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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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Manufacturing Casus Belli and seizing on tragedies to do so is as old as the concept of a justified war. It's something that should always be suspected, since it's extremely common.
Moreover, if the US wants to have any grounds to criticize breaches of international law by Russia and China, it needs to not constantly be ignoring those laws whenever they don't suit it's interests.
edited 24th Oct '16 12:51:07 PM by CaptainCapsase
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And what, exactly, could Clinton use to claim causus beli with the countries you've outlined in your scenario? You kind of need WAAAAAAAAAY more than just being friendly towards countries you don't like. Or North Korea being North Korea. And you're ignoring the fact that Iran is trying to cooperate with us at present regarding its nuclear program.
Also, again, poor argumentation. They were presented with something called proof and had reason to suspect that it was, indeed, legit. That it wasn't remains a huge mistake, but again, hindsight is twenty/twenty.
edited 24th Oct '16 12:52:28 PM by AceofSpades
If we're going to talk in specifics about what Clinton might realisticly do on the foriegn stage, we could always talk Lybia. Not Bengazii, but Gadaffi. By most accounts, including her own memoir, Clinton was the driving force behind the US-led intervention to support the Arab Spring uprising there - Obama had to be convinced of it. It was claimed that it was a humanitarian aid effort but there are dissenting opinions
that it really was about regime change.
Do I necessarily think that's a bad thing? No...but we didn't go anything to resolve the power vacumn and now there's a civil war. At least in Iraq we stayed around long enough to help the Iraqis set up a civilian government, troubled as it is. Even Obama's admitted that failing to do so was probably the worst mistake of his presidency.
At the least though, we have Clinton's demonstrated willingness to lead interventions against dictatorial countries given a cause to support, i.e. the citizens overthrowing a dictator. (I don't believe Iran and N. Korea are realistic targets in this scenario right now though.) Has she learned from the mistakes of that? I guess we're gonna find out.
edited 24th Oct '16 12:54:22 PM by Elle
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That's the difficult part. A false flag attack as happened in Poland (or Vietnam to use and American example) probably the easiest way, by that could backfire spectacularly.
Even then, it would have to be limited to something well away from American soil, so public opinion might not shift.
edited 24th Oct '16 12:54:36 PM by CaptainCapsase
So....... now you're onto conspiracy theories as to how this would happen? I get you want to provide a different opinion, but veering into stuff like that just puts a bad light on all your points, Capsase.
I mean, it's pretty clear you're just speculating now. Like, you have no actual thing in Clinton's record you can point to that's actually pointing towards her wanting a war. Or towards war in general, just this historical determinism that says if it's happened before it must happen again.
That is just an unhealthy amount of cynicism.
edited 24th Oct '16 12:58:17 PM by AceofSpades
No, I'm not talking about 9/11 truthism, I'm talking about things that historically happened, or were seriously considered.
I also wasn't finished. The safer and more likely way would be to act aggressively towards the target to force them To respond it kind, claim there was an attack that never occurred, and hope that doesn't come to light until it's too late.
It's hard to say whether those options would be taken, public opinion may simply prevent that sort of escalation altogether.
edited 24th Oct '16 1:03:20 PM by CaptainCapsase
I point you towards my second paragraph. You're assuming an awful lot, at least one of which is that Clinton hasn't learned that those are generally bad ideas. You're also assuming that we couldn't retain our influence through non-violent means. You genuinely sound like war is where we're inevitably headed because REASONS. And have done nothing, again, to prove that Clinton is actually a warhawk like you've repeatedly claimed. Voting yes on a war once, a vote which she's said she regretted, does not make someone a warhawk. It does not make her eager to seek out another war with current allies or potential allies or obnoxious pains in the ass like NK.
And again, it's extreme speculation in the first place, to assume that she wants it so much she'll create a reason for it. I wasn't even comparing it to 9/11 truthers, to be clear, just saying that veering into conspiracy theories in general make you seem a lot less credible. It probably says something about you that you assumed that's what I was talking about, though.
edited 24th Oct '16 1:03:24 PM by AceofSpades
And we're done with Capsace.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"It's pointless to talk about ways a cause belli could be generated without getting people to agree on whether one would. And with Iraq still way too fresh I doubt Clinton at least would be willing to try pulling a Rumsfeld. She'd be walking into her detractor's hands and possibly into a one-term presidency. Maybe she could capitalize off of events caused by third parties as with Lybia, but an Iraq 2 (3?) would look especially bad.
This was probably inevitable but harumph. I actually like having him around even if I mostly disagree with him.
edited 24th Oct '16 1:10:26 PM by Elle
RE: American Empire
This is one of the definitions of Empire: "an aggregate of nations or people ruled over by an emperor or other powerful sovereign or government, usually a territory of greater extent than a kingdom, as the former British Empire, French Empire, Russian Empire, Byzantine Empire or Roman Empire."
Under this definition, the USA is definitely an Empire. Your body politic contains numerous smaller nationalities and ethnic groups that were subsumed into the greater whole by force. The various Native American nations are the most prominent of these, but there's also the Hispanic populace of your former Mexican territories to consider, the indigenous population of Hawaii, etc, etc.
The USA has been an imperial project from the start. That this surprises anyone to hear always surprises me, given that the US was founded in a time period when almost all states either had imperial projects or hoped to benefit from one. Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the USA played the exact same colonial game that the European powers did, subjugating Native American tribes, trying and failing to expand into Canada, conquering a third of Mexico, annexing Hawaii, Guam, Cuba and the Philippines, etc, etc. That's simple fact. It's also a simple fact that, like the rest of the colonial powers, you've stepped away from that over the course of the 20th century, abandoning most of your overseas colonies. However, that does not mean that the territory you currently occupy was not gained as part of imperial adventurism, or that the problems from those imperial expansions do not remain—just visit a native reservation.
The funny part, however, is that this in no way makes Caspase right. That America was founded as an imperial project does not require it to always act like one, and does not mean that it is acting as one now, anymore than Britain is currently acting as one. Even with the continued plight of the Native American tribes, and many other minority groups, the USA is still miles ahead of other former imperial projects when it comes to stepping back from colonialism—as many of their subject peoples could tell you, the Russian and Chinese imperial projects are still alive and well in a way that the American one is not.
I think it's also important to distinguish between the American imperial project of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and its overt conquest, and American Cold War adventurism. Where the former was driven by Manifest Destiny and a desire to spread across the continent, the latter was driven by paranoia about Soviet intentions towards the USA. That doesn't excuse a single thing that the USA did in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, or Southeast Asia, but to simply classify American activity in the Cold War as "imperialism" or even "neocolonialism" is to ignore the context (namely that the Soviets played hardball to) and the fact that the motivations were different even if the results were often largely the same.
Bill that would honor OSS heroes held up in Congress
Theory is that the Republicans don't want to award a Gold Medal to a group of Philippine veterans ether because of racism, feeling it will benefit the Dems, or because they've been asking the DOD for money for years. The bill is really popular in certain constituencies so the only way to kill it would be to take down other groups as collateral damage.
That or it's just the Dems being goddam Commie Nazi freedom haters (sarcasm)
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.The American Empire is commonly used to refer to the idea of the US neo-colonial influence over much of the developed world, basically the tendency of the US to prop up brutal dictatorships for strategic reasons.
Here's the thing, maintaining the US's influence in the face of a growing multipolar world is best done via diplomacy and alliance building, war is how you break an empire not build one. Clinton isn't stupid, she knows all of this, she's not going to go round starting random wars, not just because she's not like that but because she's smart enough to know that starting random wars would be the best way to speed up the decline of US global power.
What she might do is follow the example of Bill in Former Yugoslavia and herself in Libya and push for some humanitarian intervention with a broad coalition in the event of crimes against humanity. But I fail to see how that would be a bad thing.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
If you like that, you'll love this. CNN is covering a story (that seems to be several years old) about how thousands of California veterans are being forced to repay reenlistment bonuses and other benefits
in the wake of a scandal involving California National Guard recruiters filing false claims. While individual waivers of the repayment can be made, the debts these soldiers, who reenlisted in good faith, owe cannot be discharged in bulk without an act of Congress, and you can imagine how likely that is to happen. The debts owed by the veterans can amount to tens of thousands of dollars each.
"But humanitarian intervention = neocolonialism." It says so in our brochure, which we're handing out on street corners!
edited 24th Oct '16 1:35:47 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Going through these last couple of pages of posts, I can't help but note that we all seem to be treating a Clinton Presidency as a Foregone Conclusion now. Granted, at this point the only question is will it be close or a landslide, but nice to see that worries over Trump winning and Dooming Us All seem to have died down.
In a normal Congress this sounds like red meat for a bipartisan, feel good Bill to waive the fees (15 million bucks is a rounding error for the US federal government). But this is the same body that held up disaster relief and funds for dying 9/11 first responders so I'm not holding my breath.
I spent 20 minutes looking at interactive electoral projections today. Trump needs to run the table on swing states (Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Nevada, NC, NH, and the extra districts in Maine and Nebraska) to win 272 to 268. And he's behind in most of those states. He also needs to watch Arizona, and Utah. If Clinton carries just one swing state, or even the two district based ones, she eeks out a win.
edited 24th Oct '16 1:51:53 PM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.I thought Trump was a good thing in that he would cause the GOP to implode and give the Dems an edge. That looks like its happening, but I didn't think it would take as long as it did (the debates). I also underestimated just how much violence he's drumming up.
edited 24th Oct '16 2:00:47 PM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

And while we're giving Clinton flak for wars she might hypothetically start in an alternate reality future, Trump continues to attack the freedom of the press.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"