General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Don't entertain this garbage. [View all]pnwmom
(108,925 posts)The world we live in today has nuclear weapons that can be carried in a suitcase, biological and chemical weapons that can wipe out cities. And the world we live in today is connected by computer systems and by transportation systems that link everyone, everywhere.
Any President who didn't recognize this fact would be derelict in his duties.
We can't live in isolation the way we did when the Constitution was written, when oceans protected us from our more powerful enemies. Today the President has to balance our need for liberty with our need for just plain being alive. And the choice he and our Congress made is to use our computer systems to monitor phone numbers so that terrorists can be tracked. So that if an attack like the Boston Bombers is made, we can go into the system and see who they might be linked to and possibly prevent further attacks.
When the Boston attack happened Obama was criticized for being at the helm of government and not preventing it. Now people like you are attacking him for trying to prevent similar attacks. He's in a Catch 22 and he always will be. But I think he's doing as well as anyone could in the midst of terrible choices and the weight of the office that he bears.