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".
Right? The point is, don't do half measures when you can do full measures. Its trying to pretend to be a democracy that cares about liberty and self determination gets in the way of getting the job of spreading your affluence done.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I prefer we not do full measures when it comes to ethnic cleansing.
I'm not quite saying that. I am saying that the effort of the United States to act according to its interests while following a soft or Doublethink / Doublespeak about the operation is what doomed itself from the start and the half measures is from trying to achieve the contradiction of accomplishing both or at least pretending to give lipservice to both when either it should have gone full Liberty or full Affluence, if the latter they simply should have fully supporting Iraqi sectarianism and backed one side; or gone full liberty and tried a functional democracy not caring whether whoever gains control is a pliable puppet or not.
They tried to trade away a little security for a little liberty and achieved neither while losing both.
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Or we should have stayed out of it beyond managing our own borders. There is very little good we ever could have done in Iraq. Iraq has been broken for a very long time - at least WWI - and all we keep doing is smashing the picture up into smaller bits and hoping the big pieces will sell us oil.
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Perhaps, but I'm operating under the assumption that even if one of us took the alias of John Titor and travelled back to the year 2000 in time to "warn" people about the disaster of Iraq the democrats would still need balls surgically implanted within them you'ld be laughed off as an Un-American nutjob who hates America and HOW DARE YOU CRITICISE OUR PRESIDENT DO YOU NOT RESPECT THE HIGH AND HOLY SACRED OFFICE!? And there's nothing you can do but hope you can take out both Cheney and Bush and make it look like a hard far right false flag operation.
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quote:There's a more insidious dynamic at work in this politics as well, which helps to understand why the reparations idea suddenly has spread so widely through mainstream political discourse. We are in one of those rare moments in American history -- like the 1880s and 1890s and the Great Depression -- when common circumstances of economic and social insecurity have strengthened the potential for building broad solidarity across race, gender and other identities around shared concerns of daily life, concerns that only the minority of comfortable and well-off can dismiss in favor of monuments and apologies and a politics of psychobabble. Concerns like access to quality health care, the right to a decent and dignified livelihood, affordable housing, quality education for all. These are objectives that can be pursued effectively only by struggling to unite a wide section of the American population who experience those concerns most acutely, the substantial majority of this population who have lost those essential social benefits or live in fear of losing them. And isn't it interesting that at such a moment the corporate-dominated opinion-shaping media discover and project a demand for racially defined reparations that cuts precisely against building such solidarity?
Separated from the conspiracy-theoretic subtext, which I disagree with, I have some sympathy for the idea that the left is shooting itself in the foot with a focus on divisive issues.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: From the NYTs,
"...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.
Yeah, what kind of monster would bomb civilians at a funeral ?
You won't see me cuddling up to our drone strike policies. That's seriously messed up too.
edit: In this instance though there's the added nefariousness of pretending to charitably give the bodies of people you've murdered to their loved ones so you can murder them too.
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quote:Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar: Perhaps, but I'm operating under the assumption that even if one of us took the alias of John Titor and travelled back to the year 2000 in time to "warn" people about the disaster of Iraq the democrats would still need balls surgically implanted within them you'ld be laughed off as an Un-American nutjob who hates America and HOW DARE YOU CRITICISE OUR PRESIDENT DO YOU NOT RESPECT THE HIGH AND HOLY SACRED OFFICE!? And there's nothing you can do but hope you can take out both Cheney and Bush and make it look like a hard far right false flag operation.
Yes. I am well aware that stopping the 2003 invasion was impossible. But we have been breaking things in the Iraq for much longer than that. I am convinced that the best we can do is to just stop.
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BlackBlade: It's true that they probably felt an extra twinge of betrayal in the split second between hearing the bomb go off and before they died.
However, you can probably appreciate from the outside it doesn't really make a big difference which monster has a slightly less shiny coat.
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quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: 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.
How many years in the future does this opinion think america would be accurately able to say that there's no racism in the system?
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Yeah, I as reading about that. They want oil from North East Iraq, and it looks like the Kurds are going to control that.
Looks like we're going to get this prediction tested.
quote: Isis insurgents in Iraq have seized several northwestern enclaves from Kurd control, prompting Syrian Kurdish fighters to cross the Iraqi border in an attempt to fend off the assault. Forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, known as Isis, began the attack late on Saturday, seizing control of majority Kurdish towns and territory that includes an oilfield and access to the Mosul dam. Dozens of Kurdish peshmerga fighters were reportedly killed. The fall of the towns marks the first time that Kurds have lost territory to Isis forces and delivers a blow to Kurdish fighters who had argued that they were more capable of defending the country than the Iraqi army, which let much of the north fall into Isis's hands in June.
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If he cared that much about it he would have secured a Status of Forces Agreement before he left office.
For that matter, Obama TRIED to establish one with Maliki, but Maliki wanted a huge troop commitment that Obama (and the American People) were unwilling to give.
And had Bush not more or less installed Maliki into power, this mess may never have happened. He almost single handedly wrecked years of progress.
Still, I think Obama has bungled things in Iraq. Not because of the troop issue, but he should have been keeping a closer watch and taken proactive measures sooner.
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Iraq and U.S. agree that all U.S. forces will withdraw "no later than December 31, 2011." On November 17, 2008, US and Iraqi officials signed a Security Agreement, often referred to as a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), stating that "All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011." The agreement also called for all U.S. combat forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities "no later than June 30, 2009." [U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement, 11/17/08]
Bush praised agreement as "another sign of progress." Calling the SOFA "another sign of progress," President Bush said in a November 27, 2008, statement, "The Strategic Framework Agreement sets the foundation for a long-term bilateral relationship between our two countries, and the Security Agreement addresses our presence, activities, and withdrawal from Iraq." [whitehouse.gov, 11/27/08]
Bush signed SOFA, which "lays out a framework for the withdrawal of American forces in Iraq." In a press conference at the signing of the SOFA, President Bush commented: "We're also signing a Security Agreement, sometimes called a Status of Forces Agreement. The agreement provides American troops and Defense Department officials with authorizations and protections to continue supporting Iraq's democracy once the U.N. mandate expires at the end of this year. This agreement respects the sovereignty and the authority of Iraq's democracy. The agreement lays out a framework for the withdrawal of American forces in Iraq -- a withdrawal that is possible because of the success of the surge." Bush later commented: "There are certain benchmarks that will be met -- such as troops out of the cities by June of '09. And then there's a benchmark at the end of the agreement. As to the pace of meeting those agreements, that will depend of course upon the Iraqi government, the recommendations of the Iraqi military, and the close coordination between General Odierno and our military." [whitehouse.gov, 12/14/08]
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Can't watch the video, maybe they block viewers from Canada?
But I would say the "chilling warning" would probably seem a whole lot less prescient to those who thought the whole invading Iraq thing would be a mess from the get-go.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Can't watch the video, maybe they block viewers from Canada?
But I would say the "chilling warning" would probably seem a whole lot less prescient to those who thought the whole invading Iraq thing would be a mess from the get-go.
Indeed.
That's one of the most written comments after someone posts this video.
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You can just as easily find quotes by Dick Cheney talking about why invading and attempting state building in Iraq would be a terrible idea while he was in the George H. W. Bush administration.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: 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.
I just read "Blind Into Baghdad". Great read. I'm really glad you shared that.
Between that and the reparations article you posted, does The Atlantic always have such high quality articles? I'm considering getting a subscription if that's the case.
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Something else to read about--The invasion of Lebanon by Israel circa 1982. I'm reading an old text book, "The Longest War" just to clean it out of my bookcase, and it describes the war as follows:
1) A great Democracy is attacked by terrorists.
2) Militaristic Hawk in the government uses fear and lies to point at another country as the source of that terrorism. More than reports of what those in the country have done is exaggerated theories of what those in that country can do, and are planning to do.
3) After a lot of press manipulation, and help from politicians seeking a bump in their polls, this country commits its first foreign invasion of a sovereign state that did not attack it first.
4) The war goes very well for the Democracy. They have the advantage in technology, discipline, training, and tactics. With almost complete air superiority the 2nd country is defeated militarily.
5) Cities are left in ruins. Many more civilians die than are reported to the people at home.
6) Volunteers and selfless people in the Democracy rush in to fix and repair the damage done, but it doesn't help.
7) The defeated, seeking some solace and pride, create resistance groups and guerrilla armies. While the Democracies citizen soldiers--untrained in the arts of making peace, try to build and repair and win hearts and minds, their more aggressive comrades continue violently proving their dominance.
8) Once the enemy armies are conquered the Democracy's army is left to occupy the country. The army is not happy with this role, the soldiers are not happy with this role, the people of both countries are not happy with this role, but no one can find a way out.
9) The occupying country eventually, after years and thousands of deaths, decides to pack its bags and go home.
10) When they leave a more aggressive, intelligent, and dangerous terrorist organization moves in. It knows how to occupy a territory, providing basic services and goodies with one hand, and providing terror to any detractors with the other.
Was the invasion of Lebanon by Israel a road map for the invasion of Iraq by the US? Does Sharon = Cheney? Southern Lebanon ended up with Hamas. Northern Iraq ended up with ISL/ISIS. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
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