I take your points but we are actively involved in Iraq and Afghanistan and have our hands full with Pakistan. Just because the mindless left was inconsistent in its attacks on George W. does not make it okay now to go after Obama in my view. Syria and Libya are different. Foreign policy is about doing what you can with what you have. Our military is tapped out. It was Britain and France who led the effort in Libya not Obama. Now we as the chief partner in NATO are part of that. We see no one leading a similar effort in Syria and I can almost guarantee that will not be a US-led effort. Turkey? Maybe. In the meantime, given the tribal natures of these nations, which we have dealt long and hard with in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, they are going to have to sort this out internally first and I hope that they do. We can and should support that effort while doing all we can to minimize the violence. Finally, the civil war that the Muslim world has long exported is coming home. It will not be pretty. Civil wars never are but they are needed if freedom is to move forward. I have no problem with Obama’s handling of the current crises in the Middle East and hell… after nailing Osama… sign me happy as hell (deliberate).
We read a lot in the newspapers about strategies to prevent another September 11th happening, but upon checking my calendar today, I noticed that yet another one is planned for later this year. Will they never learn!
African migrant workers – now refugees – some forced at gunpoint by Qaddaffi’s thugs, onto overcrowded ships headed for Italy. Punishment for the Europeans, you see: nearly 15,000 have landed since this started. Only this shipload of 600 people went down within sight of Tripoli, and nearly all drowned. Three other ships sank earlier, killing 800. (The rebels aren’t much better regarding black Africans.)
I blame the French. This is their fricking mess. their colonial disaster, their Vietnam. Now we need the US to come and rescue everyone on its own dime? sheesh, everyone should be paying the US taxes to rescue their asses from their own stupid leaders. great, where’s the responsibility. C’mon, Frenchies, you totally suck. OTH, America espouses the mission of bringing freedom and democracy everywhere. Don’t betray Jefferson, Franklin, and Lafayette. Where are the volunteers a la Spanish Civil War. Fuck, I’d go shoot some sand monkeys if they formed a foreign legion to bring peace to the middle east. then smoke some shisha and have sex with local women, just like the good ol’ UN missions.
Vietnam was a French, not American colony. I guess that makes Vietnam France’s Vietnam?
I never understood that line of reasoning. These “nations”, to the extent that term is loosely applicable, were clusterfucks long before the European colonial era. It’s not as if the Europeans were the first to force differing religious/ethnic groups to live under the same rule. A host of Islamic dynasties held sway over different peoples at different times. Syria is not France’s “mess” anymore than it’s a Turkish “mess”. Syria is responsible for its own problems, and I for one am glad we’re not getting involved in yet another war.
At the risk of being labeled an “isolationist”, I ask again, does the nation of Libya present a clear and present danger to the US? If not, why are we participating in this conflict?
Vietnam was a French, not American colony. I guess that makes Vietnam France’s Vietnam?
I never understood that line of reasoning. These “nations”, to the extent that term is loosely applicable, were clusterfucks long before the European colonial era. It’s not as if the Europeans were the first to force differing religious/ethnic groups to live under the same rule. A host of Islamic dynasties held sway over different peoples at different times. Syria is not France’s “mess” anymore than it’s a Turkish “mess”. Syria is responsible for its own problems, and I for one am glad we’re not getting involved in yet another war.
At the risk of being labeled an “isolationist”, I ask again, does the nation of Libya present a clear and present danger to the US? If not, why are we participating in this conflict?[/quote]
Vietnam was French. yes, that’s why I said their Vietnam, literally speaking e.g. Dien Bien Phu (sp?), not metaphorically as in their American Vietnam… lol
i was kinda being facetious about the second point. yes, it was crappy before, Syrians are now responsible for their own crap, they like to use foreigners as both scapegoats and expect them to save them. Well, what about rising up against your own rulers… which they haven’t done until now. so, yes, there is hypocrisy.
having said that, I do think the French still owe a debt and should help the Syrians out (similarly, like the British who just took off from Palestine). It’s the Syrian’s own problem, yes, but the honorable thing to do is for the French to lend a hand. IMO anyway.
Does the same apply to Turkey? The Ottoman Empire ruled Syria for centuries, far longer than the French Mandate of Lebanon and Syria was in existence, and with far greater impact. Just curious.
Does the same apply to Turkey? The Ottoman Empire ruled Syria for centuries, far longer than the French Mandate of Lebanon and Syria was in existence, and with far greater impact. Just curious.[/quote]
no, because the ottomans are gone. ankara and Kemal’s Turkey is not the same as the Ottomans. but i concede that this is not the most logical of arguments, and it is becoming a slippery slope. Should we say modern Egypt is responsible for Pharoanic Egypt’s excursions into Byblos? That would be the absurd end.
But more seriously, I do think the French and the Americans ought to lend a hand, not because of their colonial liability, shall we say, but more positively, based on their espousal of revolution and human rights for all: Declaration of Man, Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine, and all that, based on principle.
Nor is modern France the same as the French Empire.
Yes, the argument is illogical and leads to absurd conclusions, as fallacious arguments generally do. Not picking on you here, Jack, I know you just want your truck back, but this is a common argument from the Left (whether or not you are belong in the category is irrelevant), and it’s the argument I take issue with.
At what cost, Jack? Those American aviators could just as easily have landed in enemy territory. If that had happened, they would probably have been killed, and the war could escalate quickly and dramatically. A bombing campaign wouldn’t be enough, not when it’s personal. We’d have to DO SOMETHING.
I don’t agree with your first point: the french are still the french. The Ottomans aren’t actually Turks. it’s like saying the Qing are Chinese, when they are actually Manchu. but that’s probably another thread.
As you can sense from my unease, I do have problems with this argument myself. For example, I don’t agree that the modern Japanese should be held responsible for what happened in WWII (even though some living perpetrated the war) and therefore I lament when the Chinese demonize the Japanese. They might be right to demonize them for re-writing history and using denialism. But I concede that I have issue with “inheriting the sins of our fathers”, though realistically speaking, that is what happens because of human nature.
I don’t know at what cost. The Tree of Liberty requires the blood of everyone. I don’t have the answer to that, and maybe it’s the idealistic part of me and the hopes of the potential of the US Constitution and what it could mean for the rest of the world, and sorry that the burden has to be on the US, to be demonized as the world police, but then simultaneously, expected to be the world police. Damned both ways. I dunno.
But even from a point of national self-interest, if the US could help to install modern secular parliamentarism in these countries that want to overthrow their masters’ yoke, maybe that’s a good thing for america. Maybe that’s one real positive step in the fight against terrorism.
No worries. I don’t think most of us care that a foreign national wants us to shed our blood and spend our money fighting other people’s wars. I don’t, because such a sentiment is meaningless to me. I will always oppose wars against nations that present no threat to my own.
And there’s the classic line, that many liberals and conservatives both adhere to. Spreading democracy abroad makes the US safer at home. Germany and Japan are held up as shining examples of the benefit of democratic nation-building. I concede the argument has merit, but I would remind those eager for war that the US and other Allied forces outright conquered and occupied those nations, and continue to do so now, decades later. And it would have been wholly unnecessary to our security if those nations had not been aggressively expanding their empires and in the case of Japan, directly attacked the US.
In my opinion, the lesson of WWII is not intervene in each and every mildly democratic movement regardless of the toll in blood and treasure, but to expand the definition of “clear and present danger” to include the threat posed by burgeoning empires, invading other nations. I have seen this argument applied to Iraq, and even though I think that war was a mistake, I again concede the merit of the argument. Iraq was aggressively attempting to control and invade its neighbors, led by a megalomaniac with little regard to the huge loss of human life. Iraq was actively supporting terrorism against another nation (Israel).
So let’s consider Libya. Yes, Qaddafi has been a “thorn in the side” of the West for a long time. But does that justify war? Is Libya conquering its neighbors? Is Libya building a massive army, complete with propaganda videos of its mighty strength? Is Libya constructing weapons of mass destruction, or did it in fact recently give up its nuclear program altogether? Is there any serious comparison between Libya and the German and Japanese empires of the 20th century, or even to Iraq?
But maybe none of that matters, as long as democracy takes root in Libya. Perhaps that is worth the cost. So…are the rebels frothing at the mouth Wilsonians? And before you roll out the strawman, Jack, I don’t believe they are a bunch of jihadi terrorists (though we know there are elements of them supporting the rebel groups). I DO think they’re just an enemy coalition of tribes making a power grab. Other than the occasional poster, in English notably, calling for Western support of “the people”, I have little reason to believe the rebels would establish a cohesive nation-state capable of protecting human rights, assuming that was its goal to begin with. So if you support the war, how about we see a real argument here? Why do you believe this group will form a democracy? How will they protect human rights with such limited resources over a vast, largely inhospitable terrain? Why is their victory worth our support?
[quote=“Gao Bohan”]Why do you believe this group will form a democracy? How will they protect human rights with such limited resources over a vast, largely inhospitable terrain? Why is their victory worth our support?[/quote]A ‘real’ democracy? Doubtful, if for no other reason than it’s so difficult.
Protect human rights? I think whatever emerges will be an improvement. It won’t be a beacon to other nations.
Why is their victory worthy of support? The dignity and consent of the governed matter. That’s where this started. More importantly, their defeat would mean wholesale slaughter. Given the high price of defeat and the relatively low cost of engaging (at least, thus far), it’s worthwhile.
I don’t believe they are [mostly/all] jihadists either. In fact, as one can tell from the Tunisian event, and knowing personally people from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, the major reason is jobs. It’s about the economy, stupid, is the answer [not calling you stupid of course]. Will they agree to parliamentarism or revert to caliphate? We can’t guarantee, but that is not a reason not to participate. This argument has also been used plenty by “conservatives” in the past, in particular comes to mind, western europeans of the 1800s, who claimed on racial and cultural (or lack thereof) grounds, that the Germanic people and even more so, the Slavic people, were wholly incapable of democracy and parliamentary government. I think that’s bollocks. though it isn’t easy. You create centuries of serfdom and servitude and ignorance, and that is what you get, to loosely paraphrase Utopia’s example of England creating thiefs out of displaced youth, youth displaced by wealthy landowners and clergy. So it goes too with China, yes for now they are mostly peasants with peasant sheeple mentality, even and in particular, the Hongers, because they are still bound by the chains of millennia of autocracy, their fate decided by dead men who took it upon themselves to decide how people should be ruled, how people should run their lives, and circumscribe their very human nature. That’s fucking major bollocks, but we have to deal with it and undo the injury. and that brings us to your nation-building event of Japan. Japan is the example that it can be done, that “oriental” autocracy, whether of sultans, pharoahs, caliphs or huangdi, the people can be freed through education, etc.
So to answer your question, the rebels do not have to be frothing Wilsonians (I’m not a fan of Wilson either) in the least for our help. In fact, and on the contrary, per Jesus, we should be helping those who are least able, who are most in need of help. and if we exercise nation-building in Iraq, and based on the same reasons of urgency and necessity in Iraq, of the claims by the US to use Iraq to spread our values and ideals, then why not Libya or Syria?
you argument reminds me of the CCP’s stance. live and let live and do not interfere in the internal affairs of others. I think you can see where the Chinese vision will end up, and that is a problem also.
Which is where, precisely? China’s policy of non-interference has served it well since 1978, as any cursory review of its economic performance since that time will bore out. Again, I do not advocate non-interference when it involves nations that ancient and recent history tell us WILL become a threat. But, I reject long term arguments in favor of meddling in the internal affairs of other nations that present no serious threat to my own, given the currency we’re dealing with is LIFE. I know I repeat myself, but we’re talking about sacrificing human beings here. And for what? For the off chance that 10, no 20, no 40, no 50 years down the line something good may come of bombing the daylight out of some other country right now?
I enjoyed the references to Jesus, though, thanks for that. Wholly inappropriate, of course, given that Jesus advocated non-violence in all cases. But I don’t care about Jesus’s teachings. I AM in favor of military action in the case of self-defense, but ONLY in the case of self-defense.
A rather poor battle cry, I think. I wouldn’t want to die for the dignity and consent of the governed of some far away nation of whom I have little knowledge and little care. Would you?
the jesus reference was a joke, given that I’m an athiest. But I am in favour of military action and a worldwide, soviet, I mean Jeffersonian revolution. We should impose the US Constitution on all peoples everywhere. America, fuck yeah!
