My biggest problem with this dude’s argument is that he is essentially asking for permission to express his political opinions without fear of contradiction or mockery from other people on the left. We could empty out his argument so it had no specific content. Let’s say that he believes x and he says x. And then let’s say that TBogg writes a snarky post mocking x. Finally, let’s say this dude writes a long heartfelt post about how terrible it is that he can never say x without people like TBogg making him feel like a child who loves ponies and woodland creatures.
Honestly, I could stop now, because that, at bottom, is all his post is.
Of course, his post is about the American government killing innocent civilians. I don’t know any liberals who are in favor of killing innocent civilians. Even among conservatives, at most, you’ll find people who are indifferent. No one but a few sociopaths is actually advocating killing innocent civilians. So, the following is really just a stronger version of what nearly everyone feels:
I don’t know how else it say it, considering I’ve said it a thousand times. I want my country to stop killing innocent people. I want it so bad I don’t know how to act or what to do. I want it so bad I can’t sit still or sleep at night. I want it with everything I have that’s capable of want. And I know that this is the kind of talk that invites pure contempt from those like Tbogg, who have only the idiom of sarcasm and derision and cannot imagine straightforward moral sentiment.
So, why am I not staying up at night worrying about innocent civilians? Maybe it is because no innocent civilians have been killed by drones this year. About nine civilians were killed by drones last year. In the entire history of the drone program there are 191 confirmed cases of civilians being killed and at least 139 of them were killed during the Bush administration. Yet, to hear this dude talk, you’d think that we are just going around indiscriminately bombing villages of innocent people. I am a lot more concerned about what our troops are doing in Afghanistan than I am with the drone program, precisely because the drone program generally does not kill innocent civilians. Its entire purpose is to avoid “collateral damage.”
If drones are a concern, and they are, loss of innocent life is near the bottom of the list. Issues of national sovereignty, world opinion/blowback, and the rule of law and proper oversight are much better elements to discuss than some fictitious Holocaust of innocent people. In fact, focusing on drones takes the conversation away from the broader U.S. foreign policies that create the targets of drone attacks. Obama’s foreign policy isn’t doing enough to tamp down the anti-American sentiment that fuels terrorism. Drones are, in this sense, potentially counterproductive. One might oppose them because they make us less safe rather than because they tend to take innocent lives.
In any case, pro-Obama progressives don’t attack people when they say “I’m not voting for Obama because of the drones” because we think the drone program is great. We attack them because that’s a stupid argument. If you said that you aren’t voting for him because he is aggressively tracking down terrorists and you don’t support doing that, then that would make more sense. If your morals require you to keep your hands clean, that’s fine. My morals tell me I have to oppose the modern Republican Party with every fiber in my body. So, we just have a different moral outlook.
I’ll leave you alone if you leave me alone. But if you try to act like you are morally superior to me, I will mock you.
