The Vacuity of American Politics again on Display in the Third 2012 Presidential Campaign Debate — Avoidance regarding Afghanistan and the Bland Acceptance of Indiscriminate Drone Killing — and Joe Klein’s Related Justification for Killing 4-Year Olds in the Name of National Security

© 2012 Peter Free

 

23 October 2012

 

 

The point — when we’re too gutless (or unaware) to force political candidates to address real issues, we deserve whatever metaphorical hellfire looms for us down the road

 

American politics has refined itself into the art of talking about nothing important or true.  Passionately expressed air-headedness appears to be the American norm.

 

Take last night’s third 2012 presidential campaign debate.

 

 

You would think than no one is currently being killed in America’s name, judging by how the debate progressed

 

Amid the debate’s customary avoidance of discussing real issues in real terms, two stood out as especially illustrative:

 

(1) When the subject of Afghanistan arose, both candidates agreed that 2014 was a good exit date.

 

But no one mentioned why it is really (as opposed to pretend) necessary to let American troops continue to dribble their lives away for two more years on a mission that has had no cognizable purpose for nine.

 

(2) When asked by moderator Bob Schieffer, Governor Romney said that he approved the use of drones, evidently in the same way that Commander in Chief Obama is using them.

 

Which means that both candidates approve a logically circular policy that says people are (or were) bad guys simply because a drone killed them.

 

Issues of law, morality, and the possibility of future payback by our enemies were not addressed.

 

 

The following day, Time magazine columnist Joe Klein inadvertently put American drone policy into concrete context — by saying that drone killing is okay, insofar as it is their 4-year olds (and not ours) who are being killed

 

Today, on Morning Joe, during a discussion of the emptiness of the presidential foreign policy debate, conservative host Joe Scarborough raised the moral questions that are implicit in our drone murder policy.

 

He questioned the policy of labeling people as bad guys (after the fact), simply because a drone had blown them up.  And he objected to the immorality of “4-year old girls being blown to bits” — (a comment he made at the 10:00 mark of the below cited video clip).

 

Morning Joe guest, Time magazine columnist Joe Klein, retorted:

 

The bottom line in the end is whose 4-year old gets killed.

 

What we are doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year olds here are going to be killed.

 

© 2012 Morning Joe, Scarborough: Drone program is going to cause US problems in future, MSNBC (23 October 2012) (at 11:46 in the clip)

 

 

“How could Mr. Klein say that, Pete?”

 

Because it appears to be what most Americans think, to the degree that any of us actually engage in substantive cognition.

 

The United States is the only nation in the world in which a huge majority of the public thinks that killing people with drones is a good idea.  In every other polled nation — except Great Britain, the other Great Immoralizer — citizens reject the drone killing concept on ethical grounds:

 

[I]n nearly all countries, there is considerable opposition to a major component of the Obama administration’s anti-terrorism policy: drone strikes.

 

In 17 of 20 countries, more than half disapprove of U.S. drone attacks targeting extremist leaders and groups in nations such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

 

Andrew Kohut, Richard Wike, James Bell, Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Katie Simmons, Bruce Stokes, Jacob Poushter, Cathy Barker, and Elizabeth Mueller Gross, Opinion of Obama Slips, International Policies Faulted: Drone Strikes Widely Opposed, Pew Research Center (13 June 2012) (scroll down to the bar graph entitled, “Widespread Opposition to Drone Strikes” — which presents poll results from 20 nations) (paragraph split)

 

The full report is, here (PDF).

 

 

Cowardly complacence, combined with arrogant national self-promotion, makes for hypocritical symbols

 

The United States has been going around the world, with force of arms, for decades announcing that we are the best nation to emulate.

 

But I have difficulty seeing the cowardice involved in killing other people’s 4-year olds via drones, in the name of U.S. national defense, as something that even the lowest of the low should want to emulate.

 

 

Even if we raise the age of the innocents killed, the moral justification for collateral drone kills is not any better

 

I find it disturbing that the majority of Americans don’t care enough about what is being done in our name to force our presidential candidates to discuss it.

 

 

The moral? — Immorally wielded power and influence are not at all admirable

 

What we are doing to benefit the American Military Industrial Complex is ethically shameful.

 

Even while delivering his warning in this regard, President Eisenhower probably never thought that America would eventually stoop so low as to justify the killing of innocents on the grounds of expedience.

 

Note

 

As Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II, five star General Eisenhower had been associated with significantly more horror than any our presidential candidates today.

 

I cannot imagine “Ike” condoning President Obama’s too widespread use of drone murder.  These men and women of my father’s generation had principles, even under fire.  (Unless, of course, bigotry intruded.)

 

At some point, America’s hypocritical cowardice today will fuel our adversaries’ vengeance in a way that we cannot overcome.

 

And then the only American symbol that we will have to look back at is our own unethical one.  The only admirable wrinkle that we will have left in our historical wake is the one set by our combat troops, who courageously died and were maimed in attempting to further civilian leadership’s unexamined and short-sighted causes.

 

Is losing our best, to further the worst in the rest of us, the new American way?

 

We heard not a word on this, during months of silly rhetoric, in the vacuum-filled 2012 campaign.