2016 Elections

[Hatshepsut]

Lets not stupidly throw the word "hypocrite" around...

Indeed. Even a monster like Hitler can be quite true to his beliefs.

@Nestor Which is why I shouldn't use second-person address ("you") toward other posters as in my last post. The opponents of the War on Terror/Bush Iraq invasion policies are sincere and they happen to be right about a lot of their stuff. I view the drone strikes as legitimate because we are at war with al-Qaeda and Islamic State. They kill many fewer innocent parties than alternatives like the Tomahawk cruise missiles Bill Clinton fired into the Sudan. Although it would be better if we sought permission from governments or validated our plans with the UN as Bush the senior did in 1991.

But hardly everything we've done in this war is justified. We have resorted to torture, a practice universally seen as reprehensible, in contravention of the Geneva accords. We have a program of indefinite detention at Gitmo, claiming in doublespeak that the "enemy combatants" are POWs (to deny them trial), then that they are criminals (to deny POW status). Obama promised to close Gitmo. Sure, we had a right to capture and question them and hold them for some time, but there's no way to construe this as forever, given that full combat in Afghanistan and Iraq had ended by May 2003. They should have been released or put up on charges a long time ago. These things have grievously stained our international reputation, and unnecessarily at that.