My Monday column begins like so:
The harshest critics of my column, “No, President Obama Is Not ‘Worse Than Bush’ on National Security,” posted both here at The Daily Banter and on The Huffington Post, were anti-Obama screechers to my left (I evidently have a left) and the most common refrain was that I’m an Obama apologist and my column proves it.
Here’s the problem: the centerpiece of what I wrote, as well as a column on the same subject a week earlier, was the notion that Obama should be stripped of the war powers authority granted in the September 14, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), and/or that predator drones ought to be well-regulated because it’s too easy for this risk-free military and intelligence technology to be abused.
For some reason, stripping the president of his war on terrorism powers and calling for drone oversight makes me an Obamabot and a presidential apologist. I’m not sure how that works because calling for the president to be stripped of certain powers — twice — is, in fact, the opposite of endorsing those powers.
The only conclusion I can gather is that too many commenters/activists/trolls have been conditioned to kneejerk into self-righteous screams of “Baby killer!” and “War criminal!” whenever the subject of the president and drones comes up, regardless of the context or the points being made. [continue reading here]