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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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@Canid - I'm arguing for intervention only in places where there is a dire humanitarian situation. A Rwanda or a Syria. Not in every possible conflict for the sake of conflict.
EDIT- And that if and when we do so, we have a plan. A long term one. And not follow the same nonsense process that was first seen in Vietnam as Jack illustrated. And that we don't half-ass intervene in conflicts that have nothing to do with us, with Yemen as the example given.
edited 29th Sep '15 8:27:06 AM by FFShinra
@Shinra: Obama does listen to his advisors. But not the military or diplomatic ones, or event the economists. He listens to the political hacks who tell him how things will play in domestic politics.
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And stuff like this is why Americans hate interacting with foreigners, or more specifically talking US policy with them. Also, for the ten millionth time, the US did not arm Al Queda nor the Taliban
Not just Vietnam, but Iraq, and now it looks like Afghanistan too.
edited 29th Sep '15 8:28:58 AM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.I saw a headline that indicated that Trump said he was "childish" and may be dropping out. Intrigued, I clicked it.
And of course it was clickbait. Not even worth sharing here (it came from ABC News, if you're wondering). Basically, he used the word "childish" to refer to like one thing he did, and he said he might drop out if his polling numbers get low enough. In other words, much headline about nothing.
The New York Times just put up an editorial saying "Donald Trump is not going anywhere"
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Throwing guns and money at politically unstable places with strong anti-US sentiments without restraint is not actually helping the problem. Specially when you are aware that the funding of these anti-US groups comes from the people you are funding.
And seriously. What do you expect people to do with guns? Eat them?
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothesNo, we expect people to eat the bullets.
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)Everyone talks about how the US is hated whenever it intervenes, but it's not. Look at Kosovo, look at Bosnia, look at Kuwait, the US is loved in those places, and with good reason.
Also as much as the US may be shying away from acting like the world police it still tries to claim the prestige of such a position. You call your president the "leader of the free world", the US often calls itself the protector of democracy, if you're going to call yourself the leader of the free world then it's not unreasonable of people to expect you to lead.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI wish Americans cared more about the possibility of executing innocent people.
I'd read a disturbing op-ed
about an upcoming execution of a man who appears to have been coerced into confessing to a crime he did not commit. How upcoming? October 6. The editorial is trying to get people to look at the facts of the case and insist the execution be postponed (if nothing else) and the case be re-examined. Disturbingly, there are no comments on the editorial. A Google search didn't find many other people talking about it.
I remember that fucked-up moment in one of the presidential debates; either 2012 or 2008, when one of the candidates claimed that Texas has never executed anyone innocent. Which is very likely not true, but it seems people don't care. It's like people bury their heads in the sand and try to avoid things they don't want to know.
Like in the Simpsons movie, I often imagine the U.S intervention policies are like:
- Folder A) Guns
- Folder B) More Guns
- Folder C) Exploding cigars
- Folder D) Guns that shoot exploding cigars
- Folder E) Money and Guns
edited 29th Sep '15 9:41:52 AM by Aszur
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes![]()
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I met a guy who Kuwait who really hated the US, he was also the guy who gloated about how because we owed so much money to China we were their bitch.
Edit: I'm also pretty sure the Bosnians hate us to.
edited 29th Sep '15 10:18:09 AM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.Love us or hate us, you know who we are, so it's a form of success regardless.
edited 29th Sep '15 10:46:12 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
X5 Obama had to be dragged into Libya by the French and British.
X3 One guy is not representative, especially when he's obviously an idiot. As for the Bosnians, what's your basis for that? Because the US has been very popular in Bosnia since it intervened.
edited 29th Sep '15 11:01:10 AM by Silasw
“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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The guy was actually pretty smart, in our simulation as the CCP he managed to go from the guy in charge of lunar exploration, to head of the Communist Party, but I digress. I was wrong. Upon doing further reasearch I found we have a 63 percent approval rating in Kuwait, which given the fact that nearly every country in the Arab world has an approval rating of us lower than 50 percent, and the Jordanian people apparently at one point had a 99 percent disapproval rating, is remarkable.
In regards to the whole "Obama is a peacemonger" bit - a huge part of that was because, regardless of whether the situation called for it or not, the American Public was really sick of war by that point, and had even less reason to want to intervene in a dispute that had nothing to do with the US personally.
That said, I wish we'd done with Syria what we had with Libya, but the issue there is that Syria's been on good terms with Russia - Libya, however, was not, so the US (and the coalition) could act with relative impunity there, while intervening in Syria would have roused the bear.
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"
Oh right, I forgot to include another step in the US process of intervention. Get into such a funk about our abilities to intervene that we allow major atrocities to occur, all the while saying that both sides are the same anyway. God I wish the British were still a relevant power, they were so good at these sorts of things.

The NSA, probably.
D'oh hoh hoh. Ain't I a stinker.
edited 29th Sep '15 8:24:22 AM by Aszur
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes