How To Be At War Forever

boing
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I read an article exploring the many different types of Trump voters. By far, the most interesting minority (and a very small one at that) were liberals so pessimistic about the trajectory of the country that they would rather accelerate its downfall than watch it slowly decay (or petrify).

While I can understand their pessimism, their conclusion just smacks of self-entitlement (‘I won’t be there when it falls’) and delusional thinking. The implosion of a country is not constrained to its geographical footprint, but its reverberations throughout the rest of human civilization. And if you have any love (or failing that, concern) for, ya know, everyone else on this planet then you’d realize that a rapidly declining United States—whether into destitution or authoritarianism—is a humanitarian Krakatoa.

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No, I don’t think we can say that. We supported plenty of these sorts of government, but we’ve also done much to interrupt democratic revolts whenever they sprang up. The current situation isn’t just down to us, but we didn’t do much to help over the course of the 20th century after the end of the ottoman empire either first France/GB, with things like the Sykes-Pico agreement:

Which has shaped the middle east in the 20th century, along lines that benefited the West, not the people who lived there. Then, with the exception of the US backing the Egyptians over the Suez Crisis (because everyone was still pissed off about Nassar’s coup) - which actually gave us a great deal of political capital in the region, which we’ve spent pretty much trying to undo since then:

We’ve done a pretty great job, since then, of backing those very same despots and dictators, because of our Cold War fears of the Soviets getting their mitts on all that easily accessible oil. We managed to squander much of the good will we did have, and that’s not just down to our support of Israel either. We had some bad policies which had stupid, racist underpinnings, such as “they aren’t ready for democracy, because brown people/wrong religion” BS.

People in the middle east are not pissed because they hate our freedoms - they are pissed because we’ve often undermined theirs. Our opposition to religious political parties and our continued support of actual dictatorships who kill people for having the wrong take on faith, most certainly undermines our credibility and our ability to make friends with the people of the region. When there was a genuine democratic movement, we pretty much turned our back when our friends cracked down on that and chalked it up to our fears of a despotic religious government when we already support one… that is currently killing civilians in their neighbor to the south in large numbers.

Killing civilians by drones is not winning us friends. Backing the Saudis war in Yemen is not winning us friends. Supporting the Egyptian coup has not won us friends. Breaking Iraq and destabilizing Syria to the point of civil war has not won us friends. Making the region safe for groups like AQ (a group we helped create) and Daesh has not won us friends.

So, let’s not trot out that old, tired stereotype of “they are not ready for democracy” because how would we know when we’ve spent decades undermining it in the name of freedom.

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I disagree. It might be a hyperbolic statement, but I think there is some truth to it. [quote=“nemomen, post:31, topic:84625”]
It’s possible to make a realistic, balanced critique of the ways Russia has been wrongly painted as a villain while acknowledging the serious, malicious aggressions the Russian leadership has engaged in.
[/quote]

I think we can agree here!

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I still think that backing the action there was pretty defensible. And it’s Kosova.

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No worries!

FWIW, I’d kind of agree, but I do think we can work with China because of how interlocked our economies are at this point. We kind of have to do so…

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You’re misrepresenting the relationship between all Qaeda and the Taliban.

And in some senses Ronald Reagan built both, you know. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar supposedly smuggled Osama bin Laden out of Afghanistan in a US Army truck, even while The Shrub was laying waste to the Afghan infrastructure in order to satisfy the American thirst for revenge.

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Depends on what language you use.

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ISIL, ISIS, Islamic State … what happened to ‘Daesh’?

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Far be it from me to defend Putin[1], but he can’t be what is described in the media. See, I can buy that he is a ruthless man who won’t stop at anything to push his agenda for a New Russian Century. Fine. But then his actions[2] have to make sense.

So, he hacked the DNC servers, did he? Cui bono? I mean being this competent ruthless sort presumably he has some statisticians on his payroll who can tell him that Hillary Clinton can eat a live baby on MSNBC and Trump will still lose. So, why risk confrontation with America, then?

See, Putin who deals in realpolitik and has a distinct lack of scruples[3], yeah, that sounds about right. Putin as a Bond villain who just hates the 'States and schemes nightly of fresh ways to kill bald eagles and put polonium in mom’s apple pie… I ain’t buying it. There’s no actual evidence as to the origin of the DNC hack (Unlike the Equation Group hack), and there’s precious little to be gained by it. So, what, Putin ordered it for the lulz? Because of that old inscrutable Slavic sense of humor?

[1] Mind you, yes, he kills people with polonium, while of course, he should have done the civilized thing and sent a drone to bomb an unrelated cafe, killing dozens, and then turn 'round and bomb the right cafe, while racking up a few more collateral deaths. Choosing between America and Russia is a bit of a Sophie’s choice these days.

[2] Well. The actions of the government he’s affiliated with, rather. As much as it is popular to claim so, he’s not in fact a dictator. He’s a popular president with broad political support. But fine, let’s use Vladimir Putin as a metonym for the whole of Russia, why not. It’s not like decisions aren’t made by Medvedev, say, or Lavrov, or the whole of the Duma.

[3] Which, incidentally, is how America acts all the time. Messing with national elections is basically the job description of the State Department. I am pleased that so many Americans join me in hating this imperial attitude and disrespect for Westphalian notions of sovereignty and international law. One can only hope that this will be reflected in these elections.

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And that army drove the United Nations back from the Yalu.

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I try to default to that… but more people seem to use IS, etc.

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This more than anything else set the tone for the military actions of the 2000s. NATO initiated hostilities against Serbia without UN approval, and faced no consequences for doing so. This ability to take unilateral action encouraged them to push further with Afghanistan and Iraq.

And for what? To support a terrorist organisation (by the US’s own definition) and promote one set of ethnic cleansing over another. I think a large part of the justification at the time was to be seen to be doing something after the inaction in Bosnia and Rwanda. But “ineffective peacekeeping” and “Bombing countries without UN backing” aren’t the only two options.

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Russia is behind Islam. C’mon. Wake up.

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We have always been at war with east asia.

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Not without reason though. I suspect they weren’t interesting in another siege of Sarajevo scenario and I’d suspect that the hold up in the UN for getting approval was Russia, which (except for the period right after the end of WW2, when Stalin kicked Yugoslavia out of COMINFORM), had a long standing, supportive relationship with Serbia. [quote=“Purplecat, post:72, topic:84625”]
This ability to take unilateral action encouraged them to push further with Afghanistan and Iraq.
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I think this might be true. [quote=“Purplecat, post:72, topic:84625”]
To support a terrorist organisation (by the US’s own definition)
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Are you talking the Balkan wars now? Do you mean the KLA?

True. But what do you think would have happened to the Albanian population of Kosova had we not bombed Belgrade? The Balkan wars were incredibly bloody. Ending that saved lives, on both sides of the conflict (which given that Belgrade had the JLA army to play with, would have been incredibly asymmetrical and already was). Albanians in Kosova had long been victims of ethnic cleansing by the Yugoslav government. This was set to be a new, bloodier round, from the time that Belgrade (under Milosevic) revoked Kosovar autonomy which it had been granted in the 70s, in the name of some mythical “Serbian sacred homeland.”

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I’ve never bought into the notion that the Russians hacked the DNC or Hillary. The mere fact it’s parroted endlessly in the MSM means they just got their talking points handed to them. More likely it’s some anon hacker with a nice skillset. If it was Putin behind it, we should present him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. We lionize Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden do we not?

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That’s not true. According to Jack Chick’s research, the papacy created both, that explains the similarities, but can’t control either.

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No. It’s not.

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What good did the DNC hack serve? None at all.

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To be fair, they often think it is… with the help of the CIA, at least.

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