Mattis oversaw the fiasco that was the Iraq War, particularly the seige of Baghdad. That should tell you a lot right there.

WWII was a justified war where we unfortunately sometimes had to make hard choices and do otherwise terrible things. (Though that doesn’t excuse some of our actions, e.g. internment of Japanese Americans.) The wars we’ve fought over the last 16ish years are not like WWII, to put it kindly. The civilians that are dying…

We’ll have to agree to disagree he acted on the same instincts. Your criticism of his foreign policy is fair and I agree with most of it (certainly wish he wouldn’t have pursued the aggressive drone policy), but his foreign policy wasn’t equivalent to neoconservativism either.

- Drone bombings have killed civilians.

Not when there’s people out there who want to destroy America.

I agree with you. Obama deserves a lot of respect for the Iran Deal. He also, and it’s probably hard to believe this now considering what’s going on, developed a relationship with Russia that was putting us in the right direction.

The depressing growth rate that is better than Obama’s best year.

Beats large scale invasions and occupations like Iraq.

Drones have far less collateral damage potential than a MOAB that is why they were chosen in the Obama administration, the collateral damage still happened but it was far less than it would have been with more traditional style weapons.

You can’t chide someone for inaction and then call him a neocon. Drone strikes aside, Obama’s consistent opposition to a basically bipartisan foreign policy establishment that wants to stick our noses in everywhere at all times was one of the best things about his presidency.

I think you’re leaving out a particular connotation of “idealist” that changes things a bit. When someone’s called an “idealist” it’s usually because they espouse beliefs that are considered lofty or noble; the Nazis were idealists but nobody calls them that because their ideals were reprehensible.

Jesus christ, you rule.

I’m confused about this one. What was Obama supposed to do, help suppress a series of populist uprisings? Which I’ll grant you would hardly be unprecedented for the US, but him refraining from that doesn’t exactly help him earn the “neocon” label.

I disagree; pragmatic is just a qualifier to an essential characteristic of idealism. It’s like the term “passive aggressive”, which seems like a contradiction but just describes a methodology: someone who expresses their aggression in indirect ways to get plausible deniability. So Obama has a set of ideals, but also…

How about your droning and bombing of every comment section?

“Also, he didn’t even attempt to close Gitmo.”

Oof. Yeah. It’s nice not having to worry about that anymore.

I’m not acting like the film can’t be criticized. I’m acting like the specific criticisms being levied against it here are dumb. Because they are.

I see that, but the older I’ve gotten, the more I have shifted.

When you’re a kid, you want absolutes because they can be understood and you want perfection because it actually seems achievable. Kids don’t say I want to grow up to be Vasili Arkhipov, they want to be Superman. I think Rian was actually trying to convey…

He didn’t “try to kill his nephew” though. That was Kylo being an unreliable narrator. When Luke gives his version of events, we find that he considered it out of fear because he knew how insanely powerful Kylo was, but he ultimately changed his mind at the last second. Because he’s Luke Skywalker and not a murderer.…