Musical stars and retired politicians from less polarised era seeming antidote to cage fights on White House lawn
The Barack Obama presidential center opened in Chicago on Thursday after more than a decade in the making amid a musical fanfare and paeans to democratic principles that evoked a previous age, all while delivering an implied rebuke to Donald Trump.
Featuring appearances by a cast of musical stars and retired politicians from a less polarised era, it was a seemingly perfect antidote to the crass spectacle of cage fights on the White House lawn.
Without naming the current White House occupant, Barack and Michelle Obama launched full-frontal attacks on Trump’s authoritarian approach, depicting them as an affront to American values.
His ratio of civilians to combatants looks much better than Bush’s.
And it’s not surprising that the raw, absolute number of drone strikes went up, seeing as it was an emerging technology at the time.
Plus, the alternative would be a full-on frontal assault, which would involve artillery, air support, and battalions of ground troops composed of fallible humans with highly destructive weaponry, followed by long-term stability operations with regular patrols.
Compared to that, drone strikes are more surgical and targeted toward military leadership, command centers, and weapons cachés. Just look up the invasions of Fallujah, Mosul, and Baghdad if you want to see war crimes and civilian casualties. All of those happened under Bush.
You forgot the alternative of getting the fuck out of the middle east and keeping to yourselves, lmao.
Obama didn’t start the invasions, but if you can’t see the very real consequences of abruptly and prematurely pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan, then I’d like to introduce you to ISIS and the Taliban, because this is what happens when you botch a full-scale withdrawal of military forces.
It’s not as simple as “my predecessor shouldn’t have started this war, so let’s just suddenly leave without having a better plan in place and doing years of stability operations to ensure the long-term success of the civilian government.”
Lol.