Borgholio wrote:I just think he likes riling people up. If Clinton wins, the far-right will be so angry and upset that there could very well be violence. Trump could simply sit back, watch, eat popcorn, and collect speaking fees for going around telling everyone he was right all along.
Mr Bean wrote:But that brings us back around to the Clinton/Trump conspiracy theory.
Not necessarily. Trump doesn't have to want Clinton to win, in order to have a plan for profiting if Clinton wins.
It's at least as possible that Trump honestly wants to win, and is trying to win, but wants a backup plan in case he loses (because he's not illiterate enough to fail to notice the polls have been against him since square one).
Besides, a Trump/Clinton conspiracy would require that Clinton have been able to predict that Trump would win the nomination, or at least be likely to succeed in doing so. Very few people predicted that well in advance, so that seems unlikely.
Besides, a Trump/Clinton conspiracy would require that Clinton have been able to predict that Trump would win the nomination, or at least be likely to succeed in doing so. Very few people predicted that well in advance, so that seems unlikely.
Again I remind you of this historitic documentary about a bet between rich guys and the possibility it's the same. The Clinton's and Trump up until this year ran in the same circles and saw each other often enough to qualify as known, if they are friends or not who know (It's much more likely Trump has several very good direct line to Putin Russian friends) but it's not outside the realm of possibility the two talked, perhaps a bet was made and the initial goal was nothing more then, hey Donald, why don't you run for President, bet you 50$ you can't become the nomine and then suddenly he was.
You can agree, machismo aside that Trump never acted like even he thought he had a real chance to win the nomination until at least April.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
Could you expand on your last sentence? I don't disagree with you but I'd like to hear you explain why you said it.
...
I suppose it's remotely possible that Trump sought the nomination on a bet or as part of a conspiracy or something... But there's a catch. He's been hovering on the wings of various presidential and state races for decades. He's even hired committees and commissioned polls to test the waters. This is not a new ambition for him, it's just not something he ever seriously pursued before.
To me, it seems more likely that he decided to take the chance and actually do the thing he's been thinking about doing for thirty years. I mean, he's seventy and not getting any younger, and even he's probably not crazy enough to think he's got an infinite amount of time left in this world. If he had a long term ambition to run for office and just never felt like the time was right before... why wouldn't this election cycle be the time to change his mind?
He's running in a year where there was no Republican incumbent or favored son to lock in the nomination (unlike 1988, 1992, or 2004), no problem with Republicans being highly unpopular (unlike 2008), no Democratic incumbent to run against (unlike 1996 and 2012). Plus, the Democratic nominee was always likely to be Clinton (who is unusually disliked on the right), making it easier to ensure high Republican turnout in favor.
This is probably the best chance Trump ever had or will ever have at the presidency, with the possible exception of the 2000 election cycle.
And then he did better than anyone except his own narcissistic self would have expected, because the Republican Party has spent the last twenty years methodically grooming its support base to fall in line behind someone like Donald Trump. The fact that the closest the Republican establishment ever came to actually running a man like Trump was George W. Bush is their misfortune.
...
And none of this prevents Trump from having a plan to capitalize on his own failure in the event that he fails. He's recovered from massive self-inflicted disasters so many times in his life that he's almost bound to be used to planning for failure and how to profit from it.
Simon_Jester wrote:Could you expand on your last sentence? I don't disagree with you but I'd like to hear you explain why you said it.
Well let me lay out the reasons why at least until April despite leading in the polls Trump was acting like someone running unopposed or one who was running like he had no expectation of winning.
1. His campaign schedule which can best be described as part time at best. Long vactions, campaign stops at his businesses and every appearance of combing business and pleasure.
2. His failure to secure the delegate voters, anyone running for President soon learns if you win a state all you do is winning X number of delegates who will go to the convention to vote for you. On every vote after the first one they can vote as they wish except for some states where these delegates are unbound from the first. If a floor fight does occur making sure your delegates are you supporters is vital. Trump failed to do it, and even when it was pointed out to him and when Ted Cruz began taking delegates from Trump this way he still failed to do anything about it again until April.
3. His lack of campaign preparation. He memorized a few talking points to drop for debates and left it at that. He was in there to generate news not debate issues or even really deliver anything other than platitudes. To note Trump did hire qualified campaign people then left them mostly unused or ignored them
4. His attitude throughout when dealing with the other Republicans running for President, specifically he was trying to destroy like a vindictive cheerleader tries to destroy the nerds in a 90s movie.
5. His failure to do anything state side, not even the bare minimum. Even today the Trump campaign's local operations are either non-existent or amateur hour, to note he still indicates he's leaving all the get out of the vote efforts to the Republican party.
And to be clear, Trump's only path to victory aside from an October surprise is a massive Republican turnout, which can and has been done in the past just not on the scale Trump needs. Which is why it makes no sense what so ever to see Trump ignoring his best, second best and third best paths to victory.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
The only outlet named in that source as a potential part of "Trump's white nationalist media empire" is Breitbart, which isn't a white nationalist news source at all.
Edit: Actually on further reading it appears that the writer didn't even go that far, instead quoting a former editor (presumably Ben Shapiro) saying that it had become a white nationalist gathering place, as if guilt by association is reasonable even assuming that it is true.
Hell, it's not even that extreme for a right-wing outlet.
Just because you disagree with someone doesn't make them a white nationalist. Just because someone is against illegal immigration, that does not mean that they are a white nationalist.
Someone who is against Islam or terrorism is not by default a white nationalist.
God the mainstream left have gone off the fucking deep end this election cycle.
I sure hope there's never an actual fascist running for president, because noone is going to believe a word of it after this.
The Romulan Republic wrote:As far as Syria is concerned, I'm divided between feeling that the world had a moral obligation to do something about it, and fear of escalating it further.
Certainly, I feel that our policy their thus far has been sadly waffling and ineffective, serving neither a pro-intervention or anti-intervention goal terribly well.
If Cuba will likely be remembered as Obama's biggest foreign policy success, Syria will almost certainly be considered his greatest failure by history.
Protip: No one has nukes, Asaad escalated to nerve gas pretty early, and ISIS is conducting genocide by rape.
Kinda hard to escalate further, and had we intervened more directly and earlier, we would not have the current clusterfuck we have right now because we already would have worked things out with Putin in such a way that Syria (minus an actual Kurdistan on the border with Iraq) remains a russian client, which is all they really want.
You're such a stupid twat.
Every excuse you just gave for "intervening" (which is to say, invading and bombing) in Syria was used to foment the rape of Iraq. The result: the US armed forces lost the equivalent of a division to death or injury, the treasury was wasted and over a million Iraqis dead, plus countless others raped, tortured, robbed and forced to flee for their lives.
You want to stop ISIS? How about voting against candidates for public office who supply weaponry to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar? Not only do these countries support ISIS on the sly, but they're carrying out scores of aerial massacres in Yemen on behalf of Al Qaeda. Besides, the US hasn't won a war in over 70 years. There's no reason to think we'll win one in Syria anytime soon.
Every excuse you just gave for "intervening" (which is to say, invading and bombing) in Syria was used to foment the rape of Iraq. The result: the US armed forces lost the equivalent of a division to death or injury, the treasury was wasted and over a million Iraqis dead, plus countless others raped, tortured, robbed and forced to flee for their lives.
First of all: go fuck yourself. Seriously, are you incapable of having a civilized discussion? If not, how about you at least cool it with the misogynist insults. That would be great. Also, this "stupid twat" has a PhD, so you might want to tailor your insult selection to something less off-base that everyone else wont laugh at you for using.
Now that that is out of the way.
1) Iraq was stable. It was not at the time of our invasion, a war zone. So the risk of making things worse than they already were there was pretty much always going to be Yes.
2) Syria, by contrast, had exploded into civil war including the use of nerve gas.
The two situations are completely different. Speaking of which, how many people have been killed raped, robbed, and forced to flee for their lives in Syria without our direct intervention? That is what I thought. The only difference in outcome is that white people have not been ki...oh. Oh now I see.
Besides, the US hasn't won a war in over 70 years.
So US-led UN intervention in the Balkans was a complete waste of time then?
GALE Force Biological Agent/
BOTM/Great Dolphin Conspiracy/ Entomology and Evolutionary Biology Subdirector:SD.net Dept. of Biological Sciences
There is Grandeur in the View of Life; it fills me with a Deep Wonder, and Intense Cynicism.
Simon_Jester wrote:Could you expand on your last sentence? I don't disagree with you but I'd like to hear you explain why you said it.
Well let me lay out the reasons why at least until April despite leading in the polls Trump was acting like someone running unopposed or one who was running like he had no expectation of winning.
1. His campaign schedule which can best be described as part time at best. Long vactions, campaign stops at his businesses and every appearance of combing business and pleasure.
2. His failure to secure the delegate voters, anyone running for President soon learns if you win a state all you do is winning X number of delegates who will go to the convention to vote for you. On every vote after the first one they can vote as they wish except for some states where these delegates are unbound from the first. If a floor fight does occur making sure your delegates are you supporters is vital. Trump failed to do it, and even when it was pointed out to him and when Ted Cruz began taking delegates from Trump this way he still failed to do anything about it again until April.
3. His lack of campaign preparation. He memorized a few talking points to drop for debates and left it at that. He was in there to generate news not debate issues or even really deliver anything other than platitudes. To note Trump did hire qualified campaign people then left them mostly unused or ignored them
4. His attitude throughout when dealing with the other Republicans running for President, specifically he was trying to destroy like a vindictive cheerleader tries to destroy the nerds in a 90s movie.
5. His failure to do anything state side, not even the bare minimum. Even today the Trump campaign's local operations are either non-existent or amateur hour, to note he still indicates he's leaving all the get out of the vote efforts to the Republican party.
And to be clear, Trump's only path to victory aside from an October surprise is a massive Republican turnout, which can and has been done in the past just not on the scale Trump needs. Which is why it makes no sense what so ever to see Trump ignoring his best, second best and third best paths to victory.
The alternate explanation is that Trump is inexperienced in politics and electioneering, and is too arrogant and ignorant to comprehend the flaws in his own (lack of a) strategy. He defaults to bullying, improvisation, and macho posturing.
Which is fully in keeping with his character.
Whereas if Trump were running for the nomination on a bet, why wouldn't he try to win in the most effective ways available? For him to at first pursue suboptimal strategies, and then win anyway, doesn't make sense in that context.
To me, it only makes sense in the context of a Trump who was genuinely trying to win the nomination, isn't very good at it, but wins anyway because he's closer to what the Republican base wants from a presidential candidate.a
Titan Uranus wrote:The only outlet named in that source as a potential part of "Trump's white nationalist media empire" is Breitbart, which isn't a white nationalist news source at all.
Edit: Actually on further reading it appears that the writer didn't even go that far, instead quoting a former editor (presumably Ben Shapiro) saying that it had become a white nationalist gathering place, as if guilt by association is reasonable even assuming that it is true.
In this context, it kind of is- because
Hell, it's not even that extreme for a right-wing outlet.
That may say more about the overall political tone of the American right wing than it does about this outlet.
Just because you disagree with someone doesn't make them a white nationalist. Just because someone is against illegal immigration, that does not mean that they are a white nationalist.
Someone who is against Islam or terrorism is not by default a white nationalist.
Someone who advocates ignoring freedom of religion and tacitly encourages their followers when they call for the mass deportation of a distrusted ethnic group on the grounds of a rather nebulous terrorist threat, and is strongly opposed to Latino immigrants, and has shown massive, abusive disrespect for racial minorities in a variety of ways, and combines this with constant, open appeals to 'traditional' racism...
All these things put together, tend to make "white nationalist" sound like a pretty plausible claim.
I sure hope there's never an actual fascist running for president, because noone is going to believe a word of it after this.
I don't know; in this case I think "no one" may mean "you."
Every excuse you just gave for "intervening" (which is to say, invading and bombing) in Syria was used to foment the rape of Iraq. The result: the US armed forces lost the equivalent of a division to death or injury, the treasury was wasted and over a million Iraqis dead, plus countless others raped, tortured, robbed and forced to flee for their lives.
A division? You mean 20,000 people? "Lost"? Are you sure about that?
Also, most estimates, and the most scientifically rigorous ones, but the Iraqi death tollbetween 100K and 200K. This includes secuirity forces. There is one outlier that goes up to 500K. Pretty much everyone agrees the Syrian death toll is higher and the humanitarian fallout far worse.
Do you invent deaths to get off or just to disrespect those who died for real? Whatever it is it's pretty clear you are just climbing the body pile to crow, not out of any actual concern for the fallen.
You want to stop ISIS? How about voting against candidates for public office who supply weaponry to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar? Not only do these countries support ISIS on the sly, but they're carrying out scores of aerial massacres in Yemen on behalf of Al Qaeda. Besides, the US hasn't won a war in over 70 years. There's no reason to think we'll win one in Syria anytime soon.
Exclusive: Bannon’s enrollment is apparent violation of crucial swing state’s election law requiring voters to be legal residents of county they register in
Donald Trump’s new presidential campaign chief is registered to vote in a key swing state at an empty house where he does not live, in an apparent breach of election laws.
Stephen Bannon, the chief executive of Trump’s election campaign, has an active voter registration at the house in Miami-Dade County, Florida, which is vacant and due to be demolished to make way for a new development.
“I have emptied the property,” Luis Guevara, the owner of the house, which is in the Coconut Grove section of the city, said in an interview. “Nobody lives there … we are going to make a construction there.” Neighbors said the property had been abandoned for several months.
Bannon, 62, formerly rented the house for use by his ex-wife, Diane Clohesy, but did not live there himself. Clohesy, a Tea Party activist, moved out of the house earlier this year and has her own irregular voting registration arrangement. According to public records, Bannon and Clohesy divorced seven years ago.
Bannon previously rented another house for Clohesy in Miami from 2013 to 2015 and assigned his voter registration to the property during that period. But a source with direct knowledge of the rental agreement for this house said Bannon did not live there either, and that Bannon and Clohesy were not in a relationship.
Bannon, Clohesy and Trump’s campaign repeatedly declined to answer detailed questions about Bannon’s voting arrangements. Jason Miller, a Trump campaign spokesman, eventually said in an email: “Mr Bannon moved to another location in Florida.” Miller declined to answer further questions.
Bannon is executive chairman of the rightwing website Breitbart News, which has for years aggressively claimed that voter fraud is rife among minorities and in Democratic-leaning areas. The allegation has been repeated forcefully on the campaign trail by Trump, who has predicted the election will be “rigged” and warned supporters that victory could be fraudulently “taken away from us”.
But it is not clear that Bannon is actually entitled to vote in Florida, one of the most important prizes for Trump and Hillary Clinton in their quest for the 270 electoral votes they need to secure the White House in November’s general election.
Details of the apparent breach of election laws by Trump’s campaign chief came as it was revealed that Bannon was once charged with misdemeanor domestic violence after a violent argument with his first wife. Court documents first obtained by Politico describe how, in 1996, his wife was left with red marks on her neck and wrist after the New Year’s Day argument at their home in Santa Monica, California, which began when she woke early to feed their twin daughters and he “got upset at her for making noise”.
The case was closed after Bannon’s ex-wife failed to appear in court to testify to the accusations. Five months later, she filed to dissolve their marriage. In a police report of the 1996 altercation, she described three or four previous arguments that “became physical”.
Bannon, who only recently came into the Trump camp in a move to reset the ailing campaign, is now under fresh scrutiny over his right to vote.
Under Florida law, voters must be legal residents of the state and of the county where they register to vote. Guidelines from the Florida department of state say that Florida courts and state authorities have defined legal residency as the place “where a person mentally intends to make his or her permanent residence”.
Wilfully submitting false information on a Florida voter registration – or helping someone to do so – is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
Election officials in Miami-Dade make clear to prospective voters that they are required to actually live in the county and to use their home address in election paperwork. “You must reside in Miami-Dade County,” their website states. It adds: “When you register to vote, an actual residence address is required by law.” A county spokeswoman did not respond to questions relating to Bannon’s situation.
Three neighbors said the house where Bannon is currently registered to vote had been abandoned for three months. When the Guardian visited the property on Thursday a large window in the front aspect was missing. A soiled curtain was blowing through it. The driveway was a mess of tree branches and mud.
Bannon never appeared at the house, according to the neighbors. One of them, Joseph Plummer Jr, who lives next door, said Clohesy lived at the house until earlier this year and that a man of Latino appearance in his 20s was the only male ever seen there. Asked whether a man of Bannon’s description stayed at the house, Plummer said: “No, that was not that individual, not at all.”
The same arrangement was in place at the previous house in Miami. The $5,500 per month rent was paid via Bannon’s accountants in Beverly Hills, but “he was never there,” according to someone with direct involvement in the rental arrangement, who requested anonymity for fear of repercussions from Bannon. “In my opinion, he was not living there,” said the source. “He maybe came around twice a year for a couple of days at best, but he did not live there.” The source’s account was supported by another neighbor, who declined to be quoted for publication.
Bannon owns no property in his name in Miami-Dade, according to records held by the office of the county property appraiser. As recently as last week he was reported to be a resident of Laguna Beach in Orange County, California, where, according to public records, he owns a house.
From October last year until he joined the Trump campaign this month, Bannon was the lead presenter on the Breitbart News Daily talkshow, which airs seven mornings a week on SiriusXM. A Sirius spokeswoman said Bannon hosted the show live from Washington DC or New York.
Records from the Orange County registrar of voters state that Bannon was registered to vote there from the 1980s until 2014, when he cancelled his registration and began registering in Miami. He had voted in most general elections by mail in California but, according to records, did not vote in the 2012 presidential primary, when eventual nominee Mitt Romney beat candidates including Newt Gingrich, Bannon’s fellow rightwinger and Trump ally.
Bannon also co-owns a condominium in Los Angeles and is known to stay at the so-called “Breitbart embassy”, a luxurious $2.4m townhouse beside the supreme court in Washington DC, where his website’s staff work from basement offices. A Bloomberg profile of Bannon published last October, with which he cooperated, stated that Bannon “occupies” the townhouse and described it as being “his”.
But according to records at the DC office of tax and revenue, the Breitbart house is actually owned by Mostafa El-Gindy, an Egyptian businessman and former member of parliament. Gindy has received favorable coverage from Breitbart News, which styles him as a “senior statesman”, without an accompanying disclosure that he is the website’s landlord.
Neither Bannon or Clohesy, his ex-wife, responded to requests for comment for this article.
Acquiring Florida residency is often attractive to outsiders to the state due to Florida’s lack of state income tax. This allows people with a residency to legally avoid paying state income tax on so-called “unearned” income, such as dividends, interests and retirement benefits. Attorneys often advise people seeking Florida residency that it helps to assign their voter registration to a property in the state.
Clohesy, who has worked on conservative films produced by Bannon since their divorce, also has a voting arrangement that appears to contravene Florida regulations. Rather than register to vote from her rented homes in Miami, she was and continues to be registered to vote in neighboring Broward County from a mailbox at a shipping facility in the city of Pompano Beach.
The use of such mailbox addresses is not allowed by Broward County, which requires that residents use their home address. “You have to give the address where you live, so you can’t use a PO box,” said Tonya Edwards, a spokeswoman for the county supervisor of elections.
Clohesy appears in the county election register as living at 102 Governmental Center, which is actually the address of the elections supervisor’s office. Edwards, the spokeswoman for the office, told the Guardian this designation was intended for homeless people.
Alyrium Denryle wrote:
The two situations are completely different. Speaking of which, how many people have been killed raped, robbed, and forced to flee for their lives in Syria without our direct intervention? That is what I thought.
That's...not a strong foreign policy argument. You can't exactly argue against what would have happened if we hadn't gone into Iraq or Syria because you can conjure up any number of scenarios that would be worse than what we had now. And I say that despite personally thinking that Syria would have been less of a mess if we put a no-fly zone in place very early on in the conflict. But now we can't unring that bell, and I'm not sure that doing more than we're already doing would accomplish much beyond spending American blood and treasure.
bilateralrope wrote:You know how the right keeps complaining about voter fraud ?
It is not good for one campaign to run through at least four campaign managers in a single election. Presidential campaigns receive much more attention than they have any right to, but I do think they're useful in that they demonstrate the kinds of thinking patterns that a candidate will use in a major crisis. The fact that Trump's candidacy has been such an abject failure does not speak well to his ability to be President. It doesn't even speak well of his ability to plan to lose, as Bean was discussing above.
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
I don't think Steve Bannon was ever campaign manager. He was hired as the campaign's CEO after Manafort was fired, and Conway was Manafort's replacement as campaign manager. So, that's only 3 campaign managers Trump has run through.
That's...not a strong foreign policy argument. You can't exactly argue against what would have happened if we hadn't gone into Iraq or Syria because you can conjure up any number of scenarios that would be worse than what we had now. And I say that despite personally thinking that Syria would have been less of a mess if we put a no-fly zone in place very early on in the conflict. But now we can't unring that bell, and I'm not sure that doing more than we're already doing would accomplish much beyond spending American blood and treasure.
Well, I am not saying we should be doing more than we are right now, given present conditions and the russian stance on the subject. What I am saying is that reasonable people of good conscience could disagree in good faith regarding the issue of Syria with respect to an Intervention or No Intervention strategy, and that because it had already descended into a war zone, the parameter space for colossal fuckups is much reduced compared to Iraq where the parameter space for colossal fuckups was basically Yes.
GALE Force Biological Agent/
BOTM/Great Dolphin Conspiracy/ Entomology and Evolutionary Biology Subdirector:SD.net Dept. of Biological Sciences
There is Grandeur in the View of Life; it fills me with a Deep Wonder, and Intense Cynicism.
Every excuse you just gave for "intervening" (which is to say, invading and bombing) in Syria was used to foment the rape of Iraq. The result: the US armed forces lost the equivalent of a division to death or injury, the treasury was wasted and over a million Iraqis dead, plus countless others raped, tortured, robbed and forced to flee for their lives.
A division? You mean 20,000 people? "Lost"? Are you sure about that?
Yes.
Also, most estimates, and the most scientifically rigorous ones, but the Iraqi death tollbetween 100K and 200K. This includes secuirity forces. There is one outlier that goes up to 500K. Pretty much everyone agrees the Syrian death toll is higher and the humanitarian fallout far worse.
Stop lying.
Do you invent deaths to get off or just to disrespect those who died for real? Whatever it is it's pretty clear you are just climbing the body pile to crow, not out of any actual concern for the fallen.
Clutching at straws already? You'll have to do better than that.
You want to stop ISIS? How about voting against candidates for public office who supply weaponry to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar? Not only do these countries support ISIS on the sly, but they're carrying out scores of aerial massacres in Yemen on behalf of Al Qaeda. Besides, the US hasn't won a war in over 70 years. There's no reason to think we'll win one in Syria anytime soon.
Grenada? Panama? Persian Gulf War? Balkans?
As the War Whores kept claiming before the rape of Iraq commenced, Bush's invasion was just a continuation of the 1991 Gulf War, then yes that was a defeat since the final result is that the war was ultimately lost. If you want to count Grenada and Panama as wars, enjoy your onanistic catharsis. As for the Balkans, feel free to describe the "war" Uncle Sam won there.
Alyrium Denryle wrote:
Every excuse you just gave for "intervening" (which is to say, invading and bombing) in Syria was used to foment the rape of Iraq. The result: the US armed forces lost the equivalent of a division to death or injury, the treasury was wasted and over a million Iraqis dead, plus countless others raped, tortured, robbed and forced to flee for their lives.
First of all: go fuck yourself. Seriously, are you incapable of having a civilized discussion?
I double-checked to make sure I hadn't logged on to TFN or some other Miss Manners site. After taking note of the SDN logo and DR3, as well as the mind-numbingly fatuous post you made, I responded as I normally do to the stupidity. In other words, go play in traffic.
If not, how about you at least cool it with the misogynist insults.
Insulting you = insulting women? Since when, you blubbering vagina?
That would be great. Also, this "stupid twat" has a PhD, so you might want to tailor your insult selection to something less off-base that everyone else wont laugh at you for using.
Would that PhD (which I assume in your case stands for Piled High and Deep) be in political science? Foreign policy? International relations? I ask because if it isn't then it has no bearing whatsoever on the election, let alone foreign policy as it relates to the election -you know, the subject of this thread, asshole.
Now that that is out of the way.
1) Iraq was stable. It was not at the time of our invasion, a war zone. So the risk of making things worse than they already were there was pretty much always going to be Yes.
Iraq was bombed on a regular basis for twelve fucking years BEFORE Joffrey W. Bush ordered the invasion. During that time, over a million Iraqis (half of them children) starved to death and/or died from diseases that were easily curable with basic medicines (blocked by the US) and repairing things like the water and sewage treatment facilities Bush Sr bombed during the 1991 campaign.
On top of that, the "No-Fly Zones" gave cover to religious fanatics and other brigands (who would later create Al Qaeda in Iraq and ISIS) to enter Iraq in the first place. So yes, Iraq was a war zone, though not as bad as it became after the attack in 2003.
2) Syria, by contrast, had exploded into civil war including the use of nerve gas.
Unlike Iraq, which erupted into civil war between Sunnis, Shiites and the Kurds. Of course it's a well-known fact that Saddam Hussein didn't use nerve gas in those rebellions -oh, wait!
The two situations are completely different. Speaking of which, how many people have been killed raped, robbed, and forced to flee for their lives in Syria without our direct intervention? That is what I thought. The only difference in outcome is that white people have not been ki...oh. Oh now I see.
You are welcome to take your little strawman, twist him in a knot, soak him with gasoline, stick him right up your ass and strike a match. Failing that, fuck off.
Besides, the US hasn't won a war in over 70 years.
So US-led UN intervention in the Balkans was a complete waste of time then?
1) Iraq was stable. It was not at the time of our invasion, a war zone. So the risk of making things worse than they already were there was pretty much always going to be Yes.
Iraq was bombed on a regular basis for twelve fucking years BEFORE Joffrey W. Bush ordered the invasion. During that time, over a million Iraqis (half of them children) starved to death and/or died from diseases that were easily curable with basic medicines (blocked by the US) and repairing things like the water and sewage treatment facilities Bush Sr bombed during the 1991 campaign.
On top of that, the "No-Fly Zones" gave cover to religious fanatics and other brigands (who would later create Al Qaeda in Iraq and ISIS) to enter Iraq in the first place. So yes, Iraq was a war zone, though not as bad as it became after the attack in 2003.
Just out of curiosity now that the Goalposts of Blame have been shifted back to the 1990s... who are we blaming for this affair now? Because the no-fly zone and the embargo in Iraq was supported by presidents of both parties.
I understand that you got so busy talking about how bad the post-2003 Iraq War was that you may have forgotten this part, but in the 1990s it was generally believed by most Americans that Saddam Hussein was an actual threat to the peace of the region, and that he would launch unprovoked wars of aggression himself if allowed to build up the military means to do so. There were ample reasons to believe this, since he had already launched unprovoked attacks on Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia in the past.
You may have been too young to have real political opinions on the embargo and no-fly zone at the time; I certainly was. But exactly what are you suggesting here?
Are you saying that it would have been better to just walk away after the '91 Gulf War and let Saddam do whatever he pleased?
Are you saying we should have finished toppling him in '91, even though that would have been a much greater intervention and you are normally anti-intervention?
Or are you saying we should have remained uninvolved in '91, even if that meant Saddam conquered Kuwait and however much of Saudi Arabia he felt like taking?
Make up your mind. It's meaningless and childish of you to engage in recriminations over past policy unless you're willing to present a superior alternative.
2) Syria, by contrast, had exploded into civil war including the use of nerve gas.
Unlike Iraq, which erupted into civil war between Sunnis, Shiites and the Kurds. Of course it's a well-known fact that Saddam Hussein didn't use nerve gas in those rebellions -oh, wait!
And when he did so, and the US did nothing, the US was criticized after the fact.
Is it just me, or is this a can't-win scenario? If I act to protect rebels against a dictator means getting criticized by pacifists who would prefer to let the rebels die. If I do not act to protect rebels against a dictator means getting criticized by pacifists who blame me for the rebels' deaths. In your case, it's the same pacifist both times.
The two situations are completely different. Speaking of which, how many people have been killed raped, robbed, and forced to flee for their lives in Syria without our direct intervention? That is what I thought. The only difference in outcome is that white people have not been ki...oh. Oh now I see.
You are welcome to take your little strawman, twist him in a knot, soak him with gasoline, stick him right up your ass and strike a match. Failing that, fuck off.
So, do you actually have an answer to the question "how would a US intervention in Syria in 2011-12 be significantly worse than what wound up happening anyway?"
Because you started this whole shitstorm with the implication that Clinton was some sort of lunatic warmonger for having advocated intervention in Syria.
If that's a fair accusation to make against her, then you need to be able to establish that the intervention in Syria was an obviously bad idea, that we could reasonably foresee that the consequences of intervening would be much worse than the consequences of not intervening. You've done nothing to support that claim except to randomly recycle old talking points about Iraq- a country which, coincidentally, has been invaded and partially pillaged by spillover from the Syrian Civil War, and which has suffered even further from that war being dragged out than it would have had to suffer anyway.
This is over and above the millions of Syrian (and Iraqi, and so on) refugees pouring into Europe and of course the unfortunates who stayed behind in Syria, both the living ones and the ones who are now dead.
All of this, or something much like it, was a foreseeable outcome of allowing the Syrian Civil War to drag out indefinitely.
You can either:
1) Admit Clinton wasn't crazy to think US intervention might be preferable to doing nothing and letting this happen, or
2) Prove that Clinton must have been crazy because US intervention would likely have been even worse, which will require you to prove that:
2a) The typical consequences of US intervention are even worse than the Syrian Civil War.
I don't think you can prove (2a), and I'm pretty sure the honest position on your part would be to just concede (1). It's all very well to have a trendy hatred of mainstream politicians, but if it blinds you to the realities of millions of people suffering and dying, it is doing you no good at all.
Besides, the US hasn't won a war in over 70 years.
So US-led UN intervention in the Balkans was a complete waste of time then?
Yep.
So... Slobodan Milosevic wasn't a war criminal, and the ICTY was wrong to indict him for war crimes?
Just out of curiosity now that the Goalposts of Blame have been shifted back to the 1990s... who are we blaming for this affair now? Because the no-fly zone and the embargo in Iraq was supported by presidents of both parties.
Both parties supported the Vietnam War, too. I guess they were right and all those Indochinese who died were no great loss, so long as those who carried out the annihilation of Vietnan, Laos and Cambodia had both a D and an R next to their names. I could go on and give details of many more crimes against humanity that had bi-partisan support, but suffice it to say that the fact that something is supported by both parties should lead anyone who keeps up with current events to smell a rat.
I understand that you got so busy talking about how bad the post-2003 Iraq War was that you may have forgotten this part, but in the 1990s it was generally believed by most Americans that Saddam Hussein was an actual threat to the peace of the region, and that he would launch unprovoked wars of aggression himself if allowed to build up the military means to do so. There were ample reasons to believe this, since he had already launched unprovoked attacks on Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia in the past.
Unprovoked? The Gulf States backed Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran, in his use of nerve gas, in his slaughter of Kurds, Marsh Arabs and Shiites. Basically, Iraq was their Gregor Clegane, laying waste to Iran and anyone else they considered a nuisance to their feudal system. They were quite happy to fight the Iranians to the last Iraqi, all the while charging their Frankenstein monster interest on loans to pay for the war, as well as stealing Iraq's oil by slant-drilling. The Emir of Kuwait made his own bed with Saddam Hussein. Ditto for the House of Saud.
You may have been too young to have real political opinions on the embargo and no-fly zone at the time; I certainly was. But exactly what are you suggesting here?
Now let's take a look at what Clinton's secretary of state had to say on the subject:
Are you saying that it would have been better to just walk away after the '91 Gulf War and let Saddam do whatever he pleased?
You really suck when it comes to presenting False Dilemmas.
Are you saying we should have finished toppling him in '91, even though that would have been a much greater intervention and you are normally anti-intervention?
Or are you saying we should have remained uninvolved in '91, even if that meant Saddam conquered Kuwait and however much of Saudi Arabia he felt like taking?
We should have remained "uninvolved" from the beginning. I realize that history is a continuum, where one event is caused by what came before, so re-winding the tape to undo one catastrophe requires that you re-wind it further to undo an earlier disaster that caused it. Personally, I think overthrowing Mossadegh, siding with Iraq and the Gulf States against Iran, and Sunni fundies against the Russians in Afghanistan were not just blunders, but crimes (Talleyrand can eat a donkey's dick in hell).
If that's re-winding the tape too far for your liking, I think the case could be made that Bush Sr might have done the world a huge favor if he had simply let the sheikhs stew in their own juice. But that's just speculation and probably better suited for a different thread.
The point is that imperialism leads to one invasion, coup or some other crime against peace/humanity in order to deal with the wreckage from a previous one in much the same way that a serial liar has to pile one lie on top of another on top of another and still can't keep their story straight. "But... but... I can't stop lying now -I've told so many lies before I have to tell more lies to cover up the holes in the previous ones!"
Make up your mind. It's meaningless and childish of you to engage in recriminations over past policy unless you're willing to present a superior alternative.
I have. It's called MYOB. Not that it matters. If I point out that drinking goat piss every morning is not a good way to cure cancer, it's not up to me to suggest a drink that will cure the disease.
And when he did so, and the US did nothing, the US was criticized after the fact.
Is it just me, or is this a can't-win scenario? If I act to protect rebels against a dictator means getting criticized by pacifists who would prefer to let the rebels die. If I do not act to protect rebels against a dictator means getting criticized by pacifists who blame me for the rebels' deaths. In your case, it's the same pacifist both times.
Boo fucking hoo. You made your imperialist bed, lie in it.
So, do you actually have an answer to the question "how would a US intervention in Syria in 2011-12 be significantly worse than what wound up happening anyway?"
Holy fucksticks you are dense! The US intervened from the beginning, supplying the so-called Free Syrian Army and its allies since at least 2012, including those wonderful people who just beheaded a 6th-grader.
Because you started this whole shitstorm with the implication that Clinton was some sort of lunatic warmonger for having advocated intervention in Syria.
Truth hurts, doesn't it?
Eugene McCarthy once quipped that in the history of mankind, when it comes to causing human grief and misery, few forces can match British map-makers. In the last 60 years or so, Democrats who piss their pants at the thought of being called "weak" by right-wing jingoists have given them a run for their money. Johnson couldn't quit Vietnam because he didn't want to be accused of losing Vietnam the way Truman "lost" China. Clinton continued Bush Sr's campaign of pestilence and famine against Iraq because he didn't want the GOP to call him a pussy, and Obama's presidency has been little more than Joffrey W. Bush's third and fourth terms, and Hillary promises to give the Crawford Caligula his unofficial fifth term.
In one respect, the GOP handles this kind of villainy much better: When the war is lost, they run for the lifeboats and won't hesitate to throw their patsies overboard to feed the sharks. Just ask Thieu of Vietnam. Or Marcos or Duvalier or Botha. Or the Kurds, who have played the role of Charlie Brown while Ford, Reagan, Bush (Jr and Sr) yank the football away like Lucy time after time. Meanwhile, bed-wetting Democrats are left holding the bag and taking the blame for the aftermath, even as they insist they support the cause. It's much more comical than any of Schultz's cartoons.
If that's a fair accusation to make against her, then you need to be able to establish that the intervention in Syria was an obviously bad idea, that we could reasonably foresee that the consequences of intervening would be much worse than the consequences of not intervening. You've done nothing to support that claim except to randomly recycle old talking points about Iraq- a country which, coincidentally, has been invaded and partially pillaged by spillover from the Syrian Civil War, and which has suffered even further from that war being dragged out than it would have had to suffer anyway.
Getting involved in another country's civil war is always a bad idea. In the case of Syria where the war is a six-way civil war, it is at least three times as bad and possibly worse. Besides, who exactly are we supposed to be fighting against? Assad? That could lead to a shoot-out with Russia, Iran and now China, who have also sent advisors. ISIS and Al Qaeda? I hope not, seeing as how (a) we supplied them and (b) Assad and his allies are already fighting them and winning. So if you just HAVE to turn this into Sophie's Choice, why not just back Assad & Co, with the proviso that they don't slaughter the Kurds? Oh wait, we'd also have to ask Turkey not to massacre Kurds either and right now Uncle Sam's name is Mudd in that country.
Or we could just sit this out, heeding the wisdom of John Quincy Adams for a change.
This is over and above the millions of Syrian (and Iraqi, and so on) refugees pouring into Europe and of course the unfortunates who stayed behind in Syria, both the living ones and the ones who are now dead.
Of course US bombings will decrease the number of refugees, right?
All of this, or something much like it, was a foreseeable outcome of allowing the Syrian Civil War to drag out indefinitely.
Things that can't go on forever, don't. Besides, there's no guarantee that US intervention would help. It's been a debacle so far:
US air strikes in Syria are encouraging anti-regime fighters to forge alliances with or even defect to Islamic State (Isis), according to a series of interviews conducted by the Guardian.
Fighters from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Islamic military groups are joining forces with Isis, which has gained control of swaths of Syria and Iraq and has beheaded six western hostages in the past few months.
Some brigades have transferred their allegiance, while others are forming tactical alliances or truces. Support among civilians also appears to be growing in some areas as a result of resentment over US-led military action.
“Isis now is like a magnet that attracts large numbers of Muslims,” said Abu Talha, who defected from the FSA a few months ago and is now in negotiations with other fighters from groups such as the al-Nusra Front to follow suit.
So... Slobodan Milosevic wasn't a war criminal, and the ICTY was wrong to indict him for war crimes?
The exoneration of a man accused of the worst of crimes, genocide, made no headlines. Neither the BBC nor CNN covered it. The Guardian allowed a brief commentary. Such a rare official admission was buried or suppressed, understandably. It would explain too much about how the rulers of the world rule.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre at Srebrenica.
Far from conspiring with the convicted Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, Milosevic actually "condemned ethnic cleansing", opposed Karadzic and tried to stop the war that dismembered Yugoslavia. Buried near the end of a 2,590 page judgement on Karadzic last February, this truth further demolishes the propaganda that justified Nato's illegal onslaught on Serbia in 1999.
Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006, alone in his cell in The Hague, during what amounted to a bogus trial by an American-invented "international tribunal". Denied heart surgery that might have saved his life, his condition worsened and was monitored and kept secret by US officials, as WikiLeaks has since revealed.
Milosevic was the victim of war propaganda that today runs like a torrent across our screens and newspapers and beckons great danger for us all. He was the prototype demon, vilified by the western media as the "butcher of the Balkans" who was responsible for "genocide", especially in the secessionist Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Prime Minister Tony Blair said so, invoked the Holocaust and demanded action against "this new Hitler". David Scheffer, the US ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], declared that as many as "225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59" may have been murdered by Milosevic's forces.
This was the justification for Nato's bombing, led by Bill Clinton and Blair, that killed hundreds of civilians in hospitals, schools, churches, parks and television studios and destroyed Serbia's economic infrastructure. It was blatantly ideological; at a notorious "peace conference" in Rambouillet in France, Milosevic was confronted by Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, who was to achieve infamy with her remark that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children were "worth it".
Albright delivered an "offer" to Milosevic that no national leader could accept. Unless he agreed to the foreign military occupation of his country, with the occupying forces "outside the legal process", and to the imposition of a neo-liberal "free market", Serbia would be bombed. This was contained in an "Appendix B", which the media failed to read or suppressed. The aim was to crush Europe's last independent "socialist" state.
Once Nato began bombing, there was a stampede of Kosovar refugees "fleeing a holocaust". When it was over, international police teams descended on Kosovo to exhume the victims of the "holocaust". The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing "a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines". The final count of the dead in Kosovo was 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the pro-Nato Kosovo Liberation Front. There was no genocide. The Nato attack was both a fraud and a war crime.
All but a fraction of America's vaunted "precision guided" missiles hit not military but civilian targets, including the news studios of Radio Television Serbia in Belgrade. Sixteen people were killed, including cameramen, producers and a make-up artist. Blair described the dead, profanely, as part of Serbia's "command and control". In 2008, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, revealed that she had been pressured not to investigate Nato's crimes.
This was the model for Washington's subsequent invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and, by stealth, Syria. All qualify as "paramount crimes" under the Nuremberg standard; all depended on media propaganda. While tabloid journalism played its traditional part, it was serious, credible, often liberal journalism that was the most effective - the evangelical promotion of Blair and his wars by the Guardian, the incessant lies about Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction in the Observer and the New York Times, and the unerring drumbeat of government propaganda by the BBC in the silence of its omissions.
I have a bunch of remarks addressing Elfdart's argument on what I believe to be its merits, including my concession of some significant points where I made mistakes last night, but also my criticism of his basic approach.
At the same time, I have become totally convinced that Elfdart's argument is now totally divorced from the actual issues involved in the 2016 election. His problem isn't with Clinton or Trump or Democrats or Republicans or even Americans, it's with geopolitics as practiced by everyone everywhere for the last century or two. It's no longer even about his original statement to the effect that Clinton is/was a warmonger. It's about everyone with any meaningful political power in the developed world all being the exact same sort of warmonger with a handful of exceptions.
While I don't even think all his criticisms are wrong, it seems to me that he is no longer really saying anything that fits into this thread. Therefore, my replying to his argument on what I see as its merits would just be an exercise in drawing this tangent line out further from the curve it came from.
Therefore, I have split my post into two parts. The part that actually replies to the perceived merits of Elfdart's argument is saved as a draft, while the part in which I argue that his point is irrelevant to the matter at hand is attached to this post, below. I have a sneaking suspicion that if I posted the other part, it would just get split off the next time a mod looked at this thread, so I'm inclined not to do so.
=========================================
Elfdart wrote:
Just out of curiosity now that the Goalposts of Blame have been shifted back to the 1990s... who are we blaming for this affair now? Because the no-fly zone and the embargo in Iraq was supported by presidents of both parties.
Both parties supported the Vietnam War, too. I guess they were right and all those Indochinese who died were no great loss, so long as those who carried out the annihilation of Vietnan, Laos and Cambodia had both a D and an R next to their names. I could go on and give details of many more crimes against humanity that had bi-partisan support, but suffice it to say that the fact that something is supported by both parties should lead anyone who keeps up with current events to smell a rat.
If you're blaming both parties, that's actually totally fine as far as I'm concerned- but then this ceases to be an argument even vaguely relevant to the presidential election. Why not start a separate thread condemning the two-party system?
I understand that you got so busy talking about how bad the post-2003 Iraq War was that you may have forgotten this part, but in the 1990s it was generally believed by most Americans that Saddam Hussein was an actual threat to the peace of the region, and that he would launch unprovoked wars of aggression himself if allowed to build up the military means to do so. There were ample reasons to believe this, since he had already launched unprovoked attacks on Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia in the past.
Unprovoked? The Gulf States backed Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran, in his use of nerve gas, in his slaughter of Kurds, Marsh Arabs and Shiites. Basically, Iraq was their Gregor Clegane, laying waste to Iran and anyone else they considered a nuisance to their feudal system. They were quite happy to fight the Iranians to the last Iraqi, all the while charging their Frankenstein monster interest on loans to pay for the war, as well as stealing Iraq's oil by slant-drilling. The Emir of Kuwait made his own bed with Saddam Hussein. Ditto for the House of Saud.
So to be clear, you are arguing that this meant Saddam Hussein was unlikely to start future wars if allowed to do so. Am I correct, or was that just a puff of irrelevant words on your part?
You may have been too young to have real political opinions on the embargo and no-fly zone at the time; I certainly was. But exactly what are you suggesting here?
So basically, it would have been better to do nothing, and smack Saddam down if he tried to invade anyone else?
Honestly I'm inclined to agree. But you should suggest an alternative, not just talk about how the things that actually happened were 'unacceptable.' The situation in Syria is 'unacceptable' too, and is every bit as much a humanitarian disaster as the embargo was for Iraq. But just claiming things are unacceptable will accomplish literally nothing if you aren't prepared to make positive statements about what you intend to do about them.
Are you saying that it would have been better to just walk away after the '91 Gulf War and let Saddam do whatever he pleased?
You really suck when it comes to presenting False Dilemmas.
To be fair, thinking about it harder, that WAS a false dilemma, and I do apologize for that. Since I myself was able to come up with a third alternative... albeit one that involved continued intervention.
However, when you criticize what actually happened, without presenting an alternative, you invite people to try and trap you in false dilemmas, without even realizing they have done so. Because if I say "We did X, we shouldn't have done X," without saying "we should have done Y instead," you are yourself creating a di-lemma. Literally, a "choice between two alternatives," in which one of them is the thing that happened in real life, and the other is total inaction.
If you're too intellectually lazy to make serious suggestions about what should be done, carping about what shouldn't have been done in a war that ended twenty-five years ago is a complete waste of everyone's time.
Are you saying we should have finished toppling him in '91, even though that would have been a much greater intervention and you are normally anti-intervention?
Or are you saying we should have remained uninvolved in '91, even if that meant Saddam conquered Kuwait and however much of Saudi Arabia he felt like taking?
We should have remained "uninvolved" from the beginning. I realize that history is a continuum, where one event is caused by what came before, so re-winding the tape to undo one catastrophe requires that you re-wind it further to undo an earlier disaster that caused it. Personally, I think overthrowing Mossadegh, siding with Iraq and the Gulf States against Iran, and Sunni fundies against the Russians in Afghanistan were not just blunders, but crimes (Talleyrand can eat a donkey's dick in hell).
If that's re-winding the tape too far for your liking, I think the case could be made that Bush Sr might have done the world a huge favor if he had simply let the sheikhs stew in their own juice. But that's just speculation and probably better suited for a different thread.
The point is that imperialism leads to one invasion, coup or some other crime against peace/humanity in order to deal with the wreckage from a previous one in much the same way that a serial liar has to pile one lie on top of another on top of another and still can't keep their story straight. "But... but... I can't stop lying now -I've told so many lies before I have to tell more lies to cover up the holes in the previous ones!"
Lovely point, utterly irrelevant to the 2016 election. This isn't even you talking about politics specific to our country, this is you talking about all geopolitics of the past two hundred years, as illustrated by you throwing insults at Talleyrand of all people.
If you're going to act like your generalized complaints actually mean something... You need to be able to present at least some point of departure, within the reasonably recent past, where US inaction would have made things better.
The 1991 Gulf War is not such a point, the decision to perpetuate an embargo afterwards probably was, the no-fly zone wasn't, the invasion of Afghanistan wasn't, the invasion of Iraq almost certainly was, the decision to intervene in Syria (where we chose NOT to intervene, and chose a state of near-inaction for years)... that was not a place where our inaction clearly made things better.
Now we're intervening on behalf of the Kurds (the same people you just criticized earlier administrations for yanking the football away from them) on a limited scale, trying to stiffen the Iraqi military (which we broke and then tried to reconstruct with limited success) while largely ignoring most of the rest of the conflict. Would walking away now make things better? If it wouldn't, should we walk away anyway, just to avoid being responsible for any further disasters as we are partially responsible for the present round of disasters?
This is not an irrelevant question, unless your purpose in debating politics is purely about the word games. In which case, don't clutter up a discussion of the 2016 election, which is about issues of 2016 and about the specific past of the actual candidates and movements involved in the election.
Because you started this whole shitstorm with the implication that Clinton was some sort of lunatic warmonger for having advocated intervention in Syria.
Truth hurts, doesn't it?
Eugene McCarthy once quipped that in the history of mankind, when it comes to causing human grief and misery, few forces can match British map-makers. In the last 60 years or so, Democrats who piss their pants at the thought of being called "weak" by right-wing jingoists have given them a run for their money. Johnson couldn't quit Vietnam because he didn't want to be accused of losing Vietnam the way Truman "lost" China. Clinton continued Bush Sr's campaign of pestilence and famine against Iraq because he didn't want the GOP to call him a pussy, and Obama's presidency has been little more than Joffrey W. Bush's third and fourth terms, and Hillary promises to give the Crawford Caligula his unofficial fifth term.
In one respect, the GOP handles this kind of villainy much better: When the war is lost, they run for the lifeboats and won't hesitate to throw their patsies overboard to feed the sharks. Just ask Thieu of Vietnam. Or Marcos or Duvalier or Botha. Or the Kurds, who have played the role of Charlie Brown while Ford, Reagan, Bush (Jr and Sr) yank the football away like Lucy time after time. Meanwhile, bed-wetting Democrats are left holding the bag and taking the blame for the aftermath, even as they insist they support the cause. It's much more comical than any of Schultz's cartoons...
So to summarize, you don't actually have an argument for why it was an act of folly or madness or anything else negative on Clinton's part, to advocate greater intervention in Syria. Because you seem to have no interest in even trying to prove that would have turned out worse than what was going to happen anyway.
Except for this constant mantra of dogmatic "noninterference is better than being an imperialist," which you are harping on to the point where I start expecting you to spout lines cribbed from TNG episodes about the Prime Directive any minute now.
Also, most estimates, and the most scientifically rigorous ones, but the Iraqi death tollbetween 100K and 200K. This includes secuirity forces. There is one outlier that goes up to 500K. Pretty much everyone agrees the Syrian death toll is higher and the humanitarian fallout far worse.
Stop lying.
For shit's sake, for once can you actually present evidence instead of just throwing a tantrum? If you object to the numbers someone else puts forward, the onus is on you to present the correct numbers. You are so quick to hide behind board rules related to the appropriateness of insults/curses, but you conveniently ignore all of the ones related to honest debating tactics. I mean, fuck, I agree with you on the broad aspects of your argument (and, I believe, so does Simon, unless I misunderstood his most recent post), but as Simon said most of it is utterly irrelevant to this thread. And even where it does touch upon relevance you stubbornly refuse to actually present a reasoned argument, instead quickly degenerating into random bile.
Point of order, I agree with SOME of the broad aspects of his argument, but not others.
The point is that his argument is not germane to the topic of this thread. Engaging him on it in this thread is a waste of time. And that's even without the problem of his evasive debating tactics, which pop up whenever someone asks him an awkward question like "so what happens next," or "what should she have done," or "why is this idea of yours a good plan exactly?"
If he wants to criticize the entire two-party system and every geopolitical decision made by the United States regarding the Middle East ever since Thomas Jefferson refused to pay tribute to Tripoli, fine. He can do that in another N&P thread. Or a History forum thread, if he thinks he can actually document what he's saying rather than just declaring it.
But if he's going to use that verbal shotgunning of universal scorn as a rhetorical device to defend his ill-considered critiques of Hillary Clinton, whatever, it's not even worth engaging. Because his recitation of the litany of American crimes is no longer really relevant to current events, or at least not the part of them we discuss in an election thread.
Simon_Jester wrote:Point of order, I agree with SOME of the broad aspects of his argument, but not others.
The point is that his argument is not germane to the topic of this thread. Engaging him on it in this thread is a waste of time. And that's even without the problem of his evasive debating tactics, which pop up whenever someone asks him an awkward question like "so what happens next," or "what should she have done," or "why is this idea of yours a good plan exactly?"
If he wants to criticize the entire two-party system and every geopolitical decision made by the United States regarding the Middle East ever since Thomas Jefferson refused to pay tribute to Tripoli, fine. He can do that in another N&P thread. Or a History forum thread, if he thinks he can actually document what he's saying rather than just declaring it.
But if he's going to use that verbal shotgunning of universal scorn as a rhetorical device to defend his ill-considered critiques of Hillary Clinton, whatever, it's not even worth engaging. Because his recitation of the litany of American crimes is no longer really relevant to current events, or at least not the part of them we discuss in an election thread.
I generally concur. Though because I am currently engaging him (though at the moment am at a loss for his Bosnian Genocide denialism) I cannot make that official.
GALE Force Biological Agent/
BOTM/Great Dolphin Conspiracy/ Entomology and Evolutionary Biology Subdirector:SD.net Dept. of Biological Sciences
There is Grandeur in the View of Life; it fills me with a Deep Wonder, and Intense Cynicism.
But why the concept of not invading others, no matter what at the time seems to be "right", is s hard to grasp?
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
One, it's not a hard concept to grasp. But as presented by Elfdart, it is not relevant to the topic of the thread, which is the 2016 US election. Because this promotion of total noninterference and pacifism is uncommon, not only in the US but around the entire world. All sorts* of countries interfere to varying degrees in the affairs of other nations, including their wars, and this has gone on for literally the whole of history. It is not a defect of one American politician, or political party, or both parties, or even of America. It is a defect of the whole world for all time so far.
Thus, it is a simple concept but it is not a relevant concept. And discussion of it will inevitably become a pointless tangent in the larger context of this thread.
Two, for this concept to be actionable, we must choose to implement it in some time or place. There has to come a day when we say "we used to intervene in foreign affairs, but now we will not." It is on this level that we judge individual politicians, on their specific reaction to specific events. For any individual politician to implement this policy of total noninterference and pacifism, they must say "today is the day we will do this."
Sometimes it is obvious the world would be a better place if the noninterference had been adhered to. Sometimes, it is not obvious. We are not necessarily better off because nobody decided to forcefully resist Hitler's reoccupation of the Rhineland at the risk of violent meddling in the internal affairs of Germany. We are not necessarily better off because no international force was dispatched to perform peacekeeping duties in the Syrian Civil War and force the various factions then participating to accept a cease fire. Maybe we are better off, maybe we are not.
So as a basis for commentary on individual politicians, it is hard to use "they advocated intervention in this crisis" as evidence that they are somehow worthy of unusual condemnation. Especially a crisis like the Syrian Civil War. And since that is the only aspect of this entire issue that makes sense to bring up in the context of this thread, that further undermines the relevance of this topic to this thread.
There is no reason NOT to bring up "I support a policy of noninterference and pacifism, here are my reasons, discuss please" in its own thread. There is similarly no reason TO clutter up a thread about specific election news with pages upon pages of "I support this highly abstract stance favoring noninterference and pacifism, fuck you for questioning my reasons, stop lying."
______________________________
*Note that "all sorts of countries" is not the same as "literally every country at every moment."
Pacifism and non-interference are not uncommon concepts in any part of the world; they usually have many adherents, perhaps even the majority of the population.
In fact, the politicians rarely present a choice to the population if they should start an aggressive war or intervention, or not. They rely on their "electoral mandate" to simply start wars without direct public consent.
Hitler has declared war on most of his enemies first, or directly attacked them and declared war subsequently - so this is tangential and unrelated to US foreign policy as discussed here.
Advocating intervention in foreign civil wars is an exceptionally shaky moral position as a historical survey has demonstrated that foreign interference has in most cases prolonged the war and thereby increased the number of victims of violence.
So what if a person who has the right stance on this matter has, in your view, weakly argumented his position? That is not a good ground to dismiss it out of hand. And let's face it, with a bit of digging you could find the same information. I did it for you in this case to make my point stronger: no matter the intentions, interventions do not work out as intended. Therefore, it has been a core point of anti-imperialist politics to avoid interventions even if the government says the intentions are one hundred and fifty percent benigh (in fact, the government would usually do so even if it is a complete lie, simply to convince the public to support the intervention, no matter the result).
I also think that there is good grounds to discuss the policy of interference in foreign affairs in a thread about US elections, because many US politicans represent an imperialist warmaking elite who have launched a huge number of military interventions using the unprecended military advantage and the superpower status of the nation. It is less valid as a general discussion since most other nations (except "great powers" like UK, Russia etc. who also launch imperialist interventions or could launch them in the future e.g. China) lack the sheer military power to keep intervening again and again within mere decades in one war after the other.
Let us not avoid discussion about Clinton's potential to start even more disastrous wars given her ties to the military industrial complex.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Sen. Sanders' project set out an e-mail today urging his supporters to donate to the Democratic Senatorial candidates in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Nevada, the states currently sitting as the tipping point states between GOP and DNC control of the Senate.
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