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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Nobody is arguing for bad interventions or for blanket interventions everywhere, but it’s disingenuous to pretend that the US is never wanted (it often is and remains very popular in a lot of countries because of interventions), that geopolitical fires will put themselves out (look how that worked out in Syria and Rwanda), that it’s somehow okay for third party nations to suffer as proxy revenge against the US for past moral failings, or that the US isn’t already under direct active attack by Russia in the form of election interference.
I’ll try and keep my isolationism rant short for once, in brief a lot of isolationism isn’t about minimising death, it’s about minimising deaths they feel responsible for, a lot of isolationists prefer tens of thousands of innocents dying to something preventable over hundreds dying at their hands in an attempt to fix things. They make the choice to intervene not about protecting innocent lives but about minimising their own feelings of guilt, when it shouldn’t be about them.
As for the past discussion about the unicorn brigade, I’d note that I’ve long been long if the people in this thread using that term and I’m a card-carrying socialist, it’s not about putting down progressives, it’s about putting down people who refuse to fall in time when it’s time to vote because they didn’t get a perfect and non-existent candidate (we’ve also now started to see the rise of the electability unicorn from the center).
On Bernie, I do think this thread has a particularly strong dislike of Bernie, but I can’t get to-upset about it, because dam does he deserve it some times, also it’s about him not progressive policy, this thread loves Warren (well apart from like two people who I think hate everyone and hate Warren the least).
Bernie needs to cut the crap, unless papers are actually seeing serious interference from the top to direct a political agenda (which does happen) he shouldn’t be going after them.
Well said.
DADT wasn't a step forward. It barely did anything, designed to make heterosexual lawmakers feel better with themselves while doing nothing to fight against harassment, or even prevent servicemembers getting thrown out (remember, the military still threw you out if they discovered it, nothing changed on that front).
I wasn't aware, thank you for correcting me.
In that case, supporting DADT was certainly a blackmark in her record.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 15th 2019 at 3:51:08 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangUh, Saddamn genocided the Kurds.
Ethnic violence existed before the US' failure of an occupation+war.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang![]()
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And I don’t think anyone is disputing that the follow through in Iraq was horribly mishandled, but I guarantee it wouldn’t have been good either way.
I mean, use Afghanistan as an example. The Taliban government killed more civilians there in four years than the coalition killed in a decade of occupation.
Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 15th 2019 at 3:54:50 AM
They should have sent a poet.I stand that Iraq was a bad call simply because the US wasn’t wanted, in the end being wanted is both a key part in being effective and avoiding imperialism.
Which can be what you get with some isolationism, imperialist disconnection, a lot of isolationists say that the US is bad and shouldn’t be deciding what happens, while ignoring (or actively suppressing) the people in developing countries making a request for help.
There’s something really neo-imperialists about western-isolationists insisting that their isolationist desires are more important that the requests for help from people long screwed over by the West. “Avoiding White Guilt is more important than saving brown lives” could be the slogan for some groups (looking at you Stop the War).
We had this with Libya, the Libyan people requested help from the West and a bunch of isolationists (lead by Germany) went “no we’ve decided you should die so you have to die, we don’t care if you want to live, we get to decide”, luckily they go overruled, but it was close.
Edited by Silasw on Aug 15th 2019 at 10:58:11 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran"If sanctions didn't work, then Russia wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of meddling in an American election with the hope of getting their sanctions lifted."
I suppose now would be a good time to mention that since Mitch McConnell has killed attempts to sanction Russia, a Putin linked oligarch, who is known to have been part of the election attack, footed the bill for a factory in Mitch's state and owns almost half of it. And a factory in a small factory town has a huge influence on politics in that town.
Other members of the oligarchs company have donated millions to Mc Connell and his staffers have become lobbyists for said company.
Getting those sanctions lifted was a huge boon to Russia. They got the senate majority leader in their pocket.
And afterwards, it wasn't just the Kurds, but also the Shias and Sunnis slaughtering each other. Plus, as I said, the Jihadists rising to power.
Look, before anybody strawmans, I'm not saying Saddam was a great guy, I was just using this as an example of things getting even worse due to an intervention.
Hell, I have a kurdish friend from Iraq. Back in 2004ish, he was all Team Bush. Today, he pretty much says that the war only resulted in dozens of more of Saddams ilk wrestling for control and the rise of radicalized extremists.
I'm not saying that there is an easy solution for the middle east. But war has proven itself to be the definite wrong one, in my opinion. It only serves as fertile soil for even more extremism.
Edited by Forenperser on Aug 15th 2019 at 12:58:06 PM
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianSo if your choices are “do nothing and it definitely will be bad” and “do something and it maybe will be bad”, how are you supposed to decide? It’s not like you can see the future.
Leaving Saddam and the Taliban alone would only have made things worse in the long run. The current situation isn’t much better, but at least there’s the possibility of a turnaround.
Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 15th 2019 at 4:00:30 AM
They should have sent a poet.![]()
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That does not surprise me at all, honestly.
I'm going to want a source on the Germans refusing to support the Libyan bombing because they wanted the Libyans to die, Silas, because that sounds like a heck of a strawman.
Edited by AzurePaladin on Aug 15th 2019 at 7:00:38 AM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -FighteerYou can’t claim to not be trying to apply a simple blanket solution then try and apply a simply blanket solution.
It wasn’t because they actively wanted them to die, it was because they had decided they they as a western nation had more right to determine the fate of the Libyan people than the Libyan people did. That’s wrong, that’s imperialism.
After everything we’ve done to the Middle East maybe we shouldn’t be the ones deciding what happens, maybe we should stay away when told to stay away and ask how high when told to jump, not refuse to jump because we’ve built ourselves (well in Germany’s case had enforced upon them) a guilt complex that makes it easier for us to handle thousands of allowed deaths over hundreds of caused deaths.
Edited by Silasw on Aug 15th 2019 at 11:04:07 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranThe Iraq war was a perfect example of how interventions can go poorly, yes.
But that doesn't mean that armed intervention is never worth it, just that it should be done carefully with 1) clear objectives, 2) sufficient resources and the knowledge that you will invest those resources over a long time, and 3) an administration that is competent enough to not ignore all facts on the ground.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 15th 2019 at 4:00:47 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang![]()
Saying that war isn’t a good idea is hardly a blanket solution. A blanket condemnation, yes, but that’s not incompatible with the idea of there being no easy answers. You can have a situation with no easy answers but several obvious bad ideas.
Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Aug 15th 2019 at 7:03:23 AM
Oh God! Natural light!
x4 That doesn't guarantee success either. That describes the Persian Gulf wars, yet those ended with bombing retreating soldiers that were fleeing Kuwait
and the aforementioned uprisings against Saddam and reprisals when Bush called for one right before leaving Iraq
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This.
Even a well-fought war will cost lives. If it is necessary, it must be considered very carefully.
Edited by AzurePaladin on Aug 15th 2019 at 7:07:10 AM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -FighteerIt’s a blanket statement aimed at directing the search for a solutions, it’s also just strait up wrong. State on state war saved lives during the breakup of Yugoslavia, aversion to war in Rwanda enabled genocide, a willingness to go to war enabled the people of East Timor to get their freedom, the people of Kuwait were saved from Saddam by war, I could go on.
I get it, it goes against ones natural instinct to think that a small amount of harm can do a large amount of good, there’s a reason people often fall back on “a war for peace is like fucking for virginity”, but you know how you make new virgins? You engage in an awful lot of fucking.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranNo, it doesn't, but the exact same thing could be said about diplomatic solutions.
Often it results in beneficial results, but when it fails it can result in Rwanda or the Second World War.
Entirely rejecting hard power is just as unreasonable and self-defeating as blanketly rejecting soft power.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangWhat would the alternative have been in the Middle East? Leave Saddam in power? You can’t just unilaterally say war is never the answer.
The problem in Iraq wasn’t that we invaded in the first place, it’s that we dropped the ball when it came time to actually fix the mess.
Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 15th 2019 at 4:11:40 AM
They should have sent a poet.Two such reports on Iraq came out in the prestigious The Lancet medical journal, first in 2004 and then in 2006. The 2006 study estimated that about 600,000 Iraqis were killed in the first 40 months of war and occupation in Iraq, along with 54,000 non-violent but still war-related deaths.
The US and UK governments dismissed the report, saying that the methodology was not credible and that the numbers were hugely exaggerated. In countries where Western military forces have not been involved, however, similar studies have been accepted and widely cited without question or controversy. Based on advice from their scientific advisers, British government officials privately admitted that the 2006 Lancet report was “likely to be right,” but precisely because of its legal and political implications, the U.S. and British governments led a cynical campaign to discredit it.
In June 2007, a British polling firm, Opinion Research Business (ORB), conducted a further study and estimated that 1,033,000 Iraqis had been killed by then.
While the figure of a million people killed was shocking, the Lancet study had documented steadily increasing violence in occupied Iraq between 2003 and 2006, with 328,000 deaths in the final year it covered. ORB’s finding that another 430,000 Iraqis were killed in the following year was consistent with other evidence of escalating violence through late 2006 and early 2007.
Just Foreign Policy’s “Iraqi Death Estimator” updated the Lancet study’s estimate by multiplying passively reported deaths compiled by British NGO Iraq Body Count by the same ratio found in 2006. This project was discontinued in September 2011, with its estimate of Iraqi deaths standing at 1.45 million.
Taking ORB’s estimate of 1.033 million killed by June 2007, then applying a variation of Just Foreign Policy’s methodology from July 2007 to the present using revised figures from Iraq Body Count, we estimate that 2.4 million Iraqis have been killed since 2003 as a result of our country’s illegal invasion, with a minimum of 1.5 million and a maximum of 3.4 million.
These calculations cannot possibly be as accurate or reliable as a rigorous up-to-date mortality study, which is urgently needed in Iraq and in each of the countries afflicted by war since 2001. But in our judgment, it is important to make the most accurate estimate we can.
Edited by wisewillow on Aug 15th 2019 at 4:16:44 AM
Also, while it's cute to pretend like Afghanistsn was some noble attempt at global policing by the US, let's call a spade a spade and say it was the 9/11 Revenge Tour.
America, like any other nation on the planet, does not intervene militarily in foreign affairs based on moral imperative, it does so based on its financial and political interests. The American public was out for blood and Afghanistan was the chosen target based on some intelligence links between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Then it turns out the latter were hiding in Pakistan and suddenly all the strategic objectives had always been about bringing the torch of democracy overseas.
I'm all for having a debate on the merits of interventionism, but let's not pretend American power is wielded with a benevolence power does not possess.
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.I agree with your key point about ruling out any war being insane, but let’s not pretend that the invasion of Iraq was well planned, there were alternatives (not faking evidence against him, not blaming him for things he didn’t do, waiting for a popular uprising to occur, ect...) and they got ignored because there was a blanket desire for war, not for improving the situation in Iraq.
You’re right, but it’s worth remembering that every so often we can align the stars such that it is in our financial and political interests to be benevolent, sometimes it’s good to be good, those are the nice days.
Edited by Silasw on Aug 15th 2019 at 11:17:15 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
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Like I said, I would never say Saddam was a great guy, but yeah, I think him staying in power would've definitely made the Middle East less dangerous than it is today.
I don't think ISIS could have risen to power the way it did without the Iraq war.
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Thats true as well, and also for the Iraq war.
Edited by Forenperser on Aug 15th 2019 at 1:15:42 PM
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian

That would still be a better solution than causing more destruction though. That's not a Perfect Solution Fallacy, that's merely simply not aggravating an already bad situation and making it worse.
If we're predicating this argument on "which causes the least hurt" if peace does that...then that IS the best solution.
Edit:
, and pagetopper
Edited by AzurePaladin on Aug 15th 2019 at 6:46:33 AM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer