Reader Brian McManus asks:
“Just wondering if you can find time to post a piece on what the U.S. should do (or not do) regarding the current situation with ISIS in Iraq. Not so much on how the situation got to be where it is, but what the U.S. and/or other nations should do in situations like this. Would appreciate your thoughts on the issue.”
Thanks for writing, Brian.
Americans are “can do” people. Optimism is an appealing national personality trait but it comes with the unfortunate tendency to overestimate what can be done and its more dangerous corollary, the will to act when doing nothing would be preferable.
We saw the pitfalls of can-do following 9/11. Initial reactions to the attacks were shock and confusion. Traditional ideological divides were blurred, but in those early days one could still discern the pre-GWOT liberal tendency toward treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue, versus the old hawkish rightist desire to lash out militarily. Then the Right trotted out a line that resonated across the spectrum and caused the antiwar left to dissolve as into mist:
We have to do something.
In the United States, “something” means military action.
The thing we “have” to do “something” about always refers to foreign policy.
Americans don’t feel that “have to do something” about domestic problems. Poverty? No need to act. Corrupt bankers? Inaction is fine. But if a crisis flares up overseas (a civil war as in Syria or Libya, a siege of civilians as in Sarajevo or Iraqi Kurdistan, cross-border encroachment as in ex-Soviet Georgia or Crimea), and especially if it involves opponents the media categorizes as “bad guys” (regional economic rivals such as Iran, China or Russia, radical Islamists who may or may not have gotten their guns from us), “we” “have” “to” “do” “something” (military action).
This is not true.
There are always alternatives to military action. The success of the formerly Al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria insurgency, which controls half of both countries, is no exception. Half-measures come in both military (money and weapons) and non-military (political advisors) forms.
We can do nothing.
Albania is doing nothing in Iraq. Cuba is doing nothing in Iraq. Vietnam is doing nothing in Iraq. These countries have not been harmed by their refusal to intervene militarily in Iraq.
As I see it, Brian, whatever appetite ordinary Americans have for Obama’s airstrikes against ISIS and other attempts to prop up the current regime in Baghdad stems from the investment of lives and treasure the U.S. has made since the 2003 invasion.
“To be sure, the cost was high,” then-Secretary of State Leon Panetta said when Obama ordered the main troop withdrawal from Iraq. “But those lives were not lost in vain. They gave birth to an independent, free, and sovereign Iraq.”
If ISIS captures Baghdad and establishes Taliban-style Sharia law throughout Iraq, complete with amputations of accused thieves and stonings of wayward women — leaving Iraq, already in worse shape than it was under Saddam, an unequivocal nightmare for its people and a base for radical jihadis out to overthrow U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia — Panetta’s statement will have been belied.
The war will have been exposed as a total waste.
Which it was. Every American who lost a life or a limb in Iraq was sacrificed stupidly, predictably, in a war that never could have been won even had the generals and politicians in charge of it weren’t idiots.
The attempt to salvage Iraq by saving the rump Iraqi state inside the Green Zone is a refusal to accept defeat. But that doesn’t change reality.
We lost the Iraq War years ago. The sooner we accept that there is nothing to be saved there and move on, the better off we’ll be.
Undeniably and regrettably, washing our hands of Iraq — aside from leaving ISIS alone, we ought to evacuate the embassy and other government personnel Obama says we need to “protect” — will result in awful consequences. Whether or not ISIS can close the deal by capturing Baghdad, the sectarian conflict will escalate. Areas within ISIS control will be lost for the foreseeable future. More civilians will die, many as the result of “ethnic cleansing.”
We know these things will happen because we’ve lost wars before. The U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam created the “boat people” crisis, opened space for wars between Vietnam and its neighbors China and Cambodia, and permitted a communist regime hostile to U.S. interests to consolidate power, and exclude American business for decades.
But consider the alternative.
Remaining in Vietnam would have required pouring more money and more soldiers down a hole, and slaughtering countless more Vietnamese. We still would have lost. All that post-withdrawal stuff — the civil conflicts, reprisals against our former local collaborators — would still have happened. It just would have happened later.
After we accepted defeat and walked away from Vietnam, on the other hand, things eventually worked out. Vietnam is now a major U.S. trading partner; nearly half a million American tourists visit Vietnam each year.
A guy named Barack Obama once summarized his foreign policy as “Don’t do stupid stuff” like invading Iraq in the first place. Hillary’s jibes and Obama’s actions aside, it’s good advice. To which I’ll add Ho Chi Minh’s legendary order to his general Vo Nguyen Giap, who was planning the decisive 1954 battle that would expel France from Indochina: “If victory is certain, then you are to attack. If victory is not certain, then you must resolutely refrain from attacking.”
Victory against ISIS is anything but certain. Therefore, in this and similar situations, I would refrain from attacking.
(Ted Rall, syndicated writer and cartoonist, is the author of “After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back As Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan,” out Sept. 2. Subscribe to Ted Rall at Beacon.)
COPYRIGHT 2014 TED RALL, DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
47 Comments.
> . If victory is not certain, then you must resolutely refrain from attacking.
Sun Tzu said something similar in The Art of War. Funny how we can’t seem to absorb wisdom that’s been known to the world for over two millennia.
Absolutely we should do something: we should stop bombing the shit of the Middle East, pack up our bags and go home. If we hadn’t intervened back in 1958, Arab Spring may have come sixty years ago. If we quit fighting proxy wars in their backyard, they’d have the time and space they need to grow.
The problems “over there” aren’t inherent – they are a direct result of normal growing pains being continually thwarted by outside forces. Iraq’s problems today are the result of Britain cobbling together a country out of three disparate peoples. Left to themselves, they’d have grown into three small countries who would have had learn how to deal with each other peacefully. Instead they got crammed together and left to fester under a horrific dictator. Once that dictator was removed, fifty-year-old tensions exploded.
The creation of Israel was just about the only thing we could have done to make the situation even worse. THAT is a wound that will never heal.
It may be painful to watch, but intervening simply causes more pain in the long run.
I think you’re missing the big picture. When Vietnam occurred, people saw that a LOT of money can be made when at ‘war’ (police action, etc.). So I would say it’s accurate that americans need to DO something when a flare up occurs, but it’s more for cash generation than actually completing a mission.
Sorry, I should have placed this comment here first:
CH, you observe: “… (i)f victory is not certain, then you must resolutely refrain from attacking. Sun Tzu said something similar in The Art of War. Funny how we can’t seem to absorb wisdom that’s been known to the world for over two millennia.”
This begs the question of whether the circumstances currently slaughtering people in Iraq are, somehow, an ongoing “victory” of some sorts, say like, for the Bankster-class of warmongerer who makes all kinds of truly obscene profits financing the weapons being sold to all the participants of this perpetually murderous, Middle-East bloodbath?
The institutional-citizens of the extra-nationally incorporated, Zionland phantasmi-state (headquartered in both Palestine, AND New York) are the progenerating guardians of that One-World-conquesting conglomerate of the 1/100th of 1% banking class. Meanwhile, WDC truly is Zionist-occupied real estate, at least as far as its money-lenders are concerned.
DanD
Ted,
How about a caption on that photo? I’d really like to know exactly what I’m horrified to be staring at. I can make a guess: Soldiers of some sort, armed with weapons either paid for by American tax dollars or manufactured by companies owned mainly by hyperwealthy American interests, are murdering unarmed civilians or unarmed POWs.
ISIS already won. They already hold the Mosul Dam. If they blow it up, how hellish will Iraq become? (Some detail would be appreciated.) If they do or don’t, they’re still going to be a force of mayhem in Iraq. Why? They’re on a mission from God. Just like the Blues Brothers and the anti-abortionists and the sovereign citizen movement and all the rest of the wackiness.
Also, ISIS, by definition, is gonna have to keep up the pressure. Remember when al Qaeda/the Taliban blew up those statues in Afghanistan about six months before 9/11? Yeah, ISIS was busy blowing up statues a few weeks ago, wasn’t it? You think they’re going to stop with that? Check back in six months.
One wonders what God was doling out the rewards in the case of all the non-religious expansionist atrocities in the last 100 years?
The one word conspicuously missing from this long screed is genocide. When the worst crime against humanity is being openly proclaimed and practied it is the duty of every government, whatever its past and present criminal record, to exterminate these scum under the long-established customary international law dealing with “enemies of the human race” as these genocidal takfiri Nazis undoubtedly are.
Damn! I think your definition would also include the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, etal.
I’ll cast my vote in favor of that!
😀
Why stop there? I don’t recall Bush losing by a landslide in 2004. I don’t recall a general strike across the entire economy to stop the war. I don’t recall mass tax resistance. I don’t recall anybody but an incredibly small group putting their neck on the line to even question the wars, let contemplate doing anything substantive about it.
Business just kept on keepin on as usual ,and so did wars, some of which are escalating as we speak a decade later.
When we start to look at culpability seriously, we realize it reaches far past the “leaders”. It reaches down through the concentrated money and power brokers, all the way through to the final enablers.
And then the problems (and possible solutions) are much different than when we observe the problem casually.
Yes, I find this word is conspicuously missing in many contexts. LIke, for example when considering US taxpayers culpability in the mass killings of innocent people across the globe (yes, even under the excuse of stopping something like genocide.).
The most likely outcome of US involvement is more dead civilians than are going to die without our involvement. So unless you are going to strap on a gun and start taking out isis fighters yourself… I think I’ll refrain from finishing that sentence.
It’s tragic that the largest single budgetary expenditure (ie military) is completely useless (actually, worse than useless), but that is the fact. We need to get used to this, cut our military down by 3/4 and instead do what we can to build international justice and enforcement so that there is an actual capacity to do something in these cases.
Trollin’ – Trollin’ – Trollin’
Keep the troll a-trollin’
Oh, the fool’s a-rollin’
Keep the troll a-trollin’
Not I!
😀
not sure if actual lack of ideas or just buying time
Just bored with posts that come from a Troll and have no relevant content and are a waste of my time and the time of others. When you grow up and offer something worthy of consideration, I might deign to respond. Until then I will ignore your posts: I DO NOT FEED TROLLS!
@derlehrer It would be redundant to label you because the very short platitudes, pedantry and insults follwed by an emoticon do the job just fine.
I think most people are (or at least pretend to be) utilitarians when it comes to human quality of life. We want the optimal condition wherein the most possible people are experiencing the highest possible quality of life over as long of a time as possible. This utilitarianism comes into conflict with our need for immediate actions: we want to immediately end diseases, or poverty, or highly-militant groups, even if it might create a dangerous drop in short-term qualities of life for some people. And this utilitarianism comes into conflict with differences of opinion: ISIS thinks that human quality of life would improve with fewer non-Sunnis in the world.
Obviously ISIS does not get to claim any higher moral ground, because their opinions and actions are, from an honest and objective viewpoint, blatantly xenophobic and genocidal. It seems, from the viewpoint of the 7 billion people on the planet who are not ISIS, that stopping ISIS would be good. So can the world stop (and/or defeat) ISIS in a manner in which the people who are currently threatened by ISIS would see an increase in their quality of life? Or does stopping or defeating ISIS result in a situation in which the people currently threatened by ISIS end up being threatened by a different militant group in 5 years from now? Can stopping or defeating ISIS be done in a way wherein civilian casualties are kept to minimal levels? Are regional governments willing to ally, even if only temporarily, in order to stop or defeat ISIS? Is stopping or defeating ISIS going to have a positive or negative impact on civil war within Syria?
These are all questions worth actually getting answers to before a country in another hemisphere starts blowing things up.
and after you’ve mulled over these question for as long (and it will be very long) as it takes to answer them, will any Yazidis at all still be alive?
That’s a great emotional response, thank you for providing an example of one.
There’s about 700,000 Yazidis in the world. The word is that the ISIS has killed at least 500 of them. That’s bad, and our emotional response is that we should do something (aka, kill people) in order to prevent more deaths. But let’s think about this in a utilitarian way.
Since the lowest estimates are that malaria kills about 2,700 people a day (1 million deaths a year, divided by number of days a year), every day, that means that efforts to stop/defeat malaria should be at least five times as stringent as efforts to stop/defeat ISIS. Ditto for HIV/AIDS, that also kills somewhere upwards of 2,700 people a day.
Yes, obviously, effort should be spent on enhancing the quality and length of life of Yazidis. But if you want to make progress towards that, comments like yours that act as if they are under threat of extinction are not going to help.
You cannot solve a problem by attacking its symptoms. First, we need to answer the question, “Why does ISIS exist?”
We can kill ’em all, but unless we remove the incentive another organization will just pop up in its place.
heart attack is a symptom, and there may be multiple causes. Are you saying that the symptom should not be treated until the causes have been removed?
I’m saying that it doesn’t do any good to treat the symptoms without removing the causes.
Your cardiologist will tell you to eat better and exercise more, if you don’t do that you’ll just have another heart attack.
We could drone all of ISIS tomorrow, but without changing our policies in the ME another group will just pop up in their place. We’ve been fighting fire with fire for years and all we get is bigger fires.
@ fosforos –
“heart attack is a symptom….”
REALLY? Where did you obtain your medical degree?
Coughing & sneezing are symptoms. But HEART ATTACK????? It’s a “symptom” of WHAT?
Yeah, and that should be part of the utilitarian thinking behind any proposed military engagement. This myth that “we defeated the bad guys, we have saved the world” is way too prevalent among people who should be rational/mature/adult enough to realize that killing a violent organization does not guarantee the end of violence in that region for very long.
Defeating Nazi Germany? Good idea. Replacing half of Nazi-occupied Europe with Soviet puppet states? That’s an improvement but it’s not a miracle cure.
A well-written, well-reasoned piece you have here, Ted. The only thing I see that is missing is the motive for involvement: profits for the arms suppliers and the politicians. “Follow the money.”
🙁
Ted, I think you are WAY too pessimistic about the limits of American power. Until ISIS went genocidal I supported doing nothing but ethnic cleansing no matter where it is must be stamped out. Leaders need to know that the US will kill them if they go down that path.
Also I’m not sure what you mean by “lost” in iraq. What did victory look like? As far as I could tell the bush group just wanted Saddam out of power to avenge Saddam assignation attempt on bush Sr. Mission accomplished. Oh they also ensured that there were no WMDs. Mission again accomplished. That whole democracy thing was more Blair’s then bush’s. I don’t think bush gave a damn about democracy.
As far as US success, what about Korea and Chile. Both very successful US interventions where we used local dictators to create lasting US friend allied governments that even transitioned to us friend democracy. Korea in particular is instructive in this case. I think it is the model we will need to use here.
> Leaders need to know that the US will kill them if they go down that path.
When did we instigate that policy? So far, we’ve happily propped up the most genocidal countries on the planet. Israel comes to mind.
> Oh they also ensured that there were no WMDs.
That was already taken care of long before we went in.
@ Andy – I, for one, would like to know where you get your information. For example, I would like to know how you judge Korea to have been a “success.”
I won’t even bother with the rest of the nonsense. 🙁
OK. I’m sorry. My sarcasm didn’t come through…
That said I think it’s pretty clear that Korea was a success. If we hadn’t gone in their and propped up a nasty dictator the North would have taken the whole country. The difference between North and South Korea makes the case.
I won’t defend my Chile comment. It was trolling although I have met quite a few Chileans who think Pinochet saved the country from becoming Argentina (but I am a mining engineer so most of the people I know from outside the US are quite conservative)
Ted, you state,
“If ISIS captures Baghdad and establishes Taliban-style Sharia law throughout Iraq, complete with amputations of accused thieves and stonings of wayward women — leaving Iraq, already in worse shape than it was under Saddam, an unequivocal nightmare for its people and a base for radical jihadis out to overthrow U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia — Panetta’s statement will have been belied.
The war will have been exposed as a total waste.”
In line with the extra-national corporate template, the war(s) is(are) a smashing success! Arms sales are going through the roof, 3rd world overpopulation is being (badly) addressed, “foreign” economic competition is being (genocidally) suppressed, domestic tranquility is being (Posse Comitatus-lessly) redefined (by giving hick-town police forces enough military firepower to annihilate whole civic populations), and BarryHO fiddles with his nine-iron while the American empire burns.
Meanwhile, the masters of the “NEW WORLD ORDER (whothefuckever’they’reallyare)” continue to advance their own religiously insane global agenda. Under this paradigm, even failed wars are resounding successes, for whatever banking institution becomes the primary lender for all sides.
DanD
As it is, in the photo above ~
A whole lot of bodies, sweat, dust, and nasty, assault-rifle toting, Muslim-ish looking “terrorist,” but no blood spatter or noticable bullet holes or traumatic exit-wound injury among the genocidally laid-out crowd at all. Are these photo-ops being produced for a Disneyland crowd?
DanD
Personally speaking, I find your post to be offensive in the extreme.
I downloaded the photo and magnified it. Bullet wound are readily visible. “Exit-wound injury” would be visible only on the underside of these victims. Blood spatter would be obvious on the background bodies, since that’s where the shooters began their executions. The photographer is standing a safe distance from flying lead.
I think perhaps you’ve seen too many Hollywood horror movies. (?)
CH, you observe: “… (i)f victory is not certain, then you must resolutely refrain from attacking. Sun Tzu said something similar in The Art of War. Funny how we can’t seem to absorb wisdom that’s been known to the world for over two millennia.”
This begs the question of whether the circumstances currently slaughtering people in Iraq are, somehow, an ongoing “victory” of some sorts, say like, for the Bankster-class of warmongerer who makes all kinds of truly obscene profits financing the weapons being sold to all the participants of this perpetually murderous, Middle-East bloodbath?
The institutional-citizens of the extra-nationally incorporated, Zionland phantasmi-state (headquartered in both Palestine, AND New York) are the progenerating guardians of that One-World-conquesting conglomerate of the 1/100th of 1% banking class. Meanwhile, WDC truly is Zionist-occupied real estate, at least as far as its money-lenders are concerned.
DanD
The above comment should have followed CH’s comment way down below.
Apologies ~
DanD
If the US is concerned about global terror there is a simple solution and that solution is to stop engaging in it, stop funding it, and stop otherwise spurring it on.
Panetta? Our genocide machine was going at top speed in Iraq for almost 20 years before Panetta appeared on the scene.
“We” have only one thing appropriate to do. Bundle off to the Hague, for war crimes trials, the current president and the previous three, along with all their respective senior staffs and cabinet members involved in foreign policy.
No, I don’t expect it will be done but we were a totally, morally (whatever THAT means) bankrupt nation before this particular monumental atrocity began.
Agreed!
After all that’s the standard set by the Allies following WWII, trying the head honchos responsible, instead of the Lt. Calley types.
So – how do we do this?
I think it is high unlikely that we can do this. Here, “we” means American citizens.
First, our genocide machine is not unique. It is just our nation’s turn to dominate the genocide … following the rotational precedent set by European powers.
Although Cambodia just convicted former leaders of its own Khmer Rouge, that was a domestic issue (albeit in response to external pressures … applied by us, of course!) I know of no Western country that has demonstrated the intelligence and courage to do similar … much less effectively deal with its treatment of the outside world. (Consider, for example, the complete hysteria that ensues when reparations to blacks is considered in this country.)
The genocide machine has evolved as much toward deflection of responsibility and self preservation as destruction of others. This internal defense manifests itself in such pathological symptoms, derived from “directed thinking,” as cloyingly infantile militarism to blind, hyper-jingoist exceptionalism.
Even if that mythical 100 million Americans took to the streets, I doubt if national self-cleansing would be the unifying theme or be among the eventual outcomes. But the fantasy of having 100 million Americans in the street is MUCH less likely to occur than is one winning the next $100 lottery jackpot. To dwell on what one’s life would be like after either event is utter folly.
The rest of the world, e.g. BRICS, would be satisfied for us merely to stop our plotting of their destruction. That is, they, like the 100 Americans, would settle for self-preservation over justifiable prosecution/punishment of their former tormentors.
I am so cynical that I think the WWII war crimes trials, to which you refer, has been used, if not originally intended, as a cover for our atrocities after the assumption of the mantle of word domination.
Of course, this was simply the adoption of the goals of those “we” had just defeated and included persecution (that continues to this day – see “Ukraine crisis”) of our key WWII ally, the Soviet Union, which had effectively defeated Hitler before “we” appeared on the scene to harvest the accolades of the conquering hero.
All that said, I have had made, and proudly wear, a T-shirt which admonishes: “Visualize war crime indictments.”
Your thoughts?
@falco and @derlehrer In the case of the US, international treaties are not self-executing 🙁
from Foster & Elam v. Neilson:
“A treaty is, in its nature, a contract between two nations, not a legislative act. It does not generally effect, of itself, the object to be accomplished, especially so far as its operation is infra-territorial, but is carried into execution by the sovereign power of the respective parties to the instrument.
In the United States, a different principle is established. Our Constitution declares a treaty to be the law of the land. It is consequently to be regarded in courts of justice as equivalent to an act of the Legislature whenever it operates of itself, without the aid of any legislative provision. But when the terms of the stipulation import a contract, when either of the parties engages to perform a particular act, the treaty addresses itself to the political, not the Judicial, Department, and the Legislature must execute the contract before it can become a rule for the Court.”
So it would take something like an act of congress.
Seems like 28 U.S.C. § 1350 might be a better option, although, even if that rose above fantasy, we might find congress can suddenly assemble a majority to override the unlikely just outcome. Add to the mix a media chorus decrying the loss of sovereignty to foreigners who dare bring a case against “us” (with our own law meant exactly for that purpose) and you have a genuine shit show.
*?? “Visualize war crime indictments.??”
.
*I want one!*
😀
To derlehrer:
A T-shirt like that, or one even more impertinent, can be yours with only a visit or two to your local custom T-shirt shop.
I suspect it could even be ordered online but I’d go to a shop, look for cameras, pay in cash and give no personal information, including phone number … if you know what I mean.
… if you know what I mean.
.
Oh, yes indeed I do. (Why do you think I’m in MEXICO???
.
It occurred to me that I am a subscriber to an online T-shirt supplier who offers premiums to those who submit original designs! Mind if I use yours?
.
“Mind if I use yours?”
Please do, I’d be delighted !
In return you can supply me with the web address of your
T-shirt supplier.
I’m going to start working on a design with that thought.
You can visit their website (which is sometimes advertised on this page on the sidebar):
http://www.snorgtees.com/
I’ve submitted a design to them, and I would be happy to let you look – but I don’t have your contact information.
Are you on Facebook? Or can you send me an email address? If you send it codified, robot hackers won’t be able to steal it. Something along the lines of falco [at] yahoo [dot] com – and I’ll send you the .jpeg file. 🙂
[I’d send you mine, but the Troll might take it as an opportunity to harass me further.]
Thanks for the offer.
However, I don’t do Facebook and I am reluctant to put out even a coded version of my email. I am hyper careful on these matters.
I have communicated with Ted directly by his posted email address. Does he have your email address? Perhaps he would relay one of our addresses to another.
I’ll email him my permission for him to send my address to you.
Otherwise let me know, on any current thread on this site when the design is posted on the T-shirt site.
I’ve looked at all the T-shirts posted there. I was howling with laughter for quite awhile.
Thanks again.
Easy way to make contact is to get a throw-away email addy, like gmail – and post that. Dump it once contact has been made.
If you’re truly paranoid (and why wouldn’t you be?) You can give a password to your new friend via that email exchange – if he uses it in a post tomorrow you have verified that he’s the same guy.
To olegna78,
Two thoughts come to mind re 28 U.S.C. § 1350 and its use to prosecute war crimes.
That law allows “civil action by an alien for a tort ONLY.” (my emphasis)
Is a war crime a mere tort, among other possible legal classifications?
Even if a war crime is a tort, I agree, no war crime case proceed in the courts of the US. I suspect the plaintiff(s) and their attorneys would be dead within a week under “totally non-suspicious conditions.”
I would prefer the venue to be the International Criminal Court in the Hague but I assume anyone in a position to bring action there, or anywhere else with the authority to render a sentence, is intimidated by what they know would be the mother of all shit storms if they tried.
Of course there have been war crime trials and convictions, eg: http://tinyurl.com/bpdry6j, which was
“a tribunal of conscience, the Tribunal is fully aware that its verdict is merely declaratory in nature. The tribunal has no power of enforcement, no power to impose any custodial sentence on any one or more of the 8 convicted persons.”
“Of course there have been war crime trials and convictions,
eg: http://tinyurl.com/bpdry6j,…”
.
Wow! Thanks for that link. It’s going on Facebook. I was under the impression that Belgium had done something similar, but I couldn’t find it with my internet searches.
.
Noteworthy is this statement from the site:
“If President Bush was the President of extra-judicial torture then US President Barak [sic] Obama is the President of extra judicial [sic] killing through drone strikes. Our work has only just begun.”
Unfortunately, nothing has been done pursuant to that 2012 ruling. But with “Hope and Change” maybe it will.
.
[N.B. – I am especially grateful that your posts have substantial merit and referenced sources, rather than blowhard nonsense that have no substance and obfuscate the issue! 😀 )
Thanks for the compliment