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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24836 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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This comment is unhinged. I'm reminded of the quote (paraphrasing) "You condemn a black-and-white morality as having only two colors; but you replace it with grey, which is only one."

To my knowledge, the Obama administration only sought the torture and execution of one US citizen on political grounds (Snowden). I'm quite happy to deny "moral community" to the nation's enemies, which is why I drew the line at US citizens.

Putin's Russia is wildly different. Take for instance Trump's election while Obama was in power. How does that fit into "Power suffers no competitors"?

To my knowledge, the Obama administration only sought the torture and execution of one US citizen on political grounds

What about Abdulrahman al-Awlaki? I suppose being the family of a political enemy is "political grounds" but then that decays into agreeing with me.

Take for instance Trump's election while Obama was in power.

Unlike you, I'm not convinced that the ceremonial power structure of the US maps onto its real power structure. In a presidential election, who the ruling class is is almost never on the ballot. And when it is is precisely when the historic assassinations start to happen.

I admit I had not heard of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki before.

https://web.archive.org/web/20121103143344/http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-airstrike-that-killed-american-teen-in-yemen-raises-legal-ethical-questions/2011/10/20/gIQAdvUY7L_story.html

Two U.S. officials said the intended target of the Oct. 14 airstrike was Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian who was a senior operative in Yemen’s al-Qaeda affiliate.

One administration official described the younger Awlaki as a bystander, in the wrong place at the wrong time. “The U.S. government did not know that Mr. Awlaki’s son was there” before the order to launch the missile was given, the official said.

Is that actually the best example you can come up with? I think it proves my point.

I mean we are talking about civilian US citizen casualties of the Obama administration specifically. That's a narrow category that people only really care about because citizenship is supposed to entitle you to some protection from the US government on paper (but does not because power comes first and constitutional decorum second).

We can talk more broadly about how the US treats its enemy populations if you want. People seem to have forgotten about Abu Grahib. I have not.

Fair enough. But you're the one who brought up the Obama administration by specifically claiming it used "torture and executions" (plural) as methods of political repression. To me "political" implies intra-country, not extra-national, but maybe you meant a more expansive definition of that word?

You talk abstractly about vague notions of 'political repression', but I have no idea who, concretely, you're talking about.

To me "political" implies intra-country, not extra-national

I see, well I certainly did not mean it that way in this case. I'm talking specifically about threats to a given established regime. What distinctions or origin we draw I don't really see as relevant. I'm talking about how power treats its challengers writ large.

I have no idea who, concretely, you're talking about

Anyone who is a political enemy of the United States. In the Obama iteration that means mostly islamists, known or suspected, and their friends and family.

Certainly not friends of your average westerner, but they're not granted trial or human rights which they are entitled to according to the ideological principles of the American regime. Clearly demonstrating that power is ultimately unconstrained by ideology.

And it'd be foolish to think that this is exceptional, given the US has engaged, on its own civilian population, in arbitrary internment and mass immolation even in quite recent history.

At this point I want to stress that I'm not trying to tarnish the reputation of the US in particular, we all have skeletons in our closets, and it's a very nice country indeed. But it is still a country. And power works there the same way it does everywhere else in the world, however much we want to delude ourselves that magical dirt or pieces of paper make it otherwise.

Vae victis.

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