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PoliGAF 2017 |OT1| From Russia with Love

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B

Bonen no Max'd

Banned
AntraxSuicide said:
I've always held that the aftermath and overall handling of Iraq was the bigger issue; I think there's a moral imperative to do something when you know there's a guy next door who's murdered at least 250K people in his reign.

I tend to get riled up in discussions about political sovereignty when stuff like this comes up because it's really in poor taste to me to talk about "we shouldn't interfere in how other countries are run" when a person living in one of these regimes would likely not be comforted by your respect for their border. If Trump were to start massacring Muslims and gay people, I'd hope places like Canada and the UK and whatnot would depose him to save people instead of worrying about the imaginary line drawn around our country.
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So this is kind of a, uh, shortsighted view of the whole thing. The Iraq War cost an estimated two trillion dollars to the United States, discounting the amount spent by our allies and totally neglecting the cost in lives. Let's look at the opportunity cost of that. We could provide the entire country with universal and fully paid healthcare, universal pre-K, free college, guarantee that no child goes hungry, and help fund green energy to make serious headway against climate change. This is based on how much we spent on what we did do in Iraq. If the "aftermath and overall handling" were the issues, we would have spent much, much more. To quote one President George H.W. Bush on why he did not pursue further action against Iraq after expelling them from Kuwait (a much smarter and more just form of intervention):

We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf. Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome.
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If your argument is that we should have invaded Iraq, deposed Hussein and set up a new government, and then stayed their for much longer than the additional 6 we spent after their new constitution was drafted, the costs of that would be absurd. We could probably spend that much money to turn one or multiple developing countries into advanced economies like Japan. We could probably spend that money on eradicating hunger for the entire planet.

If that level of spending is unacceptable, what are we going to do? The Iraq War was not only an immense cost of dollars but hundreds of thousands of lives and has helped further destabilize the region while countless refugees flee in poverty and despair. ISIL was able to emerge because of the power vacuum left in the war's wake, which conservatives blame on Obama for leaving the country but only existed because of the Iraq War in the first place. What's the solution there? Spend trillions more to lock down a country? Bomb the shit out of ISIL until they're gone, and if so, what do you do when another brutal regime replaces them? Iran is a pretty terrible place, do we invade them next? Do we invade Russia and the People's Republic of China? Do we not rest until every brutal autocrat has been removed from power? Is the solution to knock them out, and then spend trillions more on modernizing their economies?
 
C

CygnusXS

will gain confidence one day
Infinite Stars said:
Because the American Political System didn't account for the fucking of Education Republicans have promoted for so long now. No one who signed the declaration thought that a Demagogue would be able to even run for president, let alone win, or that the governing bodies that are supposed to check his power would be so blinded by Partianship that they'd let him fuck over everything so long as he has an R next to his name.

Republicans know that Devos is more unqualified for this job then anyone else, but they don't give a shit about the good of the country because "Fuck you got mine". They would burn the entire country down to ensure that Democrats could do nothing.
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Of course, the electorate looked completely different at the time. They may have made a different system if they thought that just anyone could vote.
 
V

Valhelm

contribute something
AntraxSuicide said:
Stuff like this is why I'm more hawkish than you'd think given my political leanings. The US is standing on a street corner with a body like The Rock, and we're just watching people like Assad just abuse others all over the place. The continued reign of people like this is absolutely a moral failure of our country.
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Problem is that it's never just about humanitarianism. Every American intervention has an ulterior motive, usually to ensure that third-world countries comply with out economic and strategic goals.

America's track record in the Mid-East is especially shitty. Our shameful ties to Saudi Arabia and the ensuing refusal to work with Shia or secular factions means that our interventions tend to empower Islamists and push everybody else into the other camp. Our incompetence let the revolutions in Syria and Libya be hijacked by far-right religious extremists, leaving these countries far worse than how we found them.
 
B

Bonen no Max'd

Banned
CygnusXS said:
Of course, the electorate looked completely different at the time. They may have made a different system if they thought that just anyone could vote.
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It also didn't help that liberal democracy wasn't exactly a longstanding concept with a large body of work to draw from. It's bad that we fucked it up, but it's worse that we made it so hard to fix, ha.
 
B

benicillin

Banned
Even if Devos gets through, at least the dems have done a really fantastic job setting themselves up to campaign against Trump and his cabinet in the future. When she fucks up the school system it's gonna be very easy to point to Pence having to be a tiebreaker and the Dems going so far as to hold the floor for 24 hours to rail against her nomination. Even if they can't do much, it makes you feel like they're really doing all they can to bring attention to how unqualified she is.

EDIT: That list is so fucking dumb, I can remember half of them being on the major news networks just off the top of my head.
 
T

tedrotheredro

Member
If anything, these stories are overreported and sensationalized. One of the primary reasons people commit mass murder is for the notoriety. Meanwhile, domestic gun violence and drug addiction go under reported and cause exponentially more death and destruction.
 
C

Chumley

Banned
Trump: "[Obama] likes me.”
O'Reilly: “How do you know?”
Trump: "I can feel it. That’s what I do in life. It’s called, like, I understand.”

LOLLLLLL
 
I

ItWasMeantToBe19

Banned
Trump is displeased with Spicer because Spicer was parodied on SNL by a woman and I'm going to set my face on fire.

More than being lampooned as a press secretary who makes up facts, it was Spicer’s portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the president’s eyes, according to sources close to him. And the unflattering send-up by a female comedian was not considered helpful for Spicer’s longevity in the grueling, high-profile job, where he has struggled to strike the right balance between representing an administration that considers the media the "opposition party," and developing a functional relationship with the press.

"Trump doesn't like his people to look weak," added a top Trump donor.

Trump’s uncharacteristic Twitter silence over the weekend about the “Saturday Night Live” sketch was seen internally as a sign of how uncomfortable it made the White House feel. Sources said the caricature of Spicer by McCarthy struck a nerve and was upsetting to the press secretary and to his allies, who immediately saw how damaging it could be in Trumpworld.
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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/melissa-mccarthy-sean-spicer-234715
 
V

Valhelm

contribute something
I'm pretty scared about 2018.

This is very premature, but have any pundits started predicting how the congressional races will go?
 
A

aspiegamer

Member
A single, Italian citizen wounded in a shooting committed by an unidentified person in Bangladesh in Nov 2015? Damn, I guess the media shat the bed on this dramatic alleged terrorist incident. I'm convinced. Thanks, Trump. And this incident totally wasn't selected via madlibs.
 
N

neurosisxeno

Member
aspiegamer said:
A single, Italian citizen wounded in a shooting committed by an unidentified person in Bangladesh in Nov 2015? Damn, I guess the media shat the bed on this dramatic alleged terrorist incident. I'm convinced. Thanks, Trump. And this incident totally wasn't selected via madlibs.
Click to expand...

Maybe had they done their job we would have found the elusive Attaker already!
 
B

Bonen no Max'd

Banned
Valhelm said:
I'm pretty scared about 2018.

This is very premature, but have any pundits started predicting how the congressional races will go?
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Candidates haven't even been recruited yet, but historical trends show we should at least pick up some seats, though flipping houses isn't guaranteed.

Virginia governor race will probably be our first sign of how things are going, the primary for that is in June and the real thing is in November. Current Democratic candidates are the current incumbent Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam, who is more in the McAuliffe/Kaine Third Way model while former congressman and Special Envoy for the Great Lakes of Africa Tom Perriello, a progressive and believer in conviction politics. How that primary goes will be an interesting omen towards potential future Democratic primaries for 2018.

Perriello is in particular interesting because of his belief in conviction politics and convincing voters believe in his progressive values rather than triangulating to win them over. New Republic had an interview with him about running as a progressive in a conservative district and other issues here that was really interesting and I highly recommend listening to it if you have the time, as sort of a future vision of New Deal style politics from Democrats to win over Republicans and non-voters.
 
T

TiredofWinning

Member
Valhelm said:
I'm pretty scared about 2018.

This is very premature, but have any pundits started predicting how the congressional races will go?
Click to expand...

There are something like 25 districts that voted for a GOP congressman in 2016 split their ticket and voted for Hillary. Dems have their best shot there and they outnumber D seats that went for Trump.

Remember that Clinton's biggest gains were among college educated whites in more conservative leaning areas like the suburbs of Dallas, Houston and Omaha.
 
S

SexyFish

Banned
Donald J. Trump Verified account
‏@realDonaldTrump

The threat from radical Islamic terrorism is very real, just look at what is happening in Europe and the Middle-East. Courts must act fast!

He's so upset that it is going to get appealed hard.
 
D

Dubbedinenglish

Banned
SexyFish said:
Donald J. Trump Verified account
‏@realDonaldTrump

The threat from radical Islamic terrorism is very real, just look at what is happening in Europe and the Middle-East. Courts must act fast!

He's so upset that it is going to get appealed hard.
Click to expand...

If there was an actual legitimate threat he could prevent evidence and have it restored. This racist old fuck though keeps making it seem like every brown person coming off the plane is Osama reborn.
 
A

AntraxSuicide

Banned
Bonen no Max'd said:
So this is kind of a, uh, shortsighted view of the whole thing. The Iraq War cost an estimated two trillion dollars to the United States, discounting the amount spent by our allies and totally neglecting the cost in lives. Let's look at the opportunity cost of that. We could provide the entire country with universal and fully paid healthcare, universal pre-K, free college, guarantee that no child goes hungry, and help fund green energy to make serious headway against climate change. This is based on how much we spent on what we did do in Iraq. If the "aftermath and overall handling" were the issues, we would have spent much, much more. To quote one President George H.W. Bush on why he did not pursue further action against Iraq after expelling them from Kuwait (a much smarter and more just form of intervention):
Click to expand...

Sure, but I think this assumes that you'll reasonably be able to divert massive amounts of money from the military into these things. I don't think that's happening. I think that the idea of cutting military spending is as toxic to the public as a cut to Social Security, and so if you've got to keep sending billions and billions to fund tanks and shit, might as well actually use them on bad people.

And I think there's more to the first Gulf War than just "We won and it was fast, so it was just" than just saying that. Like I mentioned above, hundreds of thousands of people were murdered by Hussein's troops over the years he was there. You'd have to argue the trolley problem essentially. And since we might fall on different sides of that problem, that's fine.

If your argument is that we should have invaded Iraq, deposed Hussein and set up a new government, and then stayed their for much longer than the additional 6 we spent after their new constitution was drafted, the costs of that would be absurd. We could probably spend that much money to turn one or multiple developing countries into advanced economies like Japan. We could probably spend that money on eradicating hunger for the entire planet.

If that level of spending is unacceptable, what are we going to do? The Iraq War was not only an immense cost of dollars but hundreds of thousands of lives and has helped further destabilize the region while countless refugees flee in poverty and despair. ISIL was able to emerge because of the power vacuum left in the war's wake, which conservatives blame on Obama for leaving the country but only existed because of the Iraq War in the first place. What's the solution there? Spend trillions more to lock down a country? Bomb the shit out of ISIL until they're gone, and if so, what do you do when another brutal regime replaces them? Iran is a pretty terrible place, do we invade them next? Do we invade Russia and the People's Republic of China? Do we not rest until every brutal autocrat has been removed from power? Is the solution to knock them out, and then spend trillions more on modernizing their economies?
Click to expand...

This is just a slippery slope argument. There's a clear difference between China and Saddam's Iraq. And I actually do think we should be doing more to hurt Russia, though military intervention is clearly a bad call given their size. I'd rather just keep fucking up their banana republic until they get antsy and kill Putin in revolt.

Valhelm said:
Problem is that it's never just about humanitarianism. Every American intervention has an ulterior motive, usually to ensure that third-world countries comply with out economic and strategic goals.

America's track record in the Mid-East is especially shitty. Our shameful ties to Saudi Arabia and the ensuing refusal to work with Shia or secular factions means that our interventions tend to empower Islamists and push everybody else into the other camp. Our incompetence let the revolutions in Syria and Libya be hijacked by far-right religious extremists, leaving these countries far worse than how we found them.
Click to expand...

Sure, but that's not what I'm arguing. I'm not saying we're awesome and that we wage war to save lives, but we could be awesome if we actually did care about people's live in foreign dictatorships instead of going "Yeah you're getting gassed and bombed by your own government, sometimes with the explicit purpose of genocide, but ya know, this whole thing seems kinda expensive."

And I'll repeat (especially since this usually gets said to me when I start talking harshly about rural areas): these arguments against intervention get a lot harder if I ask you to tell people in these dictatorships who are being massacred that you're not going to help them. Nobody ever wants to say that, they just want other people to do it.
 
S

sc0la

Unconfirmed Member
whyamihere said:
Man, this is sort of a bad graph by Nate.

C4BPD7yW8AArKOa.jpg
Click to expand...
Sort of bad? It's Alkindsabad
 
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