The careless, astonishing cruelty of Barack Obama’s government

I don't take everything Monbiot says at face value, but this is certainly upsetting if it's even close to true.

The careless, astonishing cruelty of Barack Obama’s government

Yeah, it's a shitty regulation when carried to the extreme, as it seems to be with Somalia.
I would give the author more credence if he had said "the American government" rather than "Obama's government."

Quote :

No one suffers more from al-Shabaab than the Somalis. It epitomises that combination of menace and absurdity satirised in Chris Morris’s film Four Lions. In the areas these few thousand men control, they have tried to ban samosas on the grounds that their triangular shape invokes the holy trinity. They whip women for wearing bras; have pledged to prohibit the internet; have imposed fundamentalist Wahhabi doctrines on a largely Sufi

Fuck 'em.

Obama announced this morning he will be sending a war resolution to Congress for approval, a formal declaration of war against ISIL. This is, I believe, the first-ever war resolution against an ideology not a country.

Which is a problem.

Islamic sharia law is against American principles of equality and mercy, but a substantial part of The Muslim world has a different view. Since the national borders in the Middle East are largely a construct of the British and American victors of WWII, do we really have the right to dictate their judicial and legal philosophy too?

Are you sure that he is requesting a "formal declaration of war"? I read it as essentially an extension of the war powers act.

It's not the first time the country has taken an action like this. Remember Thomas Jefferson and the Barbary Pirates? Lots of similarities.

This is not war against an ideology; it's war against a bunch of murderous bandits.

I don't remember Thomas Jefferson. He was dead before I was born.

Your "bunch of murderous bandits" could amount to 23% of the world population.

_Howard wrote:

Are you sure that he is requesting a "formal declaration of war"? I read it as essentially an extension of the war powers act.

I guess I'm not clear on the difference.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31425384