US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1139

On June 27 2014 09:49 IgnE wrote:


I think you are conflating people's opinions of their actions with the putative actions themselves. Even if you sincerely believe that opening up a country's markets to American investment dollars (properly protected of course by subordinating others), privatizing of natural resources, and forcing a liberal democratic form of government, you aren't absolved from charges of economic imperialism and exploitation. Harmful ignorance is still harmful despite the best intentions. The US and Europe's invisible but destructively pernicious ideological frameworks are probably definitely more harmful to human rights and democracy than all the ridiculous farce of Russia and China.

Don't tell me that you're a good person because you are really active in the microfinancing world, buying goats for families in Africa in exchange for an IOU.

The U.S. military will not be expanding its land mine stockpile and aims to eventually eliminate its entire supply so that it can accede to the Ottawa Convention, a 15-year-old international treaty on mines, the White House announced Friday.

The move comes after persistent criticism of Washington for failing to sign the treaty, a mine-ban agreement that currently has 161 signatories. The U.S.’s refusal to join their ranks puts the country on a list that also includes Burma, North Korea and Uzbekistan.

The U.S. has one of the world’s largest stockpiles, with the number of the military’s land mines estimated at upwards of 10 million.

Some 4,000 people around the world are killed or lose a limb to land mines every year, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Eighty percent of the world’s nations have ratified or acceded to the Ottawa Convention. The U.S. is alone among Western states in holding out against the agreement.

Previous statements by Barack Obama’s administration went only as far as saying it would study the treaty's provisions. Friday’s announcement is the strongest indication yet that the U.S. will belatedly join the ban.

“The United States announced today that it will not produce or otherwise acquire any anti-personnel land mines in the future, including to replace expiring stockpiles,” a statement by the White House office of the press secretary said.

The announcement was made Friday by an American observer delegation to a conference in Maputo, Mozambique, on the progress of the Ottawa Convention.

If more "Americans" are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.

On June 28 2014 04:56 Simberto wrote:
Why? Landmines are basically an indiscriminate weapon of terror that still kills innocents decades after the war they were used in is over.

On June 28 2014 04:53 xDaunt wrote:
As tragic as the inevitable "collateral damage" is, I still wouldn't get rid of land mines.

On June 28 2014 05:08 xDaunt wrote:

They are only indiscriminate insofar as they kill/maim anyone who passes into the mined area. Area denial is a legitimate function and tactic of war. The bottom line is that war necessarily entails some degree of civilian casualties -- both during and after the conflict. I find land mine-related casualties to be within acceptable limits.

On June 28 2014 05:57 Paljas wrote:

using this sick reasoning, one could defend any kind of weaponry by pointing to it alleged "legitimate function" or how war always entails civilian causalties, "both during and after (why?) the conflict."

defending a weapon where 80% of the victims are civilian and 25% are children makes me wonder where you draw line

On June 28 2014 05:08 xDaunt wrote:

They are only indiscriminate insofar as they kill/maim anyone who passes into the mined area. Area denial is a legitimate function and tactic of war. The bottom line is that war necessarily entails some degree of civilian casualties -- both during and after the conflict. I find land mine-related casualties to be within acceptable limits.

On June 28 2014 07:47 xDaunt wrote:
It's always fun to see the hysterics of the peaceniks when it comes to talking about the realities of war. It'd be nice to see one post employing something resembling critical thought. Wishing me dead doesn't quite qualify.

But yeah, as a matter of general policy, it is perfectly sane to accept some degree of civilian casualties (among a whole range of other atrocious things) in exchange for protecting your troops and winning the war. War is inherently a shitty enterprise. Landmines fall well-within acceptable limits as far as I am concerned.

It was a slap in the face.” Steven Levine is remembering that day in 2006 when President George W. Bush took the stage in a small-town school gym in Indiana. It was October 28, right before the midterm elections, and Levine was a 22-year-old White House advance aide. He’d been camped out in Sellersburg all week, working to get the details just right for Bush’s campaign rally. The flags hung just so, the big presidential seal on the podium. Then Bush started talking, his standard stump speech about taxes and supporting the troops. But a new applause line took Levine by surprise. “Just this week in New Jersey,” the president said, “another activist court issued a ruling that raises doubt about the institution of marriage. We believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman, and should be defended. I will continue to appoint judges who strictly interpret the law and not legislate from the bench.”

The crowd loved it. Levine was crushed.

He was gay and working for a Republican and convinced it was possible to be both at the same time.
Like dozens of other gay colleagues in the Bush White House, many of them closeted, Levine had been sure that Bush himself was personally tolerant even if the GOP was not—and uncomfortable with gay-bashing as a way to win elections. But this was a rebuff, and it was hard not to take it personally: “To be working extraordinarily hard with all of your energy, working through many nights for somebody that you believe in, and to hear that person that you work so hard for come out against something that you are.”

Levine knew, of course, that Bush had officially backed the Federal Marriage Amendment, a proposed amendment to the Constitution to define marriage as solely between a man and a woman. But this was also the president who had made combating AIDS in Africa a personal cause (later, at Levine’s urging, he would even decorate the White House North Portico with a giant red ribbon to mark World AIDS Day), who had met with previously ostracized gay Republican leaders and whose hard-line conservative vice president had an openly gay daughter. And besides, opposing gay marriage just “wasn’t a centerpiece of the campaign to date,” Levine recalled when we talked recently. “So it wasn’t something that I was expecting to have been sort of his rallying cry at that event.”

Afterward, Levine made what small protest he could, telling his bosses he refused to work advance for future campaign events. Back in Washington, Levine says, “I told the folks in the [White House] advance office that I couldn’t do that anymore. … I told them why. These are my friends.”

“That was sort of my quiet way of objecting,” Levine recalls.

On June 28 2014 07:47 xDaunt wrote:
It's always fun to see the hysterics of the peaceniks when it comes to talking about the realities of war. It'd be nice to see one post employing something resembling critical thought. Wishing me dead doesn't quite qualify.

But yeah, as a matter of general policy, it is perfectly sane to accept some degree of civilian casualties (among a whole range of other atrocious things) in exchange for protecting your troops and winning the war. War is inherently a shitty enterprise. Landmines fall well-within acceptable limits as far as I am concerned.

On June 28 2014 08:25 coverpunch wrote:

I see where you're going with this in principle, but I think it is trumped by the reality that the vast majority of countries that actively use mines are using them indiscriminately to kill civilians as well as enemy soldiers.

I don't think the US should necessarily ratify the ban because that only bans the US from using mines, not others. To be transparent about which fronts the US still uses mines (which I think would be only Korea) and to say it is not selling them to regimes which abuse them is good enough IMO.