[monfrere]

First, I would point out that bombings, drone strikes etc. have definitely been the target of criticism from sectors of the left. Although I would agree that the outrage has not reached this scale.

I can think of several reasons. I don't necessarily think they are all good reasons.

1) U.S. bombings are seen as a good-faith effort to stop terrorism, based on intel etc.

The current executive order seems more like a rash decision based on xenophobia and poorly implemented (in the early hours, border officials were giving confused and contradictory info on whether green card holders were affected, etc.)

2) The collateral damage from the bombings, added up over a decade, has probably been hundreds of innocent civilians' lives in some of these countries. This is upsetting but distant.

On the other hand, the collateral damage from this executive order is that 500,000 expats living in the US can't leave the country, or are stranded outside the country. For American "coastal elites", myself included, these are not remote people but our friends, coworkers, professors. Everyone in my social circle seem to have at least a second-degree connection to someone from Iran.

3) The current executive order threatens the standing of the communities "coastal elites" are part of: top American universities, Silicon Valley, the medical community, etc. These institutions are world-class due in no small part to how welcoming they are to foreign talent. That could change if the smartest around the world start heading to universities, hospitals, and companies in Canada or Germany instead...

[ivan_gammel]

Collateral damage from foreign policy mistakes is much bigger than from drone strikes, e.g. with "red line" for Assad, when West failed to act, or with the whole adventure in Libya, when Western coalition helped to ignite the civil war, but didn't help to stop it. Millions displaced, hundreds of thousands dead - these people are just not friends, coworkers and professors to care about them loud enough.

[Anderkent]

> Collateral damage from foreign policy mistakes is much bigger than from drone strikes

The core word here is mistakes. No one knows what the right way to react to a international crisis is (though the argument for complete military non-interventionism gets stronger every time a military intervention just makes things worse...).

You have to distinguish between decisions made in good faith that backfire (or perhaps the alternative would have been even worse?), and malicious decisions like what Trump is doing

[ivan_gammel]

What exactly is "good faith" is hard to tell here, so no, I don't want to distinguish between something which only sounds good and something which does not even pretend to sound good. Is it making good to people of another country? Or making good just to people of America and let the world burn in fire? Or making good for the party agenda, so that some politicians will be reelected in next cycle?

How did Obama make that decision not to follow his promise on crossing "red line" by Assad? What were the pros and cons for that decision? How can we be sure that it were not purely U.S. internal politics arguments for giving up? Questions like that do not allow us to forgive mistakes: they force us to hold the governments to account.

[Anderkent]

> How did Obama make that decision not to follow his promise on crossing "red line" by Assad? What were the pros and cons for that decision? How can we be sure that it were not purely U.S. internal politics arguments for giving up? Questions like that do not allow us to forgive mistakes: they force us to hold the governments to account.

And questions like that are asked and answered? Obama had good reasons for not following up on that threat. Read, for example, theatlantic's 'Obama Doctrine' article. It was never obvious that a heavier US intervention in Syria would help the people in Syria at all - in fact, history suggests that the opposite.

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine how the US refusing refugees would make the Syrian situation worse.

[rtx]

Forcing a pipeline through a sovereign nation is not in good faith. Alan Kurdi died because Obama wanted to help Saudi Arabia. None of the people on the left or right felt outrage on September 2nd 2015.

[Anderkent]

> None of the people on the left or right felt outrage on September 2nd 2015.

How not? Just the fact that it made news in outlets like nytimes and guardian means that people did care and feel outraged. Things that people don't care about aren't read.

But you're correct the outrage wasn't aimed at Obama. Why? Because there's a difference between a president that acknowledges there's complexities to immigration and refugees, and works on a compromise, and one that seems to treat anyone from the Middle East as of no moral value.

[iaskwhy]

I agree with your points but "The collateral damage from the bombings, added up over a decade, has probably been hundreds of innocent civilians' lives" is not really true. One single drone strike during Bush era killed almost 100 children in a school. There's been much more than 1000 killed civilians and probably 10x that injured (and, as you can imagine, injuries from drone strikes are not usually soft ones).

Drone strikes stats can be seen at https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/dron...

[monfrere]

Troubling. Thanks for sharing. I wonder how the percent of innocents killed by drone strikes compares to the number for non-drone combat.