Lots to catch up on, but I just wanted to clarify that a Turkish or Russian takeover of China is not, in fact, my preferred outcome, or that of leftists, as far as I know. The preferred outcome is for Assad to get to keep ruling whoever wants to be under his rule, and generally let everyone get self-determination. Every other outcome is a reason to grieve.
Also, I do not identify as a leftist at this time.
Likewise please refrain from assuming that people will take any pretext and push any argument for the sake of 'putting America down'. I can't speak for others, but, personally, beyond debunking lies that directly and provably affect people's lives, I'm not interested in the USA's image one way or another.
Edited by Oruka on Feb 1st 2019 at 12:15:00 PM
as a venezuela I want to said something:
While military intervention will be always be iffy for us and some argument here like "america have the power, why not?" or "the other option is russia and china" always come as problematic because it miss the efect intervention have one someone, you can "we failed but we need kept doing it" feel priviliged when you are not a damn target of said interventation or when said intervention is based more on what the US acept or not(hello saudi arabia).
BUT internaciona presure and condeming stuff DOES work, here in venezuela have made more progress in weak that have being done in YEARS, granted part of it is because nobody act before, the oposition being idiots and more latin country not caring about venezuela until it was their issue and racism come out of it(latin brotherhood my ass), international presure can do wonder to time to time.
For the first times in much time, people are feeling hope.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"This.
I'm especially confused considering that I never advocated for deposing Assad.
And if you think fewer people would've died if we did nothing and allowed Daesh to run rampant then you're kidding yourself.
Doing nothing and allowing expansionistic actors to do what they want doesn't actually result in more peace.
Collateral damage is unfortunate and should be scrutinized but the idea that it invalidates any good results is inane and myopic.
And you think America doing nothing will result in this... how?
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Feb 1st 2019 at 3:36:59 PM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
. This
But that’s not how International politics works. Like it or not, we live in a globalized world, and our actions have consequences that affect everyone.
Pretending that they don’t is irresponsible, and doesn’t help anybody.
Edited by megaeliz on Feb 1st 2019 at 3:44:44 PM
@Fourthspartan:
What faction is that? I have yet to hear about them.
Sorry if I misatributed support for deposing Assad to you. I must've either misunderstood something you wrote or been thinking of someone else.
What good have we accomplished? What would victory in Syria even look like? Anyway, it's easy to say that when you aren't a person who's dead and would still be alive we're it not for US intervention and you don't personally know such a person.
If innocent people are going to die either way, why not go with the path where we aren't the ones doing the killing? Better yet, why not a policy that will help others without such a high risk of killing them like sending planes to evacuate people and put them through the process to seek asylum in the US?
I'm not Fouth Spartan, but I'm here to help!
The faction is called Rojava, or the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. Commonly referred to as Kurdish as it has its base in Syrian Kurdistan and much of its forces are Kurdish, it is probably the most Democratic faction in the conflict.
Edited by AzurePaladin on Feb 1st 2019 at 5:04:38 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. -FighteerThey also include several socialist groups under their umbrella and are responsible for projects like the Jinwar female-only commune,
FYI.
I will admit to having such thoughts about some opposers of interventionism, in the end there can be an undercurrent of “whites only socialism” amongst such people, it’s the same reason you will find supporters of social spending in the US only wanting such spending to go to white people, such people are often also isolationists, they don’t care about people beyond their borders.
If it was done right (which under Trump it can’t so I’m talking about a hypothetical future democrat working alongside European allies) you wouldn’t have a power vacuum, there didn’t have to be one after Saddam was removed, Bush and co just make such a huge mess that they caused a power vacumme. With Syria we also have the added advantage that for at least one third of the country there’s a reasonable group to work with (the Kurd and the democratic non-Kurdish groups allied with them).
That’s even assuming a direct removal of the entire Assad regime, what might be more viable is a partisan (god I’m showing my Britishness, suggesting partition), with the current regime having some territory as part of a Russian zone, the Kurds having an independent sector under their control and a democratic secural(ish) section under the few reasonable rebels that haven’t been killed or absorbed into the Kurds.
Civilians are gonna die anyway, that’s a reality of war, those who die care little for if it’s because of a US drone strike that hit the wrong target, or because Assad decided to drop barrel bombs on their homes (though the first way is probably less painful).
This is a big part of my issue with some anti-interventionists, the ignoring of the death and destruction that happens if we do nothing, it makes me think of the anti-vaccine movement, which bases itself on the ‘logic’ that it’s better to let many die via inaction than risk being directly responsible for the suffering of a single person.
I don’t care if a bunch of people back home feel a load of white guilt over the civilian casualties of an intervention, what I care about is if we end up with less civilian dead because we act that we’d have had if we sat on our asses.
I wasn’t cebrating so much as stating a fact, also I don’t consider it unreasonable that big changes should take a big effort from the leader who wishes to inact them, monumental desicions shouldn’t be made on a whim.
Plus I don’t grant to premis that Trump won the election fairly.
Yes we’ve killed civilians in Syria, we’ve also allowed the deaths of many more civilians via inaction and saved the lives of many civilians via our actions.
Nobody gets a 100% success rate, the world isn’t that kind, the civilian deaths we’ve caused are tragic and should be avoided whenever possible, but I remember during the Libya intervention when NATO accidentally bombed a rebel convoy and afterwards the rebels called NATO and told them to not let the incident make them gun shy, the bigger picture matters, the net gain of our actions is important and as is the net loss of our inaction.
Edited by Silasw on Feb 1st 2019 at 4:58:00 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI assume it wasn't the same rebels.
"it’s the same reason you will find supporters of social spending in the US only wanting such spending to go to white people"
Instead of presuming racism, consider that there are laws in the US forbidding the government from funding or helping competitors to US industries, such as farming. This includes foreign occupations. It's one of the reasons opium is still farmed in Afghanistan.
Consider also Blackwater, Erik Prince, and belligerent fundamentalist Christianity, XI Xth century naked imperialism, and 'libertarian' ideology. Consider that he's not alone.
Please, you talk like you get Blackwater brought up all the time in these discussions, surely you must have a ready set of talking points as to how, say, Viceroyhoods
being on the President's table, with everything that implies, are not relevant to this discussion.
For the record, I'm not against intervention on its own. I take issue with how it's usually done. When a burglar enters my home or a husband starts beating me, I would absolutely love to be able to call 911... But not if the cops beat me up as well, thrash the house in the process, grab some valuables along the way, after the way they handled the fight has left me homeless, and then instead of giving me shelter keep me in a tent in the woods.
Or, you know, show up, shoot me, and say "apparently this ni**er broke in and hung up pictures of his family everywhere," but that's maybe a topic for another thread or two.
Edited by Oruka on Feb 2nd 2019 at 2:39:31 AM
I consider Eric Prince and I dismiss him as not a problem as long as we aren’t calling specifically for the US Republican Party to stage an intervention involving us conventional ground troops.
Like yeah I’m with you guys, the US Republicans are bad at interventions and shouldn’t do them, cool, that still leaves the US Democrats, the French, the Canadians, the Australians, the British, the EU acting collectively, the African Union and many more.
Interventionism exists as more than just a Republican front for modern imperialism.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
Actually, “what about blackwater” is a pretty common refrain in discussions about interventionism.
And I’ll point out that like all whataboutism it doesn’t really mean a damn thing. Blackwater is bad, yes, but they don’t have a whole lot to do with US intervention strategy as a whole.
I’ll also point out that the proposal you’re linking to was roundly shot down by the Pentagon and the White House, in a rare stopped clock moment for the latter.
They should have sent a poet.I suspect that Trump thinks the oil should be taken for him, not given out to Prince. If Donald Jr was the suggested warlord to control Afghanistan, Trump might go for it.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI found the elipses!
@Silasw
at 8:55:38
So if there's going to be death and suffering either way, why is us intervening militarily better than if we stayed out of it? What makes you think what we're doing in Syria will turn out any better than when we tried to do the same thing in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam?
at 4:25:53
What makes you think the Democrats are any better at interventions then the Republicans? Did we make any more progress in Iraq and Afghanistan under Obama than we did under Bush?
As for the idea that only Republicans are imperialistic, you should go to You Tube and watch the video titled "WATCH: Joe Biden Brags About Rigging The Ukrainian Political System". Keep in mind also that so-called "defense contractors" donate to both parties.
Edited by SandersSupporter on Feb 6th 2019 at 9:04:53 AM

Just tap the elipses on the upper-right side of the textbox, an Edit Post option will come up.