[nozzlegear]

Nixon certainly would've been prosecuted if he hadn't been pardoned.

> There is even a strong argument that Obama should have been prosecuted for drone strikes on citizen combatants.

I don't think this is very strong at all. There is zero evidence that Obama intentionally targeted civilians outside of al-Awlaki. Suggesting that he did, and that he should be prosecuted for war crimes, puts him in the same moral category as those who ordered actual torture on enemy combatants and launched wars on fabricated evidence. It's preposterous.

[int_19h]

War crimes are a very broad category, so no, it's not preposterous to claim that different people are both guilty of them even if the scope varies significantly.

[masfuerte]

Obama pardoned all the torturers and their instigators. He is in the same category.

[nozzlegear]

I strongly disagree with that equivalency. Obama should have pursued accountability instead of pardoning them like he did, but I do not agree that it puts him in the same moral category. Your framing shifts the argument from "Obama maybe deserves some scrutiny here" to "Obama belongs in the same cells with the torturers."

You're collapsing several degrees of responsibility with this lazy equivalence, and minimizing the heinousness of the people who actually designed and executed torture programs.

[masfuerte]

The world has no shortage of evil bastards. The only thing that restrains them is the knowledge that they may be held to account. Obama undermined that.

"Don't worry, we've got your back. If your country asks you to do evil, we won't hold you to account. So go right ahead."

Who is worse? The criminal or the corrupt judge?

[UncleEntity]

> There is zero evidence that Obama intentionally targeted civilians outside of al-Awlaki.

So... there is evidence he intentionally targeted a civilian?

[nozzlegear]

Sorry, I actually meant to write that al-Awlaki was a citizen, as in an American citizen. Obama didn't intentionally target civilians, and he didn't intentionally target "citizens" as OP stated outside of al-Awlaki who was an American citizen turned insurgent.