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[Max White]

There could be a report tomorrow the government was kidnapping people off the street and interogate-torturing them, and I STILL don't think there would be major unrest over.

I thought they were already doing that. I mean Guantanamo is still a thing isn't it? You know that thing Obama said he would shut down, all those years ago...

[misko27]

There could be a report tomorrow the government was kidnapping people off the street and interogate-torturing them, and I STILL don't think there would be major unrest over.

I thought they were already doing that. I mean Guantanamo is still a thing isn't it? You know that thing Obama said he would shut down, all those years ago...

...Oh help me.. I'll let someone else field this. Maybe Glyph or Salmon can go over how to be properly outraged.

[Sheb]

Max White: Guantanamo is still open, but they don't actually send people there anymore, they jsut don't know what to do with the guys that are already there.

As for myself, I think Snowden is handling this very well, feeding us a steady drop of leaks so it cannot slip out of our consciousness. Unless he was willing to wait for 2016 and make it a primary issue amongst Democrats, I don't know what he could have done.

[Duuvian]

Some attempts were made to remove prisoners from Guantanamo in order to give them a trial in US courts, but there was a great deal of opposition to so called 'terrorists in our backyards', mostly by Republicans if I recall correctly though I could be wrong on that last bit.

[Sheb]

IIRC Congress refused to act on Guantanamo, but let a loophole open where the President can individually free prisoners. Of course Obama didn't do it for fear of seeing newpaper headlines reading "President free baby-killer!"

[Mech#4]

It must be very frustrating to be in a "damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't" situation. Possibly a good test of strength of character but it would be quite stressful.

[SalmonGod]

It must be very frustrating to be in a "damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't" situation. Possibly a good test of strength of character but it would be quite stressful.

I'm sure it is.  But that should only make the decision difficult if your goal is something other than doing the right thing.

Option A:  Do the right thing.  A bunch of (violently insane) people will hate you, because they disagree that it was the right thing.
Option B.  Don't the right thing.  A bunch of people will hate you for not doing the right thing.

Tough decision there.

[misko27]

It must be very frustrating to be in a "damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't" situation. Possibly a good test of strength of character but it would be quite stressful.

I'm sure it is.  But that should only make the decision difficult if your goal is something other than doing the right thing.

Option A:  Do the right thing.  A bunch of (violently insane) people will hate you, because they disagree that it was the right thing.
Option B.  Don't the right thing.  A bunch of people will hate you for not doing the right thing.

Tough decision there.

To be fair, violently insane people are not the sort of people you want to piss off, let alone make them hate you.


But politicians don't get where they are by doing the right thing. They do it by doing what they need to do to win. The Idea of this unfortunate system is that since a politician's interest aligns or should align with advancing the country he is in and looking good while doing it, supporting the country is the best bet. The problem becomes the other things that can distract their interests, like money, or their base, or general shortsightedness, or what have you.


In this case though, I don't think Obama's approval ratings could take anything resembling a significant hit if he went and did it anyway, so he should try it out.

[Helgoland]

What really upsets me about this whole situation: Lots of Germans now say that Obama's no better than Bush because drones and financial crisis and him being American - the sort of normal anti-American bullshit you usually hear around here. However, they also blame him for not having closed Guantanamo - without thinking of the problems he faced in Congress, without thinking of how no new people are interned, without thinking of the vast improvements made there under Obama, and without mentioning that Germany refused to accept some of the harmless inmates that are left.

Bloody Germans.

[Another]

...
To be fair, violently insane people are not the sort of people you want to piss off, let alone make them hate you.

...

And if you are pissing off some violently insane people - that is usually a pretty good indication that you are doing exactly the right thing.

[Sergarr]

...
To be fair, violently insane people are not the sort of people you want to piss off, let alone make them hate you.

...

And if you are pissing off some violently insane people - that is usually a pretty good indication that you are doing exactly the right thing.

It could also possibly indicate that you're about to lose everything you have and more. They're violently insane for a reason.

[Duuvian]

What really upsets me about this whole situation: Lots of Germans now say that Obama's no better than Bush because drones and financial crisis and him being American - the sort of normal anti-American bullshit you usually hear around here. However, they also blame him for not having closed Guantanamo - without thinking of the problems he faced in Congress, without thinking of how no new people are interned, without thinking of the vast improvements made there under Obama, and without mentioning that Germany refused to accept some of the harmless inmates that are left.

Bloody Germans.

I have a feeling those thoughts are being fueled by the same people who would take personal advantage of a weakened Obama and Democratic party in America. All these things except being foreign to Germans are handovers from Bush. Bush thought he was friends with Putin because they were similar ideologically in many areas.  Bush was probably Putin's favorite American president because his terms were just plain bad as far as corruption ruining the government's image internally while ruining it's foreign relations due to unceasing conflict. Obama's administration has been much less self servingly incompetent, which is bad for Putin. (not to say it's wonderful in foreign relations but compared to Bush...)

It would stand to reason that the people pushing such misleading information in Germany are willing to ally with fellow conservatives like the Republican party. I don't know how loose electoral laws are in Germany now, but remember that in America corporations find enormous profit in sinking money into the political system at the current time. I would not doubt that should they find profit in harming Democrat's election chances by blaming a 'collapse' of foreign relations with one of our friends in Europe (Germany) on Democrats that they would not purposefully harm our diplomatic relations if they had the means to fund it, which I'm quite sure they probably have a legal loophole. The 'collapse' of foreign relations would likely either be support of an anti-American political group propelling a Conservative party into power in some chamber in Germany. This party would likely be planned to be antagonistic to the US as long as there is any real Democratic party power still in either the presidency or Congress so that conservatives in the US could feed off the negative reaction towards 'those German relations Obama ruined.' If somehow foreign relations cave in because of this, say relations with Germany due to German Conservatives winning elections it would be easy to pin it on Obama because he hasn't done very much to reign in his intelligence services (who have a frightening number of Bush holdovers still at the top because of the apparently never ending war on terror, perhaps knowingly overreaching in order to lay blame on the administration they don't care to support politically, thus winning for themselves both their allowance of questionable capabilities as well as hamstringing their political foe even though he is their boss)

As for why I mentioned Putin in the first paragraph, it seems to me he stands to benefit immensely should he continue to try to form an Eastern Bloc or what not (On that note, I'm not sure if he still is trying to convince countries more or less East of Germany to join a trade union expanded past the three already in it or some such. I haven't heard much about it lately), should friendly German conservatives convince their people the Eastern Bloc would be worth a try at some point...

It seems to me that the American Conservative's willingness in this admittedly wild yet I think plausible theory to abandon national interest in order for short term political gain could very easily backfire and push Germany's people towards Putin. After all, they have already abandoned their constituent's interests by for example refusing Medicaid expansion in some of the poorest counties in the country from what I hear.

If this does not seem plausible please inform this thread and thus the world so Helgoland, and my thanks.
If it's not plausible I apologize, for I don't know much about Germany's political system, but I thought I might point out the possibility that exists within the framework of my limited knowledge.

[Another]

I heard quite a number of US citizens say that they voted for Obama but by now (partly due to all the leaks) they see Obama continuing and expanding every Bush program they were opposed to.

Does Obamacare outweigh all the human rights violations?

[Helgoland]

You seem to imply that people are normally rational when it comes to politics.

No, but in Germany these opinions are far worse than in, let's say, France. In Germany, these opinions need to be marginalized or repressed, because unlike France Germany has much more potential to do damage* with this kind of thinking.

*We're closer to Russia, we're stronger economically, and we have a tradition of populists following through with what they said to  be elected. Germany's dangerous if not handled right.

[Evil Knievel]

You seem to imply that people are normally rational when it comes to politics.

No, but in Germany these opinions are far worse than in, let's say, France.

That sounds like a wild guess to me. Anything to back this? I have left Germany a long time ago, but I got a quite different impression. I am quite sure ( = my personal wild guess is) that the Germans would always prefer to be friends with USA compared to for example Russia.

Less important rant:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think nobody is outraged about what Russia is doing because there is no disappointment, i.e., no surprise, while recent events regarding US espionage put the cream on the disappointment cake that started with Bush. Seriously, I remember no anti-American sentiments during or before the Clinton time. Anti-Americanism became reality only when Bush decided to march into Iraq and claim his god-given oil.

In Germany, these opinions need to be marginalized or repressed, because unlike France Germany has much more potential to do damage* with this kind of thinking.

*We're closer to Russia, we're stronger economically, and we have a tradition of populists following through with what they said to  be elected. Germany's dangerous if not handled right.

That one sounds also quite weird. Are you polarizing between Germans better marginalizing those that articulate anti-Americanism and Germans installing a new fascist dictatorship starting wars all over the place?
Do you see any chance that the German electorate will elect someone crazy in the near future?

Rant of less importance:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Moreover, Germany is not a completely sovereign state anyway. Well deserved after the second world war, but there are still 70000 US troops permanently stationed, and as long as those are present, their right of self-defence gives them also all those rights to espionage all of Germany (which sneaks us back on topic) or at least it is used this way, and German politics plays along.