The real tragedy is the free pass the press gives him, if Bush had pulled this, the drone hits, fast and furious, and more, we would have at least had the press on our side.
I can, but don't have to accept, members of his own party turning a blind eye, I will never accept a press which has.
Are we talking about the same press that cheer-led us into the Iraq war? And on a macro scale--the same press that has basically deified Ronald Reagan?
The American press has never been opposed to blowing up foreigners, because Americans believe it is our god-given right to blow up foreigners. This is true regardless of what party is in power. To the extent that there is opposition, it is rooted solely on the impact of military action on Americans--servicemen killed in action, money spent out of the Treasury, etc. That's why the press finally turned against Bush when Iraq continued to drag on. And that's also why the press doesn't care about drone strikes--the American drone operators aren't getting shot at nor do they cost us a lot of money. That's why they didn't care about cruise missiles under Clinton, either.
The press don't care because of structural reasons not because of a belief system common to Americans. Press reporting is systemically biased in favor of powerful interests that influence them by carrot and by stick.
Nerds on message boards also think that the country is outraged alongside them about TSA scans. But I listened to Talk of the Nation this week on the new TSA pocketknife policy, and the sentiment was overwhelmingly in the other direction --- "I fly with my children, so I think anything we can do to make ourself more safe...". People are angry at TSA... for relaxing restrictions on carry-on items!
I opt out of the electronic strip search at every airport. How many times do you guess I've seen someone else opting out at the same time? Zero.
I went to college in Atlanta, Georgia (a pretty liberal place as far as the South goes). A year or so after the 9/11 bombing, I remember my classmates talking about how we should turn the Middle East into a glass parking lot. Quite seriously, with zero disagreement from anyone else. This was at a well-regarded engineering school, so these weren't stupid people, and indeed they were all very nice guys. We're just a tribal people--it's "our tribe" versus "their tribe" and the use of force on people outside the tribe is seen dramatically differently than the use of force on people within the tribe.
You don't need to reach to "bias" and "powerful interests" to see why the media reports the way it does. The media is a reflection of the beliefs of the American people.
I was in school next door at Georgia State about a year after that. The way I remember it was that the entire campus was basically wailing and gnashing their teeth at the prospect of war with Iraq.
I don't remember anyone, except me, who was pro war (btw I'm ashamed that I supported the war back then--before I shifted to more libertarian views).
I was actually quite opposed to the Iraq war (on time/money grounds, not pacifism) but I was quite definitely in the minority. Then again, Georgia Tech is a pretty conservative place as far as universities go, especially within the engineering departments. I think the political tone was closer to the mainstream, though, than what is the case at other universities.
> The media is a reflection of the beliefs of the American people.
That's backwards. For issues of political significance the beliefs of the American (or other) people are a reflection of messages produced by the media. Iraq war mongering was proliferated by the media, as desired by the state.
I think that different Americans believe different things. Believe it or not, your paragraph of an anecdote from 11 years ago doesn't do much to convince me otherwise.
What's your point? Yes, there is a minority of Americans that cares about drones blowing up people in Yemen. The media does not cater to those people. None of this refutes my point.
Does "minority" here mean 49%? 1%? You don't know, you don't care. You're pretending to argue using data but really just going from your gut beliefs about media, not from any basis in fact other those precious few you've selectively picked to form your opinion over the years.
I don't see it. Bush started a literal war of aggression with press support; we're supposed to expect them to get up in arms over a few assassinations?
I don't think that the press is giving him a pass, so much as what he is doing has the approval of BOTH parties.
The press (I'm talking about the one that drives the political discourse, in this case, the major news networks) is divided into three teams:
1) MSNBC aka Team Democrat
2) Fox News aka Team Republican
3) CNN aka Team WE'RE NEUTRAL WE'RE NEUTRAL, PLEASE DON'T CALL US BIASED
Team Democrat will almost never say a bad word about Obama because he is a Democrat (and this would anger his base, aka their viewers).
Team Republican actually APPROVES of what he is doing so don't attack him on it (instead choosing to focus on attacking a fictional Obama character who is a "Socialist Atheist Muslim Commie Infiltrator born in Kenya").
This leaves CNN, who out of fear of ever being called biased, attempt to be neutral (as opposed to objective) and so take part in "he said, she said" journalism, and right now, both he and she are saying the same thing: "OBAMA NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY GOOD".
examples:
1) Democrats say Obama's new healthcare bill will help decrease the deficit, Republicans say it will add to the deficit. What's the reality? The f*ck should I know? It's not like we do any investigative journalism here, let me instead have a split screen of two a$$holes engaged in a shouting match. One representing team Democrat and the other, team Republican.
2) Democrats say that Paul Ryan's budget proposal does not offer any specifics as to how exactly he would lower the deficit and thus is not a serious proposal. Paul Ryan disagrees. Who's telling the truth? I don't know, it's not like I know how to read or anything.
I also specifically picked these examples to mention another trend, that of CNN (and other news networks/outlets hoping to earn the moniker of neutral/bi-partisan), fearful of charges of being part of the "liberal media" will over-correct, and usually be harsher on Democrats than Republicans.
Note the dates. In fairness to the press, it's not surprising that the firs 5 years of drone strikes received little press coverage, because we had become involved in a much larger war in Iraq. I'm somewhat tolerant of drone strikes; all told they seem to have killed about 3,200 people at the highest estimate, which sounds bad until you consider lowest estimate for the Iraq war is 110,000 deaths, of which over half are civilians. The median estimate is about double that.
Drones are sort of scary for a variety of reasons, but there is at least some basis for fighting that conflict (directly responsive to 9-1--2001 attacks) and the casualties from done warfare are a fraction of those from conventional warfare, by about 2 orders of magnitude.
It still doesnt make it right, nor is it any sane or logic reasoning behind the drone use.
Ever time I hear someone explain the wars as an legit response to the 9/11 attack, it sounds as an "excuse" a kid would make after a school massacre. Oh look he say, there was this evil kid who hit and kicked me that other day, so I took my dads machine gun and extracted my revenged. The other children and teachers sheltered that bully, so they deserved what they got. It was justice, he said.
There are no sane reasoning behind such claim. There are also no sane reasoning behind any claimed connection between 9/11 and the current wars or drone usage. I understand that the kid received a great injustice from the bully. I can understand the need for revenge. 9/11 was also a great injustice where people craved for revenge. But sanity left quick after, and we got schools with dead bodies and two wars. That, and drones.
Well, the government is constitutionally obliged to defend the citizenry. Any President that went on TV and said 'you know, we sort of deserved that due to our past foreign policy, so we should take it on the chin' would almost certainly have been impeached. Now I do see whare you're coming from, and somewhat agree, but I'm making n argument about what's legal as opposed to what's right. I think, for example, that once we withdraw our troops from Afghanistan Congress should sunset the AUMF and define the scope of Presidential authority to fight future terrorism much more narrowly.
