You should think about reading the Declaration of Independence sometime:
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
We also spent 20 years in Afghanistan blowing shit up as a result of some Saudis hijacking planes, then just left all the terps and their families to be killed by the Taliban.
At least they justified it. I mean, the justification was bullshit; but the justifications existed and, at least at the time, the majority of the public believed it.
If we give blanket immunity to the president, then, IDK, goodbye Madagascar, for no logical reason.
At least right now they have to try to justify taking some kind of action against someone or something. They can't just do whatever.
Executive action, president can serve as long as they want. Executive action, the president is now the God-King dictator of the USA. States are dissolved, and everyone is under the rulership of his supreme Highness.
Lincoln arguably needed it, and got it, as a requirement to win the Civil War. He suspended habeus corpus, arrested Confederate sympathizers on the spot, sized property from union and southern folks for basically any reason...
But won the war and freed the slaves; he broke the rules but was proven right.
I'm aware of the habeus corpus suspension - which I would argue was a bit of an extraordinary case as it was drawn into play initially because of the civil war, the capital was difficult to reinforce because of a rail obstruction and Congress could not safely be called into session. Even then, to my knowledge the act only applied to a small area from DC to like Pennsylvania or something. The act was rendered inoperable at the official end of the war and even before that I think all political prisoners taken during that time were released and even offered amnesty so long as they didn't aid the confederacy, which, again given the extraordinary circumstances is a little more understandable (albeit admittedly still very contentious) than the current situation we have now.
What I'm not aware of is Lincoln's criminal/civil immunity outside of this. Do you have any other information on this? It sounds interesting and something I have never heard of. I'd like to learn about it!
He didn't need it, he was pardoned immediately by his successor. Bush was never even prosecuted for his war crimes. The tweet is correct that no other president has needed immunity, but it's not because they didn't do crime. It's because the system has always been rotten, and these crooks have always covered each other's backs even across party lines.
Not for the deaths themselves, but he should be tried for authorizing 'double-tap' strikes. Depending on the exact justification and the level of scrutiny employed, it may not rise to the level of a war crime - but there is a very good chance that it does.
Sadly, it'll never happen. If Bush didn't get tried for much, much worse while being much, much less popular, Obama definitely isn't.
I'm not sure why that is an actually unpopular opinion either... They're literally designed to hit first responders.
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) includes the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against medical units and transport (arts. 8(2)(b)(xxiv), 8(2)(e)(ii)) for both international and non-international armed conflicts).
If I don't like it when their guy does it, I don't see why it's ok when our guy does it.
I actually wrote up and sent Obama a strongly worded letter a few years ago, after his last term ended expressing my disappointment in him. I read his book and realized that he didn't know, or refused to acknowledge his complicity in the atrocities of his administration. Never did get a reply.