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I'm going to need a shower after this but Gitmo, extraordinary rendition, and warrantless mass surveillance were still a thing under Obama, no? Still, not even comparable to what we're witnessing now.


Obama also created ICE as we know it today. And normalized drone strikes.


How are drone strikes any different than a pilot, a warplane, and advanced precision bombs/missiles?

Except they're cheaper to run and don't physically risk a pilot.


The issue is not really with the difference in impact between drone attacks and other types of aerial attacks, but with the dramatic increase in scale, resulting from reduced cost and risk.

It probably would have been more accurate to say something like "mass extra-judicial assasination/execution of individuals opaquely labelled as 'militants,' including US citizens, in foreign jurisdictions" instead of "drone strikes," but the latter is shorter and I thought would be understood as implying the former.


That appears to be an issue of policy not one of technology.

Because they'd more than likely target those same individuals with less precise weapons if not for the given alternative.


The technology enables the policy. If the cost and risk were higher, there would be fewer strikes.


They invaded two countries simultaneously (one landlocked). Then used secret stealth helicopters to fly a hit squad into an allied nations territory for one particular individual.

I don't think this is a fruitful debate but I doubt risk & cost are as much a determining factor as you'd like.


Yep. Trump's taken it to a new level by targeting American citizens while they're physically in the USA, and while immigration courts were always a bad joke he's even skipping the kangaroo court and just shipping people off without even a pretense of due process or legal justification. Rather than an incremental step forward on the path of authoritarianism, this administration has taken a flying leap out the frog-boiling pot, straight into the inferno.


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