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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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The US Military is so powerful, I believe they shouldn't ever need to resort to using it in the first place, not since 1991. Why are there still people stupid enough to invite that sort of fire upon their heads?
Because the last time the US sat and did nothing we got World War II.
Admittedly I think a lot of presidential candidates might get good traction if they wanted to downsize the military (cutting it in half will cut a ton of expenditure) and let the rest of the world deal with problems themselves. I remember reading a while ago about Pakistan's war against the Taliban having problems with the civilians because when they don't fight they say "Why aren't you doing anything?" and when they do do something they say "Why are you fighting America's war?"
Basically since World War 2 and the 90s America has been the world's police force because everyone else thinks we'll handle it, and then have the nerve to criticize us when things don't go as planned.
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Whats funny is we wern't really doing that post WW 2, a vast majority of the actions were specifically to counter and fight communism. Including supporting and installing dictators when it suited us.
The Gulf War is what got us really doing the actual world police thing.
edited 24th Oct '16 8:32:59 AM by Memers
X4 It's often not even people int he same country, the naked hypocrisy tends to come form the Russian and Chinease governments, which people from the US seem to assume speak for the rest of the world. The places where the US does help it's got a good reputation, the problem comes in the Middle East when the US doesn't understand why it isn't thanked for fighting terrorists that only exist because the US is propping up a despotic regime for its own strategic interests.
The people of Pakistan don't want the US to help via fighting the Taliban, they want it to help by stopping supporting the Pakistanis goverment.
“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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Not installed per se, the US certainly didn't stop and had no direct involvement
in the Military Coup that lifted Saddam Hussein to power.
Well, the "World Policeman" role is more a responsibility that comes with being the top Superpower, one the US inherited from The British Empire.
edited 24th Oct '16 8:53:05 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling OnHRC isn't really a hawk if you consider the sum total of American foreign policy thinking, and if we start screeching that a typical political realist like Hillary is an unrepentant War Hawk, we risk diluting the term into a useless political buzzword. Honestly, the problem with the attitude of the average American voter is that they can't make up their damned mind. They want us to defeat ISIS, but they don't want boots on the ground, so we use air power, but then we say don't use air power, it shouldn't be us, but we still need to defeat ISIS. So we turn to local powers, but admittedly, our local allies all suck, save for some of the Kurds, so the voters say, don't support our allies. But they want to defeat ISIS, yet they don't want our allies funded, they don't want our air force intervening, and they don't want boots on the ground. But then we do nothing, and then the voters demand, "Do something!" They need to make up their damned mind, or at least admit they don't give a shit whether ISIS is defeated or not.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."What we have going in Iraq right now is probably the best way to do it. Any boots we have on the ground there are either special forces raiding ISIS, or advisors helping the Iraqis with strategic decisions. The rest is just air strikes, supporting the Iraqis and Peshmerga while they do the ground work.
edited 24th Oct '16 9:08:56 AM by theLibrarian
Long Before Trump, There Was Ross Perot
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There's a short video about Perot and the '92 election there as well. If you're too young to remember that election, or weren't born back then (like me), it's a pretty interesting history lesson.
I'll say this - Perot is a much better speaker and considerably more likable than Trump is, at least in my opinion.
Oh God! Natural light!@crimson: you could say that the price of the war’s not a price that they’re willing to pay
@thelibrarian: eh, I'm not so sure that this is the right way to go about it. If the goal is regime change and defeating ISIS the current model only takes out ISIS. In fact unless the US is willing (and it isn't) to protect its allies the syrian army can roll over after all the major fighting is done. We'd need to see a proper invasion force to take out Assad and that would be costly in more then just dollars.
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?
X3 The Syrian army can't roll over anything, hell the actually army is almost a fiction at this point due to manpower shortages. Assad has had to withdraw from eastern Syria not because of ISIS but because he angered the Kurds, he's only got Aleppo surrounded because of Russian and Iranian support and has yet to crack the city.
Assad isn't really fighting ISIS that much at the moment, so the idea that with ISIS gone he could overrun the opposition is pure fiction.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranDamnit now I am imagining a game staring 'President Trump' going all Duke Nukem gunning down ISIL and spouting sexist and Apprentice one liners.
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He wouldn't but his allies certainly would, and assuming they called the US's bluff when a no fly zone was declared, short of starting World War 3 there's very little the US could do about that without invading in force, assuring a Republican victory in 2020.
@Crimson: That assumes the US actually is involved in Syria for humanitarian reasons. It's no more about humanitarianism than 19th century European involvement in Africa was about bringing "civilization" to "savages." At the end of the day, it's about imperialism and the typical games between great powers that has existed since the dawn of civilization.
Those in charge may very well believe in their own rationalization for their actions, and sometimes there is a positive impact, but on the whole it tends to do far more harm than good.
edited 24th Oct '16 10:14:17 AM by CaptainCapsase
We voted last night. Will be dropping off our ballots today after work. Researching judges was hard. With senators, we used votesmart.org and Ballotpedia to find what they'd voted on in their careers, but there wasn't an equivalent for judges that we could find. We wound up on news.google.com, looking up newsworthy cases where the judge was mentioned by name, in order to analyze sentencing trends, get an idea of personality based on the judges' comments, and see if there are any outstanding controversies to delve into like disproportionate sentencing or somesuch.
I never knew it was possible to hate a person as much as I hate Donald Trump right now. This is too much. Trump, who embodies the Alt-Right, who represents the Confederate values alive today, desecrated Gettysburg by delivering a speech of hate on the site where Lincoln once gave his famous address?! Excuse me, I need a moment to go let off some flame before what I have to say on that gets me banned five times over.
...
Okay, I'm back. So much hate.
Ooo, that's bad for Johnson. Harambe was polling at 5% in that hilarious poll months back that the "Stein losing to a dead gorilla" reference stems from. Through his campaign, Johnson at least had a shred of legitimacy for the fact that he's actually beating Harambe, but now he's fading back down to "Just another third party candidate" levels.
Probably should have done his research on Aleppo.
That just brightened up my day. I needed that after the Gettysburg desecration.
It's cheered on by the radical fringe of whoever's not in power, because it predominately f*cks with whoever is.
Also by anarchists/libertarians/anti-politicians/etc. regardless of who's in power, because it gives them fuel for the "All government is bad!" fire.
edited 24th Oct '16 10:06:52 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.@sil: I'm expecting the US to just lose all interest syria when ISIS is "defeated" while Russia is very keen to keep their dictator in charge. The kurds do good work but what happens when they're just another rebel faction?
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?No they wouldn't, Hez might be willing to follow Assad into such a clusterfuck but the Iranians have no interest (especially as such a fight might inflame their own, generally well integrated, Kurdish population) and the Russians are actually working with the Kurds, they're not going to throw away influence over half of Syria just to make Assad feel important.
The Kurds will do fine, they're smart enough to know that the US will likely abandon them one day and they're prepared for it, it's part of why they've in part working with the Russians. Assad doesn't have the power to fight them (he tried and the Russians had to arrange a truce before all his remains troops out east were slaughtered) and his allies have no interest in fighting the Kurds.

The thought that's struck me before, going along with my feeling the candidates' stances on issues are secondary to the point of irrelevant, is that whenever someone does bring up a stance of Clinton's, they're typically trying to use it as a reason not to vote for her rather than the reverse or seeking validation about why they should.
edited 24th Oct '16 7:54:22 AM by sgamer82