posted
I don't think the current Iraqi government would be a worthwhile recipient for them, but I hope someday we pay them reparations or something.
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If we aren't going to man up and admit we need to pay reparations to our own blacks and native american tribes, there's no way we'd give reparations to a faraway country
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On the day the US first invaded Iraq back in March of 2003, I told people "Our leaders will declare victory in 2 weeks but we will still be fighting in 10 years." Looks like I was sadly over optimistic.
It took 6 weeks before Bush declared 'Mission Accomplished". Will the fighting go on for 30 years?
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: On the day the US first invaded Iraq back in March of 2003, I told people "Our leaders will declare victory in 2 weeks but we will still be fighting in 10 years." Looks like I was sadly over optimistic.
It took 6 weeks before Bush declared 'Mission Accomplished". Will the fighting go on for 30 years?
IIRC, Bush never said mission accomplished. He actually said we still have a lot of work to do. It was just that dumb banner.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: If we aren't going to man up and admit we need to pay reparations to our own blacks and native american tribes, there's no way we'd give reparations to a faraway country
Right, but in the case of Iraq we don't have the excuse that it was our ancestors and not us who did it.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: On the day the US first invaded Iraq back in March of 2003, I told people "Our leaders will declare victory in 2 weeks but we will still be fighting in 10 years." Looks like I was sadly over optimistic.
It took 6 weeks before Bush declared 'Mission Accomplished". Will the fighting go on for 30 years?
IIRC, Bush never said mission accomplished. He actually said we still have a lot of work to do. It was just that dumb banner.
That's splitting hairs a bit finer than is actually relevant at this point. Regardless of what words were said, 'mission accomplished' was the tone of the event and it was NOT just the dumb banner. It was the whole publicity stunt of Bush heroically landing the the fighter jet on the aircraft carrier. The original draft of the speech did in fact say "Mission Accomplished." Rumsfield insisted that phrase be taken out as it was 'too conclusive'. It was replaced with 'major combat operations are over'.
But those details are really irrelevant to the point I was trying to make. In 2003, there was widespread belief, by both its proponents and opponents, that the war would be over in a few days at most. Well hear it is, over a decade later and the fighting is still going on.
It should have been clear to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the culture and history of the region that this is what would happen.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: If we aren't going to man up and admit we need to pay reparations to our own blacks and native american tribes, there's no way we'd give reparations to a faraway country
You are probably right even though you are comparing apples and oranges. War reparations are well establish in international law and have a long history. As recently as 20 year ago, we required Iraq to pay reparation for invading Kuwait.
Reparations for slavery would be something unprecedented. Don't get me wrong, I think we should be making reparations to blacks and native americans. I'm just saying that the issues raised by making reparations for racial oppression are not at all the same as the issues involved in making war reparations.
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I fully acknowledge that it's an apples and oranges thing, to a point.
The point of my bringing it up is that the nation that won't even pay reparations to the native americans is the nation that won't pay reparations to Iraq. Is there perhaps a war reparations precedent in existence? Yup. Would not paying reparations in the case of Iraq possibly make us hypocrites? Sure. Will either of these things matter? Nope.
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For those advocating reparations, do you believe Iraqis would be living in a better country had we never got involved in 2003? Do you think ousting Saddam Hussein caused more problems than it solved? And do you believe that ISIS or a similar terrorist organization wouldn't be causing these sorts of problems had we never sent troops over there in the first place?
I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious.
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While I don't think we've made it much better, if at all, I have a hard time wrapping my head around how it is worse. It was bad before 2003 and, the way other Middle Eastern countries fared (Syria, Iran, Jordan, etc.) without our intervention, I don't see why they would've improved any. Do you think the citizens would've gotten rid of Al-Qaeda on their own? I don't mean to imply they're gone now, but even if they did, how is ISIS our fault? Terrorist organizations crop up all the time in countries we never invaded.
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ISIS is filled with angry Sunnies who see no future for them in the present Shiite government. Many of them were generals, officers in the army, and policeman when we invaded and they were summarily fired and dismissed even when they came forward to offer to be a part of the new government. They essentially have no voice or part in the present government. So they are banding together with Sunnies from Syria to form a new country in Northern Iraq that can stand up to Iran and the Shiite majority in Iraq, as well as the Iran sponsored Shiite government in Syria.
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quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: For those advocating reparations, do you believe Iraqis would be living in a better country had we never got involved in 2003? Do you think ousting Saddam Hussein caused more problems than it solved? And do you believe that ISIS or a similar terrorist organization wouldn't be causing these sorts of problems had we never sent troops over there in the first place?
I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious.
Yes. Especially for the hundreds of thousands who would be alive and hundreds of thousands more who would be unmaimed and have their loved ones still living. Plus the women who went from living in a relatively secular society to an oppressive fundamentist one.
Yes. We broke their country. Of course, it might have been even better had we not kept him in power in the first place.
Yes. And we would be in a much better position to deal with terrorist threats in general.
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here is my serious response: i would start with reading the Atlantic's "Blind into Baghdad" - then follow it by reading matt taibi's "the great Iraq swindle"
like, i do not want to summarize either. there's no tl;dr here. you gotta sit down and absorb those two particular pieces in order.. not skim.
once you have done so, i won't have to summarize what i consider the extent of the crime we committed to Iraq. even taking the time for filling in data about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed in the power vacuum is superfluous.
let me know what you think.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: If we aren't going to man up and admit we need to pay reparations to our own blacks and native american tribes, there's no way we'd give reparations to a faraway country
You are probably right even though you are comparing apples and oranges. War reparations are well establish in international law and have a long history. As recently as 20 year ago, we required Iraq to pay reparation for invading Kuwait.
Reparations for slavery would be something unprecedented. Don't get me wrong, I think we should be making reparations to blacks and native americans. I'm just saying that the issues raised by making reparations for racial oppression are not at all the same as the issues involved in making war reparations.
Yes, reparations. Makes sense, since every black American living today is a direct descendant of a slave, and they have all felt like what it is like to be in slavery.
Why don't we also just throw in reparations for Chinese Americans that were exploited during the 1800's, or the Mormons that were murdered and thrown off their land in Missouri?
Let's just make it right for everyone.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: If we aren't going to man up and admit we need to pay reparations to our own blacks and native american tribes, there's no way we'd give reparations to a faraway country
You are probably right even though you are comparing apples and oranges. War reparations are well establish in international law and have a long history. As recently as 20 year ago, we required Iraq to pay reparation for invading Kuwait.
Reparations for slavery would be something unprecedented. Don't get me wrong, I think we should be making reparations to blacks and native americans. I'm just saying that the issues raised by making reparations for racial oppression are not at all the same as the issues involved in making war reparations.
Yes, reparations. Makes sense, since every black American living today is a direct descendant of a slave, and they have all felt like what it is like to be in slavery.
Why don't we also just throw in reparations for Chinese Americans that were exploited during the 1800's, or the Mormons that were murdered and thrown off their land in Missouri?
Let's just make it right for everyone.
do you even coherently understand what the case for reparations would be, in the case of blacks and the first nations? would you be able to understand why not being directly related to slaves wouldn't matter overall?
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Invading a country should require the absolutely highest standards, the US invasion of Iraq met no standards.
This quote is from one of Destineer's other threads, but I wondered how Russia's invasion of Crimea stacks up to this test Blayne suggested.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: If we aren't going to man up and admit we need to pay reparations to our own blacks and native american tribes, there's no way we'd give reparations to a faraway country
You are probably right even though you are comparing apples and oranges. War reparations are well establish in international law and have a long history. As recently as 20 year ago, we required Iraq to pay reparation for invading Kuwait.
Reparations for slavery would be something unprecedented. Don't get me wrong, I think we should be making reparations to blacks and native americans. I'm just saying that the issues raised by making reparations for racial oppression are not at all the same as the issues involved in making war reparations.
Yes, reparations. Makes sense, since every black American living today is a direct descendant of a slave, and they have all felt like what it is like to be in slavery.
Why don't we also just throw in reparations for Chinese Americans that were exploited during the 1800's, or the Mormons that were murdered and thrown off their land in Missouri?
Let's just make it right for everyone.
do you even coherently understand what the case for reparations would be, in the case of blacks and the first nations? would you be able to understand why not being directly related to slaves wouldn't matter overall?
Samp, what are your cases and what would reparations be or look like? If you have already discussed this else where on the forum, can you just point me to the link? Thanks
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Same goes for you too, Geraine. Though I expect it not to actually change the mind of any invested conservative, it's the only way I expect someone to have a coherent sense of what the argument for reparations actually is, even if they continue to wholeheartedly disagree with it. As it is what I most often see is stuff like "ah, because every black american living today has felt what it is like to be in slavery" that has a subtle consistency.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: For those advocating reparations, do you believe Iraqis would be living in a better country had we never got involved in 2003? Do you think ousting Saddam Hussein caused more problems than it solved? And do you believe that ISIS or a similar terrorist organization wouldn't be causing these sorts of problems had we never sent troops over there in the first place?
I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious.
This question is predicated on the assumption that the US invaded Iraq in order to liberate its people and improve its economic and humanitarian situation. This is a dubious assumption. The US invaded Iraq, first and foremost, to assert its own regional geopolitical goals. Seen in this light alone, the Iraq war adventure was highly successful.* From a humanitarian or human justice point of view, not so much.
*Highly successful in the sense that it served to perpetuate an imbalance in the region that continues to stand in the way of regional autonomy and national or multi-national assertiveness in world trade. Despite what are apparently bad outcomes across the region, the outcomes in purely rationalist terms, as they apply to the US alone, are all fairly favorable. That is not a moral judgement or a justification, just an observation of current realities.
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Same goes for you too, Geraine. Though I expect it not to actually change the mind of any invested conservative, it's the only way I expect someone to have a coherent sense of what the argument for reparations actually is, even if they continue to wholeheartedly disagree with it. As it is what I most often see is stuff like "ah, because every black american living today has felt what it is like to be in slavery" that has a subtle consistency.
People share this Coates article all over the place, but I actually found it disappointing in one crucial respect. He doesn't really do much to address the objection, "But present-day white people aren't responsible for choices their ancestors made."
I don't myself care about this objection, because I don't care who owns what and think wealth redistribution from non-black Americans to black Americans would have huge positive effects. But anyone who believes in property rights is going to make a huge deal about it, and Coates really doesn't say anything to refute it.
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Personally (and I recognize this is a minority view and one colored by my political and personal ideology) I feel like the negative impacts of the Iraq war pointed out by other posters had little to do with the US invasion and everything to do with the underlying social dynamics of Saddam's Iraq. Comparing the Iraq war to the ongoing Syrian Civil War suggests to me that the US presence probably worked to decrease the amount of sectarian violence and bloodshed from what was an inevitable civil, religious war.
Saddam held onto power very effectively through brutal repression, torture, and slaughter; but eventually that regime would have ended, with or without US involvement, and the sectarian civil war would have erupted just as it did. While the US presence during that time served as a focal point for some attacks, and the US's early decisions particularly around disbanding the military had significant negative impacts on security, I think the role they served in brokering local and national power-sharing agreements went a long way toward decreasing the violence of the civil war.
That's not to say we bear no responsibility, or that we weren't misguided in forcing regime change in Iraq. But I don't think it's fair to lay the blame for all the terrible things that have happened in Iraq since the invasion on the US's involvement.
As a further note, I think the question of whether Iraqis see themselves as better off depends on which Iraqis you ask. The Shia majority is almost certainly more secure and better off than they were under Saddam, as are the Kurds. The Sunnis, as evidenced by ISIS's rapid spread through the West, are very angry about their diminished role.
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Hard to ask the dead ones, though. I bet they would not say they are better off. Are you better off if your government is better (and I am not conceding that- it certainly isn't better for women) but you are cripple. Or your parents are dead. Or your child?
Here is a thought experiment. Suppose a more powerful country decided that we needed a better government - one that even we would agree was better - but that we would need to sacrifice 1% of our population. Three million people. And would require the eyes, legs, arms of millions more. Would they have a right to make that choice for us?
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I think it all depends on degree of harm vs. help to the country. I mean, if someone had successfully brought long-lasting "regime change" to Uganda under Amin, or Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, that would have been a great moral achievement.
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quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: ... I have a hard time wrapping my head around how it is worse.
Well, you started with a secular government that the 9/11 commission discovered has no links to Al Qaeda, actually had no weapons of mass destruction, and was resolutely opposed to Iran (supposedly one of your (American) foes).
You've ended up with a sectarian civil war between a government that is allied with Iran and a rebel group that actually truly allied with Al Qaeda but was kicked out for being too extreme, likely kicking off terrorism that everyone will have to deal with for years.
There's also the many fun things that one could buy with the 1.7 trillion odd dollars that was wated like improving your own healthcare, improving infrastructure, etc.
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: I don't myself care about this objection, because I don't care who owns what and think wealth redistribution from non-black Americans to black Americans would have huge positive effects. But anyone who believes in property rights is going to make a huge deal about it, and Coates really doesn't say anything to refute it.
The most important factor of the case is saying that independent of "assigning" "blame" it's incumbent on a decent society to provide a means to break the result of an enforced cycle of economic abuse and disenfranchisement of blacks. If not just because of eminently moral reasons, but because of practical improvement of our communities and cities. We have a dire rot in our cities, whole areas of crime and hopelessness and anomie, because of the predatory actions towards blacks. A country does not want this legacy in their cities and communities.
The people who refuse to accept any sense of blame because they "don't individually benefit from racism!" or are otherwise not responsible for the actions of their ancestors (and thus don't have to do anything) are both completely predictable and irrelevant. Strange that the vast majority of them will sign off on all taxpayers having to pay for two wars of 'liberation' in the middle east, but they won't even liberate a marginalized population in their own cities.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by SenojRetep: ... Saddam held onto power very effectively through brutal repression, torture, and slaughter; but eventually that regime would have ended, with or without US involvement, and the sectarian civil war would have erupted just as it did.
I've heard American commentators and journalists predict the fall of North Korea for as long as I can remember and the fall of the Chinese government since the June 4th/Tiananmen Square at least. Assad is still around even with the US supplying his enemies. I've long grown doubtful of these kinds of predictions.
quote: But I don't think it's fair to lay the blame for all the terrible things that have happened in Iraq since the invasion on the US's involvement.
Of course it is. If America really was greeted as a liberator and Iraq turned out into a bastion of hope and freedom as presented by Bush, there would be no end of credit being taken. Conversely, you don't get to hide it underneath the carpet simply because the outcome was undesirable. Republicans knew this and were aware of this before the invasion
quote:Fast-forward 25 years to another phrase involving metaphoric breakage. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was quoted in "Plan of Attack" as cautioning President George Bush before the war that he would "own" Iraq and all its problems, after military victory. "Privately," wrote Bob Woodward, "Powell and Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it." (Richard Armitage is the deputy secretary of state.)
posted
yeah, except that Powell was wrong in one particular regard. He didn't account for the fact that his party would begin to operate on a conspicuously pathological pseudologic that exports all the blame for anything that needs blame.
Instead of "You break it, you own it" it's "You break it, Obama is always wrong"
Exhibit A is how conservatives are already endlessly blaming Obama for withdrawing.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Destineer: I don't myself care about this objection, because I don't care who owns what and think wealth redistribution from non-black Americans to black Americans would have huge positive effects. But anyone who believes in property rights is going to make a huge deal about it, and Coates really doesn't say anything to refute it.
The most important factor of the case is saying that independent of "assigning" "blame" it's incumbent on a decent society to provide a means to break the result of an enforced cycle of economic abuse and disenfranchisement of blacks. If not just because of eminently moral reasons, but because of practical improvement of our communities and cities. We have a dire rot in our cities, whole areas of crime and hopelessness and anomie, because of the predatory actions towards blacks. A country does not want this legacy in their cities and communities.
The people who refuse to accept any sense of blame because they "don't individually benefit from racism!" or are otherwise not responsible for the actions of their ancestors (and thus don't have to do anything) are both completely predictable and irrelevant. Strange that the vast majority of them will sign off on all taxpayers having to pay for two wars of 'liberation' in the middle east, but they won't even liberate a marginalized population in their own cities.
I totally agree, I was just saying that the article is flawed because it doesn't mention any of these points. Coates's goal is to make "the case for reparations," and given the assumptions his audience will make coming in, about who's responsible for what, the article can't possibly convince anyone who doesn't start out from the same place as you and me.
I'm not sure how you can say the predictable property rights types are "irrelevant," since they're the people preventing this whole thing from ever happening in a million years.
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quote:Personally (and I recognize this is a minority view and one colored by my political and personal ideology) I feel like the negative impacts of the Iraq war pointed out by other posters had little to do with the US invasion and everything to do with the underlying social dynamics of Saddam's Iraq. Comparing the Iraq war to the ongoing Syrian Civil War suggests to me that the US presence probably worked to decrease the amount of sectarian violence and bloodshed from what was an inevitable civil, religious war.
I think there's a few logical problems with this. First among them being the statement 'Saddam's Iraq'. Well, sure it was, but if we're going to say that we have to examine the circumstances under which it became Saddam's Iraq and remained so for so many years. I don't think many serious people could examine that question and not see another striking example of Cold War stability foreign policy biting us in the ass.
As for the other premise, that it would have happened anyway, let's assume for the sake of argument that that's true. I think it's a big claim to make, but there is a case to be made. But even if we assume that, do we really get to set aside that responsibility simply because it would have happened? Our hands being on the figurative lever, for better or worse.
quote:Saddam held onto power very effectively through brutal repression, torture, and slaughter; but eventually that regime would have ended, with or without US involvement, and the sectarian civil war would have erupted just as it did. While the US presence during that time served as a focal point for some attacks, and the US's early decisions particularly around disbanding the military had significant negative impacts on security, I think the role they served in brokering local and national power-sharing agreements went a long way toward decreasing the violence of the civil war.
This I have less issue with, or at least the second portion. Mucus has already addressed the problem of brutal regimes being overthrown from within-historically, I can't think of many popular revolutions that were ever successful without some significant external help. Either help to the rebels, or external harm to the powers that be. As for the rest, though, that's where things get a lot murkier for me. I don't believe a civil sectarian war was inevitable, though I do think with the on-the-cheap nation-building we tried it was all but inevitable. I think had we committed to an authentic effort, which would have been enormously expensive and time-consuming and effort-consuming, the current circumstances could have been avoided.
Problem is there is little historical record to look at of such efforts, in our own history or anyone else's. It's simply not usually tried.
quote:That's not to say we bear no responsibility, or that we weren't misguided in forcing regime change in Iraq. But I don't think it's fair to lay the blame for all the terrible things that have happened in Iraq since the invasion on the US's involvement.
I can agree with this. Though I would challenge the qualifier 'misguided' in the case of some leadership.
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I still don't think that an independent Kurdish state is imminent, but it looks a little more likely than it did a week or two ago.
Posts: 1068 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I still don't think that an independent Kurdish state is imminent, but it looks a little more likely than it did a week or two ago.
I think some sort of special administrative region is imminent. You're not going to easily dislodge the Kurds from those oil fields again. And, if they can keep ISIS out, and get the oil line repaired, they're going to make a lot of money.
posted
Well, the KRG is already a special administrative region: it has its own flag, army, parliament, etc. The main reasons that it hasn't yet transitioned to full independence are financial and geo-political. And adding Kerkuk and getting a green light from Turkey may just be enough to solve those two issues.
Posts: 1068 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Sorry I couldn't finish my post, and I forgot to edit it after posting.
What I meant to say is something "beyond" a special administrative region is imminent. After my statement about all the money they are going to be getting I meant to suggest that it's enough to fund a fully functional independent country.
Turkey being eager to buy oil from the Kurds means the only thing that could stop them from declaring independence is probably what Iraq's government does whether good or bad. Or maybe ISIS, but I don't think ISIS by itself can boss the Kurds around.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: If we aren't going to man up and admit we need to pay reparations to our own blacks and native american tribes, there's no way we'd give reparations to a faraway country
You are probably right even though you are comparing apples and oranges. War reparations are well establish in international law and have a long history. As recently as 20 year ago, we required Iraq to pay reparation for invading Kuwait.
Reparations for slavery would be something unprecedented. Don't get me wrong, I think we should be making reparations to blacks and native americans. I'm just saying that the issues raised by making reparations for racial oppression are not at all the same as the issues involved in making war reparations.
Yes, reparations. Makes sense, since every black American living today is a direct descendant of a slave, and they have all felt like what it is like to be in slavery.
Why don't we also just throw in reparations for Chinese Americans that were exploited during the 1800's, or the Mormons that were murdered and thrown off their land in Missouri?
Let's just make it right for everyone.
If you think reparations are just about slavery, then you're incredibly ignorant about 20th Century American history.
Ta-Nahisi Coates was on the Colbert Report the other night and he said he'd be willing to spot America everything before the 20th century and call it a mulligan. Because the slavery discussion is a distraction from the real, specific harms done to blacks in America in the 20th century, for which millions of sufferers are still alive today, not just descendents.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Let's say in the middle of Chicago there's a bunch of city blocks which are basically bombed out ruins filled with slow-burning seams and the ruins emit poison gas and it's just a terrible eyesore and problem and the city has to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the problem and if the winds shift the poison gas kills a lot of people, especially marginalized people who have to live next to the bombed out ruins and it's been the hugest largest most evident problem of Chicago for the past 40 or 50 years since Chicago actually initially had the police bomb the area into ruins.
Somebody says "Yo, this is ridiculous, this isn't a problem which is going to go away easy on its own and it's foolish to expect that. We basically need to put effort into the area and restore the whole region."
Then the mayor says "ehhhhhhhh but that's expeeeennnnsiiiiiivve"
And the chief of police says "stop trying to blame me, it was my predecessor who bombed it not me, you can't punish me for the faults of my ancestors"
and the city council agrees that since nobody in the room is DIRECTLY responsible for the bombed out ruin, they can't be arsed to do anything about it, sorry
SO the city continues to have a giant bombed out ruin in the middle of it and it continues to cost hundreds of millions of dollars in problems and scores of deaths every year. GREAT JOB AMERICA
this is a studiously imperfect analogy but it sort of represents what's up with the general haze of logic governing why we won't ever engage in conspicuously efficacious reparations. hell, this country won't even pay the native american tribes the literal billions of dollars the BLM literally legally owes them from legally binding contracts.
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Yeah, I as reading about that. They want oil from North East Iraq, and it looks like the Kurds are going to control that.
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"...militants turned over the bodies of Shiite civilians they had killed, only to bomb the cemetery during their funerals, according to one account."
Look, murdering people at all is messed up. But that's like another order of magnitude out from messed up.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Let's say in the middle of Chicago there's a bunch of city blocks which are basically bombed out ruins filled with slow-burning seams and the ruins emit poison gas and it's just a terrible eyesore and problem and the city has to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the problem and if the winds shift the poison gas kills a lot of people, especially marginalized people who have to live next to the bombed out ruins and it's been the hugest largest most evident problem of Chicago for the past 40 or 50 years since Chicago actually initially had the police bomb the area into ruins.
Somebody says "Yo, this is ridiculous, this isn't a problem which is going to go away easy on its own and it's foolish to expect that. We basically need to put effort into the area and restore the whole region."
Then the mayor says "ehhhhhhhh but that's expeeeennnnsiiiiiivve"
And the chief of police says "stop trying to blame me, it was my predecessor who bombed it not me, you can't punish me for the faults of my ancestors"
and the city council agrees that since nobody in the room is DIRECTLY responsible for the bombed out ruin, they can't be arsed to do anything about it, sorry
SO the city continues to have a giant bombed out ruin in the middle of it and it continues to cost hundreds of millions of dollars in problems and scores of deaths every year. GREAT JOB AMERICA
this is a studiously imperfect analogy but it sort of represents what's up with the general haze of logic governing why we won't ever engage in conspicuously efficacious reparations. hell, this country won't even pay the native american tribes the literal billions of dollars the BLM literally legally owes them from legally binding contracts.
The analogy is more than imperfect if the bombed out ruin is going away on its own. I believe racism in this country is declining, especially among the younger generations (anyone 30 and under). And by the time those generations are the legislators and law enforcement officers, racism should be effectively gone from the system. IMHO, obviously.
Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Invading a country should require the absolutely highest standards, the US invasion of Iraq met no standards.
This quote is from one of Destineer's other threads, but I wondered how Russia's invasion of Crimea stacks up to this test Blayne suggested.
I never said it was justified, only that it was a "win" for Russia; new metaphor: in the same way me taking your queen by sacrificing a rook and a bishop is a win.
I also made repeated statements that I felt the Donbass stuff in SE Ukraine is a mistake; I think its clear there's a difference between invading a region you have no cultural or religious understanding of (crusade anyone?) and invading a country where 1/3 of its people speak your language and the chunk of people living adjacent to you identify as your culture.
I was not that I can recall, making a moral judgement, only a zero-sum geopolitical one.
In either case, the current situation in the Mid-East is a screw up of epic proportions by the Neocon's of the Bush administration and nothing could have salvaged it except by the whole hearted acceptance of Ethnic cleansing by the Americans.
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quote: This I have less issue with, or at least the second portion. Mucus has already addressed the problem of brutal regimes being overthrown from within-historically, I can't think of many popular revolutions that were ever successful without some significant external help. Either help to the rebels, or external harm to the powers that be. As for the rest, though, that's where things get a lot murkier for me. I don't believe a civil sectarian war was inevitable, though I do think with the on-the-cheap nation-building we tried it was all but inevitable. I think had we committed to an authentic effort, which would have been enormously expensive and time-consuming and effort-consuming, the current circumstances could have been avoided.
I wish I had the link as it was years ago, but I remember a color coded map of the world which showed how something like a large chunk of the NIC's and Third World transitioned to functional democracies at the end of the Cold War. I think South Korea is an arguable example, most of the Formal Warsaw Pact transitioned relatively peacefully as did Russia (Russia probably transitioned back to Autocracy), and I think most of South America.
As for nation building, South Korea, Japan, West Germany, the Marshall Plan recipients in general, I think there's a lot of successful examples of nation building projects. Tsarist Russia's elevating of Finland to the rank of nations is probably an early example to boot.
The principle problem with the Iraq war was how ad-hoc the whole enterprise was, General Zioni former CnC CENTCOM was actually in charge one in constructing such a plan around the time of the first gulf war but his work was shelved, for ~reasons~ that I don't recall, but I think its telling there wasn't a plan.
I think with foresight, a plan of action and quick response a lot might have been avoided. Such as the looting of Iraqi museums and dig sites.
Then the issues of de-baathifization and the disbanding of the military. Perhaps Saddam's execution was also a problem, if he had been thrown in a cell they might have been able to drag him out like a long lost pretender to the Iron Throne and let him loose to have some sort of third side of the conflict, who knows?
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quote:Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar: In either case, the current situation in the Mid-East is a screw up of epic proportions by the Neocon's of the Bush administration and nothing could have salvaged it except by the whole hearted acceptance of Ethnic cleansing by the Americans.
That is the opposite of "salvaging".
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