the cases where the evidence is slim or the news has just broken I'm very critical - this morning I didn't quite belive that he was even dead. But when you have such overwhelming evidence of horrible deeds over the last couple of decades it is pretty easy to say he was a bad man.
He was a politician wasn't he? Seems proof enough as far as I'm concerned.
No punishment, just history...
Everything a bliss.