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Please guys, stay on topic.
This thread is about the situation in Iraq and Syria. |
On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:On June 17 2014 05:54 Disregard wrote:
You be surprised how rampant corruption is in India and Pakistan has their hands full dealing with their own insurgencies. I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting.
That was the whole point of American neo-conservative Middle East policy. Do you like how it turned out?
On June 22 2014 04:10 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:On June 17 2014 05:54 Disregard wrote:
You be surprised how rampant corruption is in India and Pakistan has their hands full dealing with their own insurgencies. I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. And how do you expect to institute these three things to a people who don't want any of them. Women in sharia dominated countries are not secure will not get education and certainly won't have any rights. what you want to do is bring western civilization and progress to a group of people who haven't gotten pats the "lets just cut each others heads off" stage of development. The best thing we could do is prop up a violent military dictator and force them to progress as a people. Force them to have security education and sanitation for all and not just for their tribe, gender, or ethnic groups.
And this is the point. These are people who simply have fundamentally different values than we do. They are not going to react to things the way that we would. This is why our attempts to super-impose western values upon them failed.
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On June 22 2014 05:17 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:On June 17 2014 05:54 Disregard wrote:
You be surprised how rampant corruption is in India and Pakistan has their hands full dealing with their own insurgencies. I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. That was the whole point of American neo-conservative Middle East policy. Do you like how it turned out? Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 04:10 Sermokala wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:On June 17 2014 05:54 Disregard wrote:
You be surprised how rampant corruption is in India and Pakistan has their hands full dealing with their own insurgencies. I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. And how do you expect to institute these three things to a people who don't want any of them. Women in sharia dominated countries are not secure will not get education and certainly won't have any rights. what you want to do is bring western civilization and progress to a group of people who haven't gotten pats the "lets just cut each others heads off" stage of development. The best thing we could do is prop up a violent military dictator and force them to progress as a people. Force them to have security education and sanitation for all and not just for their tribe, gender, or ethnic groups. And this is the point. These are people who simply have fundamentally different values than we do. They are not going to react to things the way that we would. This is why our attempts to super-impose western values upon them failed.
The very premise of your post is bullshit. We never tried to fix Iraq. At best you could say that our little in and out operation was an attempt to pretend that we were doing something good. The idea that Iraq could have been fixed/westernized by the symbolic 'reconstruction' we did there is as laughably stupid as planning to cut someone's leg off and then applying a band-aid on the hemorrhage. Any sort of nationbuilding there would be extremely expensive, politically suicidal, and would take at least one generation to have any hope of success. We never prepared for any of those conditions, thus you cannot say that we actually tried to fix the problems in Iraq.
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On June 22 2014 06:42 Jormundr wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 05:17 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:On June 17 2014 05:54 Disregard wrote:
You be surprised how rampant corruption is in India and Pakistan has their hands full dealing with their own insurgencies. I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. That was the whole point of American neo-conservative Middle East policy. Do you like how it turned out? On June 22 2014 04:10 Sermokala wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:On June 17 2014 05:54 Disregard wrote:
You be surprised how rampant corruption is in India and Pakistan has their hands full dealing with their own insurgencies. I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. And how do you expect to institute these three things to a people who don't want any of them. Women in sharia dominated countries are not secure will not get education and certainly won't have any rights. what you want to do is bring western civilization and progress to a group of people who haven't gotten pats the "lets just cut each others heads off" stage of development. The best thing we could do is prop up a violent military dictator and force them to progress as a people. Force them to have security education and sanitation for all and not just for their tribe, gender, or ethnic groups. And this is the point. These are people who simply have fundamentally different values than we do. They are not going to react to things the way that we would. This is why our attempts to super-impose western values upon them failed. The very premise of your post is bullshit. We never tried to fix Iraq. At best you could say that our little in and out operation was an attempt to pretend that we were doing something good. The idea that Iraq could have been fixed/westernized by the symbolic 'reconstruction' we did there is as laughably stupid as planning to cut someone's leg off and then applying a band-aid on the hemorrhage. Any sort of nationbuilding there would be extremely expensive, politically suicidal, and would take at least one generation to have any hope of success. We never prepared for any of those conditions, thus you cannot say that we actually tried to fix the problems in Iraq.
We turned the country over to the Iraqi people and gave them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of post-war aid and reconstruction funds. Feel to free to explain what else should have been done.
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Zurich15366 Posts
On June 22 2014 08:54 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 06:42 Jormundr wrote:On June 22 2014 05:17 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:On June 17 2014 05:54 Disregard wrote:
You be surprised how rampant corruption is in India and Pakistan has their hands full dealing with their own insurgencies. I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. That was the whole point of American neo-conservative Middle East policy. Do you like how it turned out? On June 22 2014 04:10 Sermokala wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:On June 17 2014 05:54 Disregard wrote:
You be surprised how rampant corruption is in India and Pakistan has their hands full dealing with their own insurgencies. I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. And how do you expect to institute these three things to a people who don't want any of them. Women in sharia dominated countries are not secure will not get education and certainly won't have any rights. what you want to do is bring western civilization and progress to a group of people who haven't gotten pats the "lets just cut each others heads off" stage of development. The best thing we could do is prop up a violent military dictator and force them to progress as a people. Force them to have security education and sanitation for all and not just for their tribe, gender, or ethnic groups. And this is the point. These are people who simply have fundamentally different values than we do. They are not going to react to things the way that we would. This is why our attempts to super-impose western values upon them failed. The very premise of your post is bullshit. We never tried to fix Iraq. At best you could say that our little in and out operation was an attempt to pretend that we were doing something good. The idea that Iraq could have been fixed/westernized by the symbolic 'reconstruction' we did there is as laughably stupid as planning to cut someone's leg off and then applying a band-aid on the hemorrhage. Any sort of nationbuilding there would be extremely expensive, politically suicidal, and would take at least one generation to have any hope of success. We never prepared for any of those conditions, thus you cannot say that we actually tried to fix the problems in Iraq. We turned the country over to the Iraqi people and gave them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of post-war aid and reconstruction funds. Feel to free to explain what else should have been done.
Not fucking fucked all their shit up? Are you kidding me?
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On June 22 2014 10:15 zatic wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 08:54 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 06:42 Jormundr wrote:On June 22 2014 05:17 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:On June 17 2014 05:54 Disregard wrote:
You be surprised how rampant corruption is in India and Pakistan has their hands full dealing with their own insurgencies. I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. That was the whole point of American neo-conservative Middle East policy. Do you like how it turned out? On June 22 2014 04:10 Sermokala wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:On June 17 2014 05:54 Disregard wrote:
You be surprised how rampant corruption is in India and Pakistan has their hands full dealing with their own insurgencies. I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. And how do you expect to institute these three things to a people who don't want any of them. Women in sharia dominated countries are not secure will not get education and certainly won't have any rights. what you want to do is bring western civilization and progress to a group of people who haven't gotten pats the "lets just cut each others heads off" stage of development. The best thing we could do is prop up a violent military dictator and force them to progress as a people. Force them to have security education and sanitation for all and not just for their tribe, gender, or ethnic groups. And this is the point. These are people who simply have fundamentally different values than we do. They are not going to react to things the way that we would. This is why our attempts to super-impose western values upon them failed. The very premise of your post is bullshit. We never tried to fix Iraq. At best you could say that our little in and out operation was an attempt to pretend that we were doing something good. The idea that Iraq could have been fixed/westernized by the symbolic 'reconstruction' we did there is as laughably stupid as planning to cut someone's leg off and then applying a band-aid on the hemorrhage. Any sort of nationbuilding there would be extremely expensive, politically suicidal, and would take at least one generation to have any hope of success. We never prepared for any of those conditions, thus you cannot say that we actually tried to fix the problems in Iraq. We turned the country over to the Iraqi people and gave them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of post-war aid and reconstruction funds. Feel to free to explain what else should have been done. Not fucking fucked all their shit up? Are you kidding me?
If you've read my comments in the past page, you'll seen that I've addressed him. The things he's been saying have been... rather interesting. I'd attribute it to a combination of nationalism and ignorance. It's as absurd as saying that many European Jews were in poor ghettos in WW2 because that's where they were living, not because they were forced into that situation by the Axis, and then saying that those Jews are at fault for being in that situation. Absolute hogwash.
Anywho, 12 years of a full embargo that dropped the GDP by 3/4s iirc (not to mention the mass deaths and everything) followed by a decade of war and violence will successfully turn any country into garbage (no offense to iraq). I find it interesting that he says to "feel free what we should have done then" when I already explained that on the last page. meh.
All the advanced nations know the devastation and terrors of war, institutionalized starvation, and all sorts of atrocities and suffering, except for us. It's one thing to do unspeakable wrongs for sinister purposes; it's going to another level to defend them to the hilt. Even your countrymen have owed up to past mistakes. But we're on top of the world, don't expect us to anytime soon. As long as that is the case, you can expect to make that same reply you made at least a few more times 
EDIT: Apologies for invoking Godwin's law, but I wanted to use an example that people usually accept as black and white, not the whole self-apologetic, jingoistic tone common for people from here to justify this and that.
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On June 22 2014 10:15 zatic wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 08:54 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 06:42 Jormundr wrote:On June 22 2014 05:17 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:On June 17 2014 05:54 Disregard wrote:
You be surprised how rampant corruption is in India and Pakistan has their hands full dealing with their own insurgencies. I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. That was the whole point of American neo-conservative Middle East policy. Do you like how it turned out? On June 22 2014 04:10 Sermokala wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:On June 17 2014 05:54 Disregard wrote:
You be surprised how rampant corruption is in India and Pakistan has their hands full dealing with their own insurgencies. I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. And how do you expect to institute these three things to a people who don't want any of them. Women in sharia dominated countries are not secure will not get education and certainly won't have any rights. what you want to do is bring western civilization and progress to a group of people who haven't gotten pats the "lets just cut each others heads off" stage of development. The best thing we could do is prop up a violent military dictator and force them to progress as a people. Force them to have security education and sanitation for all and not just for their tribe, gender, or ethnic groups. And this is the point. These are people who simply have fundamentally different values than we do. They are not going to react to things the way that we would. This is why our attempts to super-impose western values upon them failed. The very premise of your post is bullshit. We never tried to fix Iraq. At best you could say that our little in and out operation was an attempt to pretend that we were doing something good. The idea that Iraq could have been fixed/westernized by the symbolic 'reconstruction' we did there is as laughably stupid as planning to cut someone's leg off and then applying a band-aid on the hemorrhage. Any sort of nationbuilding there would be extremely expensive, politically suicidal, and would take at least one generation to have any hope of success. We never prepared for any of those conditions, thus you cannot say that we actually tried to fix the problems in Iraq. We turned the country over to the Iraqi people and gave them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of post-war aid and reconstruction funds. Feel to free to explain what else should have been done. Not fucking fucked all their shit up? Are you kidding me?
Oh, I apologize. I did not realize that Iraq was such a paradise under Saddam.
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On June 22 2014 10:31 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 10:15 zatic wrote:On June 22 2014 08:54 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 06:42 Jormundr wrote:On June 22 2014 05:17 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:On June 17 2014 05:54 Disregard wrote:
You be surprised how rampant corruption is in India and Pakistan has their hands full dealing with their own insurgencies. I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. That was the whole point of American neo-conservative Middle East policy. Do you like how it turned out? On June 22 2014 04:10 Sermokala wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:
[quote]
I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. And how do you expect to institute these three things to a people who don't want any of them. Women in sharia dominated countries are not secure will not get education and certainly won't have any rights. what you want to do is bring western civilization and progress to a group of people who haven't gotten pats the "lets just cut each others heads off" stage of development. The best thing we could do is prop up a violent military dictator and force them to progress as a people. Force them to have security education and sanitation for all and not just for their tribe, gender, or ethnic groups. And this is the point. These are people who simply have fundamentally different values than we do. They are not going to react to things the way that we would. This is why our attempts to super-impose western values upon them failed. The very premise of your post is bullshit. We never tried to fix Iraq. At best you could say that our little in and out operation was an attempt to pretend that we were doing something good. The idea that Iraq could have been fixed/westernized by the symbolic 'reconstruction' we did there is as laughably stupid as planning to cut someone's leg off and then applying a band-aid on the hemorrhage. Any sort of nationbuilding there would be extremely expensive, politically suicidal, and would take at least one generation to have any hope of success. We never prepared for any of those conditions, thus you cannot say that we actually tried to fix the problems in Iraq. We turned the country over to the Iraqi people and gave them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of post-war aid and reconstruction funds. Feel to free to explain what else should have been done. Not fucking fucked all their shit up? Are you kidding me? If you've read my comments in the past page, you'll seen that I've addressed him. The things he's been saying have been... rather interesting. I'd attribute it to a combination of nationalism and ignorance. It's as absurd as saying that many European Jews were in poor ghettos in WW2 because that's where they were living, not because they were forced into that situation by the Axis, and then saying that those Jews are at fault for being in that situation. Absolute hogwash. Anywho, 12 years of a full embargo that dropped the GDP by 3/4s iirc (not to mention the mass deaths and everything) followed by a decade of war and violence will successfully turn any country into garbage (no offense to iraq). I find it interesting that he says to "feel free what we should have done then" when I already explained that on the last page. meh EDIT: Apologies for invoking Godwin's law, but I wanted to use an example that people usually accept as black and white, not the whole self-apologetic, jingoistic tone common for people from here to justify this and that.
You didn't explain anything. You presented the same, myopic "it is all America's fault" arguments that everyone presents. The present conflict in Iraq is centuries in the making. Sure, eliminating Saddam created the power void that allowed the conflict to erupt, but we sure as shit aren't responsible for it. Presuming otherwise is ludicrous.
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On June 22 2014 10:39 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 10:31 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On June 22 2014 10:15 zatic wrote:On June 22 2014 08:54 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 06:42 Jormundr wrote:On June 22 2014 05:17 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:
[quote]
I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. That was the whole point of American neo-conservative Middle East policy. Do you like how it turned out? On June 22 2014 04:10 Sermokala wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:
[quote]
This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. And how do you expect to institute these three things to a people who don't want any of them. Women in sharia dominated countries are not secure will not get education and certainly won't have any rights. what you want to do is bring western civilization and progress to a group of people who haven't gotten pats the "lets just cut each others heads off" stage of development. The best thing we could do is prop up a violent military dictator and force them to progress as a people. Force them to have security education and sanitation for all and not just for their tribe, gender, or ethnic groups. And this is the point. These are people who simply have fundamentally different values than we do. They are not going to react to things the way that we would. This is why our attempts to super-impose western values upon them failed. The very premise of your post is bullshit. We never tried to fix Iraq. At best you could say that our little in and out operation was an attempt to pretend that we were doing something good. The idea that Iraq could have been fixed/westernized by the symbolic 'reconstruction' we did there is as laughably stupid as planning to cut someone's leg off and then applying a band-aid on the hemorrhage. Any sort of nationbuilding there would be extremely expensive, politically suicidal, and would take at least one generation to have any hope of success. We never prepared for any of those conditions, thus you cannot say that we actually tried to fix the problems in Iraq. We turned the country over to the Iraqi people and gave them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of post-war aid and reconstruction funds. Feel to free to explain what else should have been done. Not fucking fucked all their shit up? Are you kidding me? If you've read my comments in the past page, you'll seen that I've addressed him. The things he's been saying have been... rather interesting. I'd attribute it to a combination of nationalism and ignorance. It's as absurd as saying that many European Jews were in poor ghettos in WW2 because that's where they were living, not because they were forced into that situation by the Axis, and then saying that those Jews are at fault for being in that situation. Absolute hogwash. Anywho, 12 years of a full embargo that dropped the GDP by 3/4s iirc (not to mention the mass deaths and everything) followed by a decade of war and violence will successfully turn any country into garbage (no offense to iraq). I find it interesting that he says to "feel free what we should have done then" when I already explained that on the last page. meh EDIT: Apologies for invoking Godwin's law, but I wanted to use an example that people usually accept as black and white, not the whole self-apologetic, jingoistic tone common for people from here to justify this and that. You didn't explain anything. You presented the same, myopic "it is all America's fault" arguments that everyone presents. The present conflict in Iraq is centuries in the making. Sure, eliminating Saddam created the power void that allowed the conflict to erupt, but we sure as shit aren't responsible for it. Presuming otherwise is ludicrous.
Yep, there was progress, stability, peace, no ethnic cleansing or civil war, the greatest bastion against teh same Islamic extremism that is tearing up the Mideast and North Africa today, a secular and progressive society (for the most part, some of the pro-Iranian radicals obv weren't), and much more. Most of the world's economic growth, especially the developing world, has been in the past 30-ish years. Imagine what could have been achieved in that period.
We are responsible for the 12 year embargo and for the Iraq War. Those are the entirely reasons why Iraq where it is today. For direct and indirect reasons, it's our fault. "The current conflict" would not be a problem if not for us. Khomeini's holy jihad of the 80s was the greatest threat the Mideast has faced since the Mongols, and yet it was dealt with. Now the country can't even deal with some 100s of ragtag ISIS monkeys.
Nowadays, there's none of that LOL. You were saying something about ludicrosity btw?
PS: You were saying that EVERYONE makes these arguments? Well, they must carry some weight if you're the only one saying otherwise
On June 22 2014 10:35 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 10:15 zatic wrote:On June 22 2014 08:54 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 06:42 Jormundr wrote:On June 22 2014 05:17 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:On June 17 2014 05:54 Disregard wrote:
You be surprised how rampant corruption is in India and Pakistan has their hands full dealing with their own insurgencies. I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. That was the whole point of American neo-conservative Middle East policy. Do you like how it turned out? On June 22 2014 04:10 Sermokala wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:On June 17 2014 06:12 xDaunt wrote:
[quote]
I'm not sure that the "developed" world has the stomach to do what is necessary to crush these Islamist uprisings. It probably wouldn't be "legal." This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. And how do you expect to institute these three things to a people who don't want any of them. Women in sharia dominated countries are not secure will not get education and certainly won't have any rights. what you want to do is bring western civilization and progress to a group of people who haven't gotten pats the "lets just cut each others heads off" stage of development. The best thing we could do is prop up a violent military dictator and force them to progress as a people. Force them to have security education and sanitation for all and not just for their tribe, gender, or ethnic groups. And this is the point. These are people who simply have fundamentally different values than we do. They are not going to react to things the way that we would. This is why our attempts to super-impose western values upon them failed. The very premise of your post is bullshit. We never tried to fix Iraq. At best you could say that our little in and out operation was an attempt to pretend that we were doing something good. The idea that Iraq could have been fixed/westernized by the symbolic 'reconstruction' we did there is as laughably stupid as planning to cut someone's leg off and then applying a band-aid on the hemorrhage. Any sort of nationbuilding there would be extremely expensive, politically suicidal, and would take at least one generation to have any hope of success. We never prepared for any of those conditions, thus you cannot say that we actually tried to fix the problems in Iraq. We turned the country over to the Iraqi people and gave them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of post-war aid and reconstruction funds. Feel to free to explain what else should have been done. Not fucking fucked all their shit up? Are you kidding me? Oh, I apologize. I did not realize that Iraq was such a paradise under Saddam.
According to Iraqi folk I've come across, both Muslims and especially Assyrian Christians, compared to how things are now, it was very much a paradise back then.  Although, that should be obvious. The country was actually functional, to say the least, among many other things.
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Who are these "we" you keep refering to? Using rhetoric constantly undermines any point you want to make whatever it is, other than that apparently fellow Americans aren't macho enough to cause mass genocide to fulfil your imagined threats or whatever.
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On June 22 2014 10:43 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 10:39 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 10:31 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On June 22 2014 10:15 zatic wrote:On June 22 2014 08:54 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 06:42 Jormundr wrote:On June 22 2014 05:17 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 21 2014 18:58 Elroi wrote:
[quote]
This would be a strange way of reasoning for a nation that has already broken just about every international law when dealing with "terrorists" already. And that line of reasoning has a scary history too I think. To defend one's own barbaric actions by saying that the enemy is less human than you or more barbaric than you can ever be has been an important part of colonialism at least since the Sepoy mutiny when reports of rapes of British women served as a pretext for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Indians. Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. That was the whole point of American neo-conservative Middle East policy. Do you like how it turned out? On June 22 2014 04:10 Sermokala wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:
[quote]
Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. And how do you expect to institute these three things to a people who don't want any of them. Women in sharia dominated countries are not secure will not get education and certainly won't have any rights. what you want to do is bring western civilization and progress to a group of people who haven't gotten pats the "lets just cut each others heads off" stage of development. The best thing we could do is prop up a violent military dictator and force them to progress as a people. Force them to have security education and sanitation for all and not just for their tribe, gender, or ethnic groups. And this is the point. These are people who simply have fundamentally different values than we do. They are not going to react to things the way that we would. This is why our attempts to super-impose western values upon them failed. The very premise of your post is bullshit. We never tried to fix Iraq. At best you could say that our little in and out operation was an attempt to pretend that we were doing something good. The idea that Iraq could have been fixed/westernized by the symbolic 'reconstruction' we did there is as laughably stupid as planning to cut someone's leg off and then applying a band-aid on the hemorrhage. Any sort of nationbuilding there would be extremely expensive, politically suicidal, and would take at least one generation to have any hope of success. We never prepared for any of those conditions, thus you cannot say that we actually tried to fix the problems in Iraq. We turned the country over to the Iraqi people and gave them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of post-war aid and reconstruction funds. Feel to free to explain what else should have been done. Not fucking fucked all their shit up? Are you kidding me? If you've read my comments in the past page, you'll seen that I've addressed him. The things he's been saying have been... rather interesting. I'd attribute it to a combination of nationalism and ignorance. It's as absurd as saying that many European Jews were in poor ghettos in WW2 because that's where they were living, not because they were forced into that situation by the Axis, and then saying that those Jews are at fault for being in that situation. Absolute hogwash. Anywho, 12 years of a full embargo that dropped the GDP by 3/4s iirc (not to mention the mass deaths and everything) followed by a decade of war and violence will successfully turn any country into garbage (no offense to iraq). I find it interesting that he says to "feel free what we should have done then" when I already explained that on the last page. meh EDIT: Apologies for invoking Godwin's law, but I wanted to use an example that people usually accept as black and white, not the whole self-apologetic, jingoistic tone common for people from here to justify this and that. You didn't explain anything. You presented the same, myopic "it is all America's fault" arguments that everyone presents. The present conflict in Iraq is centuries in the making. Sure, eliminating Saddam created the power void that allowed the conflict to erupt, but we sure as shit aren't responsible for it. Presuming otherwise is ludicrous. Yep, there was progress, stability, peace, no ethnic cleansing or civil war, the greatest bastion against teh same Islamic extremism that is tearing up the Mideast and North Africa today, a secular and progressive society (for the most part, some of the pro-Iranian radicals obv weren't), and much more. We are responsible for the 12 year embargo and for the Iraq War. Those are the entirely reasons why Iraq where it is today. For direct and indirect reasons, it's our fault. Nowadays, there's none of that LOL. You were saying something about ludicrosity btw?
It is simply incredible to me that you're blaming the Sunni vs. Shiite conflict -- which predates America by a millennium -- on the US. Yes, that is ludicrous.
We have fucked up plenty of countries worse than we fucked up Iraq. Japan, Germany, etc. The difference is that those countries had actual national identities and cohesive populations. What you are failing repeatedly to recognize is that Iraq does not have a cohesive population and national identity, which is the root cause of the present sectarian violence. The US has NOTHING to do with that.
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On June 22 2014 10:46 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Who are these "we" you keep refering to? Using rhetoric constantly undermines any point you want to make whatever it is, other than that apparently fellow Americans aren't macho enough to cause mass genocide to fulfil your imagined threats or whatever.
By "we", I mean US govt./politics. I don't know what you're trying to say in the rest of your post though.
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On June 22 2014 10:51 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 10:43 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On June 22 2014 10:39 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 10:31 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On June 22 2014 10:15 zatic wrote:On June 22 2014 08:54 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 06:42 Jormundr wrote:On June 22 2014 05:17 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:On June 22 2014 02:59 xDaunt wrote:
[quote]
Life sucks, eh? I'm not pretending that my suggestion is "moral." It clearly isn't. But winning has nothing to do with morality. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone else to suggest how we can "morally" get rid of ISIS and like-minded groups. That's the point. Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. That was the whole point of American neo-conservative Middle East policy. Do you like how it turned out? On June 22 2014 04:10 Sermokala wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:
[quote]
Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. And how do you expect to institute these three things to a people who don't want any of them. Women in sharia dominated countries are not secure will not get education and certainly won't have any rights. what you want to do is bring western civilization and progress to a group of people who haven't gotten pats the "lets just cut each others heads off" stage of development. The best thing we could do is prop up a violent military dictator and force them to progress as a people. Force them to have security education and sanitation for all and not just for their tribe, gender, or ethnic groups. And this is the point. These are people who simply have fundamentally different values than we do. They are not going to react to things the way that we would. This is why our attempts to super-impose western values upon them failed. The very premise of your post is bullshit. We never tried to fix Iraq. At best you could say that our little in and out operation was an attempt to pretend that we were doing something good. The idea that Iraq could have been fixed/westernized by the symbolic 'reconstruction' we did there is as laughably stupid as planning to cut someone's leg off and then applying a band-aid on the hemorrhage. Any sort of nationbuilding there would be extremely expensive, politically suicidal, and would take at least one generation to have any hope of success. We never prepared for any of those conditions, thus you cannot say that we actually tried to fix the problems in Iraq. We turned the country over to the Iraqi people and gave them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of post-war aid and reconstruction funds. Feel to free to explain what else should have been done. Not fucking fucked all their shit up? Are you kidding me? If you've read my comments in the past page, you'll seen that I've addressed him. The things he's been saying have been... rather interesting. I'd attribute it to a combination of nationalism and ignorance. It's as absurd as saying that many European Jews were in poor ghettos in WW2 because that's where they were living, not because they were forced into that situation by the Axis, and then saying that those Jews are at fault for being in that situation. Absolute hogwash. Anywho, 12 years of a full embargo that dropped the GDP by 3/4s iirc (not to mention the mass deaths and everything) followed by a decade of war and violence will successfully turn any country into garbage (no offense to iraq). I find it interesting that he says to "feel free what we should have done then" when I already explained that on the last page. meh EDIT: Apologies for invoking Godwin's law, but I wanted to use an example that people usually accept as black and white, not the whole self-apologetic, jingoistic tone common for people from here to justify this and that. You didn't explain anything. You presented the same, myopic "it is all America's fault" arguments that everyone presents. The present conflict in Iraq is centuries in the making. Sure, eliminating Saddam created the power void that allowed the conflict to erupt, but we sure as shit aren't responsible for it. Presuming otherwise is ludicrous. Yep, there was progress, stability, peace, no ethnic cleansing or civil war, the greatest bastion against teh same Islamic extremism that is tearing up the Mideast and North Africa today, a secular and progressive society (for the most part, some of the pro-Iranian radicals obv weren't), and much more. We are responsible for the 12 year embargo and for the Iraq War. Those are the entirely reasons why Iraq where it is today. For direct and indirect reasons, it's our fault. Nowadays, there's none of that LOL. You were saying something about ludicrosity btw? It is simply incredible to me that you're blaming the Sunni vs. Shiite conflict -- which predates America by a millennium -- on the US. Yes, that is ludicrous. We have fucked up plenty of countries worse than we fucked up Iraq. Japan, Germany, etc. The difference is that those countries had actual national identities and cohesive populations. What you are failing repeatedly to recognize is that Iraq does not have a cohesive population and national identity, which is the root cause of the present sectarian violence. The US has NOTHING to do with that.
You realize most of the Sunni vs. Shia violence in today's Iraq started when Sunni and Shia terrorists from other countries flooded into the country following the invasion? It was largely instigated by foreign sources. Before that, there was no such Sunni vs. Shia conflict besides some ostracized Shia radicals who supported Khomeini/Iran. The country was relatively peaceful, in particular for Christians, whose population has unsurprisingly dropped by 80% from 2003 until before the ISIS incursion (there's most likely fewer in past weeks).
But Iraq would still be in the shitter even if there was no such Sunni vs. Shia conflict. Do you realize that? A full embargo that has done the most economic damage to any single country in the modern era and a war that destroyed whatever infrastructure didn't die as a result of said embargo would still have the country in a terrible position even if there was no Sunni vs. Shia conflict. Even without that, there'd still be one of the world's most corrupted and least productive regimes, among everything else that would still be in place without a Sunni vs Shia conflict. But to reiterate, there wouldn't be a violent Sunni vs Shia conflict there had the US not fucked things up in the first place.
The main difference with Germany/Japan more than anything BTW is that those were powerful imperialist powers; modern advanced nations for a very long time. Not a region whose population was decimated by the Mongols (Baghdad was said to be one of the world's greatest cities), exploited by Turks for centuries, ruled by a British puppet monarchy, then with US intervention of various kinds ever since the monarchy was overthrown. Huge difference, wouldn't you say? People tend to be a lot more angry when they're not living in advanced, wealthy states. This is why the rule of law, keeping order in society, and securing the borders against violent extremists were very important priorities in Iraq. When the US removed those, obviously all hell broke loose with terrorists as far as away as Algeria and Libya pouring into the country.
Speaking of Sunni vs. Shia conflict, if the US wanted to destroy the primary sources of terrorists and most especially extremist influence (thus dealing a huge blow to Islamic extremism), we should crush Saudi Arabia and Iran today. It would be the first good thing the US has done in the Mideast, and a huge favor for the world overall.
A lot of the instigation of the overall Sunni vs Shia crisis in the modern world is Iran. Before, Iran was a very secular nation, perhaps the most secular in the Mideast. A democracy was established. However, we overthrew that to put in a very brutal and unpopular king back in power, so terrible, that this once very secular society went to the extreme of supporting the greatest Islamic fanatic at the time to seize power. Had we left the Iranian democracy alone, I'm sure we'd have a valuable friend, rather than a hated enemy.
The root cause of the problems in Iraq are the aforementioned past couple of decades. If we hadn't fucked up anything, these problems would not be existing there. There is no denial of that.
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On June 22 2014 10:57 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 10:51 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 10:43 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On June 22 2014 10:39 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 10:31 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On June 22 2014 10:15 zatic wrote:On June 22 2014 08:54 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 06:42 Jormundr wrote:On June 22 2014 05:17 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 03:46 Godwrath wrote:
[quote]
Security, education, sanitation. In general, just uplift the standard of living would do thousand times better than what you are suggesting. That was the whole point of American neo-conservative Middle East policy. Do you like how it turned out? On June 22 2014 04:10 Sermokala wrote:
[quote]
And how do you expect to institute these three things to a people who don't want any of them. Women in sharia dominated countries are not secure will not get education and certainly won't have any rights.
what you want to do is bring western civilization and progress to a group of people who haven't gotten pats the "lets just cut each others heads off" stage of development. The best thing we could do is prop up a violent military dictator and force them to progress as a people. Force them to have security education and sanitation for all and not just for their tribe, gender, or ethnic groups. And this is the point. These are people who simply have fundamentally different values than we do. They are not going to react to things the way that we would. This is why our attempts to super-impose western values upon them failed. The very premise of your post is bullshit. We never tried to fix Iraq. At best you could say that our little in and out operation was an attempt to pretend that we were doing something good. The idea that Iraq could have been fixed/westernized by the symbolic 'reconstruction' we did there is as laughably stupid as planning to cut someone's leg off and then applying a band-aid on the hemorrhage. Any sort of nationbuilding there would be extremely expensive, politically suicidal, and would take at least one generation to have any hope of success. We never prepared for any of those conditions, thus you cannot say that we actually tried to fix the problems in Iraq. We turned the country over to the Iraqi people and gave them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of post-war aid and reconstruction funds. Feel to free to explain what else should have been done. Not fucking fucked all their shit up? Are you kidding me? If you've read my comments in the past page, you'll seen that I've addressed him. The things he's been saying have been... rather interesting. I'd attribute it to a combination of nationalism and ignorance. It's as absurd as saying that many European Jews were in poor ghettos in WW2 because that's where they were living, not because they were forced into that situation by the Axis, and then saying that those Jews are at fault for being in that situation. Absolute hogwash. Anywho, 12 years of a full embargo that dropped the GDP by 3/4s iirc (not to mention the mass deaths and everything) followed by a decade of war and violence will successfully turn any country into garbage (no offense to iraq). I find it interesting that he says to "feel free what we should have done then" when I already explained that on the last page. meh EDIT: Apologies for invoking Godwin's law, but I wanted to use an example that people usually accept as black and white, not the whole self-apologetic, jingoistic tone common for people from here to justify this and that. You didn't explain anything. You presented the same, myopic "it is all America's fault" arguments that everyone presents. The present conflict in Iraq is centuries in the making. Sure, eliminating Saddam created the power void that allowed the conflict to erupt, but we sure as shit aren't responsible for it. Presuming otherwise is ludicrous. Yep, there was progress, stability, peace, no ethnic cleansing or civil war, the greatest bastion against teh same Islamic extremism that is tearing up the Mideast and North Africa today, a secular and progressive society (for the most part, some of the pro-Iranian radicals obv weren't), and much more. We are responsible for the 12 year embargo and for the Iraq War. Those are the entirely reasons why Iraq where it is today. For direct and indirect reasons, it's our fault. Nowadays, there's none of that LOL. You were saying something about ludicrosity btw? It is simply incredible to me that you're blaming the Sunni vs. Shiite conflict -- which predates America by a millennium -- on the US. Yes, that is ludicrous. We have fucked up plenty of countries worse than we fucked up Iraq. Japan, Germany, etc. The difference is that those countries had actual national identities and cohesive populations. What you are failing repeatedly to recognize is that Iraq does not have a cohesive population and national identity, which is the root cause of the present sectarian violence. The US has NOTHING to do with that. You realize most of the Sunni vs. Shia conflict in Iraq started when Sunni and Shia terrorists from other countries flooded into the country following the invasion? It was largely instigated by foreign sources. Before that, there was no such Sunni vs. Shia conflict besides some ostracized Shia radicals who supported Khomeini/Iran. Not even the Shia liked them. The country was relatively peaceful, in particular for Christians, whose population has unsurprisingly dropped by 80% from 2003 until before the ISIS incursion (there's most likely fewer in past weeks).
No, this is totally incorrect. There's nothing special about Iraq or its population that created the appearance of stability before the US started invading and imposing sanctions. It was simply one more example of a Muslim country with deep historical divisions being held artificially together by a brutal military dictator. For the life of me, I don't understand why you seem to think that this was a good state of affairs for Iraq. History has proven that it certainly isn't a stable one in the long term.
And I'm not sure why you keep bringing up the plight of the Christian population in Iraq. Christians have been fleeing the Middle East for decades in the face of Muslim extremism. As just one example, Lebanon used to be a Christian nation. Those days are long gone, though.
But Iraq would still be in the shitter even if there was no such Sunni vs. Shia conflict. Do you realize that? A full embargo that has done the most economic damage to any single country in the modern era and a war that destroyed whatever infrastructure didn't die as a result of said embargo would still have the country in a terrible position even if there was no Sunni vs. Shia conflict.
So what? Many countries have been utterly destroyed before, and then, once the destruction stopped, they were able to rebuild and be fully functional again. Why was Iraq unable to do this when given hundreds of billions of dollars in aid and foreign investment? The lack of national identity.
Even without that, there'd still be one of the world's most corrupted and least productive regimes, among everything else that would still be in place without a Sunni vs Shia conflict. But to reiterate, there wouldn't be a Sunni vs Shia conflict there had we note fucked things up in the first place.
Please, you can't just sweep centuries of history under the rug.
The root cause of the problems in Iraq are the aforementioned past couple of decades. If we hadn't fucked up anything, these problems would not be existing there. There is no denial of that.
Yeah, not quite.
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On June 22 2014 11:09 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2014 10:57 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On June 22 2014 10:51 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 10:43 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On June 22 2014 10:39 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 10:31 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On June 22 2014 10:15 zatic wrote:On June 22 2014 08:54 xDaunt wrote:On June 22 2014 06:42 Jormundr wrote:On June 22 2014 05:17 xDaunt wrote:
[quote]
That was the whole point of American neo-conservative Middle East policy. Do you like how it turned out?
[quote]
And this is the point. These are people who simply have fundamentally different values than we do. They are not going to react to things the way that we would. This is why our attempts to super-impose western values upon them failed. The very premise of your post is bullshit. We never tried to fix Iraq. At best you could say that our little in and out operation was an attempt to pretend that we were doing something good. The idea that Iraq could have been fixed/westernized by the symbolic 'reconstruction' we did there is as laughably stupid as planning to cut someone's leg off and then applying a band-aid on the hemorrhage. Any sort of nationbuilding there would be extremely expensive, politically suicidal, and would take at least one generation to have any hope of success. We never prepared for any of those conditions, thus you cannot say that we actually tried to fix the problems in Iraq. We turned the country over to the Iraqi people and gave them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of post-war aid and reconstruction funds. Feel to free to explain what else should have been done. Not fucking fucked all their shit up? Are you kidding me? If you've read my comments in the past page, you'll seen that I've addressed him. The things he's been saying have been... rather interesting. I'd attribute it to a combination of nationalism and ignorance. It's as absurd as saying that many European Jews were in poor ghettos in WW2 because that's where they were living, not because they were forced into that situation by the Axis, and then saying that those Jews are at fault for being in that situation. Absolute hogwash. Anywho, 12 years of a full embargo that dropped the GDP by 3/4s iirc (not to mention the mass deaths and everything) followed by a decade of war and violence will successfully turn any country into garbage (no offense to iraq). I find it interesting that he says to "feel free what we should have done then" when I already explained that on the last page. meh EDIT: Apologies for invoking Godwin's law, but I wanted to use an example that people usually accept as black and white, not the whole self-apologetic, jingoistic tone common for people from here to justify this and that. You didn't explain anything. You presented the same, myopic "it is all America's fault" arguments that everyone presents. The present conflict in Iraq is centuries in the making. Sure, eliminating Saddam created the power void that allowed the conflict to erupt, but we sure as shit aren't responsible for it. Presuming otherwise is ludicrous. Yep, there was progress, stability, peace, no ethnic cleansing or civil war, the greatest bastion against teh same Islamic extremism that is tearing up the Mideast and North Africa today, a secular and progressive society (for the most part, some of the pro-Iranian radicals obv weren't), and much more. We are responsible for the 12 year embargo and for the Iraq War. Those are the entirely reasons why Iraq where it is today. For direct and indirect reasons, it's our fault. Nowadays, there's none of that LOL. You were saying something about ludicrosity btw? It is simply incredible to me that you're blaming the Sunni vs. Shiite conflict -- which predates America by a millennium -- on the US. Yes, that is ludicrous. We have fucked up plenty of countries worse than we fucked up Iraq. Japan, Germany, etc. The difference is that those countries had actual national identities and cohesive populations. What you are failing repeatedly to recognize is that Iraq does not have a cohesive population and national identity, which is the root cause of the present sectarian violence. The US has NOTHING to do with that. You realize most of the Sunni vs. Shia conflict in Iraq started when Sunni and Shia terrorists from other countries flooded into the country following the invasion? It was largely instigated by foreign sources. Before that, there was no such Sunni vs. Shia conflict besides some ostracized Shia radicals who supported Khomeini/Iran. Not even the Shia liked them. The country was relatively peaceful, in particular for Christians, whose population has unsurprisingly dropped by 80% from 2003 until before the ISIS incursion (there's most likely fewer in past weeks). No, this is totally incorrect. There's nothing special about Iraq or its population that created the appearance of stability before the US started invading and imposing sanctions. It was simply one more example of a Muslim country with deep historical divisions being held artificially together by a brutal military dictator. For the life of me, I don't understand why you seem to think that this was a good state of affairs for Iraq. History has proven that it certainly isn't a stable one in the long term. And I'm not sure why you keep bringing up the plight of the Christian population in Iraq. Christians have been fleeing the Middle East for decades in the face of Muslim extremism. As just one example, Lebanon used to be a Christian nation. Those days are long gone, though. Show nested quote +But Iraq would still be in the shitter even if there was no such Sunni vs. Shia conflict. Do you realize that? A full embargo that has done the most economic damage to any single country in the modern era and a war that destroyed whatever infrastructure didn't die as a result of said embargo would still have the country in a terrible position even if there was no Sunni vs. Shia conflict. So what? Many countries have been utterly destroyed before, and then, once the destruction stopped, they were able to rebuild and be fully functional again. Why was Iraq unable to do this when given hundreds of billions of dollars in aid and foreign investment? The lack of national identity. Show nested quote +Even without that, there'd still be one of the world's most corrupted and least productive regimes, among everything else that would still be in place without a Sunni vs Shia conflict. But to reiterate, there wouldn't be a Sunni vs Shia conflict there had we note fucked things up in the first place. Please, you can't just sweep centuries of history under the rug. Show nested quote +The root cause of the problems in Iraq are the aforementioned past couple of decades. If we hadn't fucked up anything, these problems would not be existing there. There is no denial of that. Yeah, not quite.
You realize, even TL's (and my own) beloved South Korea had a brutal military dictatorship in a completely homogeneous country and comparatively non-aggressive non-Islamic region, right? Even then, there was still tons of angry people and threats to basic stability. SK only moved away from that once order could be kept without having that, ie. when such a system was no longer necessary. Now we turn to Iraq, a developing country which borders the two biggest terrorist states in the world and who are very influential at that, and with an extremely diverse society. And hell, this is going to sound crazy to you, if there's anything I've learned, there wasn't anywhere near as much animosity and division in the society as exists nowadays, and what exists today isn't even a result of Iraq domestically. Flood a country with terrorists from everywhere Islam exists, and you'll have one big charlie foxtrot. But, are you're against having a peaceful society, that you would condemn keeping order and peace against violent bands of insurrectionists, domestic and foreign? Btw, in case you're not aware, the current regime is extremely oppressive and brutal. Nothing changed for the better in that regard.
Isn't it strange you followed "This is totally incorrect" by being totally incorrect?
Lebanon is half Christian. This is even considering they had an 15 year civil war and highly disproportionate growth in the Muslim population. I'd say that's pretty Christian. But when a country's Christian population drops from 1.5 million in 2003 to 300k pre-ISIS incursion which is a blip on the timeline of Christianity in Iraq (note: This is even considering that the Turks killed 100,000s of Christians in the Assyrian genocide a century ago), that's pretty serious.
Egypt still has its large Christian population. Your point is also wrong on this account.
And dude, are you attempting to justify massacres and ethnic cleansing by saying "Christians have been leaving for a long time"? Please, find a Holocaust survivor and tell them the Holocaust was good because by your logic "Jews have been leaving places where they were persecuted for a long time". Well, at least we've established you're okay with the Holocaust and I can only imagine other genocides as well.
So what? Many countries have been utterly destroyed before, and then, once the destruction stopped, they were able to rebuild and be fully functional again. Why was Iraq unable to do this when given hundreds of billions of dollars in aid and foreign investment? The lack of national identity.
So that means it is okay for the US to destroy countries? This is the most senseless logic I've ever heard XD. Iraq isn't able to do this because the govt. is like the top 5 most corrupted in the world. It has nothing to do with a "national identity". They were developing well before the embargo and invasion, with infinitely less investment. There wasn't even a "national identity" then, either. Arguably less so, since the country was a lot less urbanized and interconnected.
An Iraq that was left alone for the past 2 decades, getting that much investment, would probably produce something steadily approaching Israel or South Korea. The Turks, our friend we help a lot and which was the center of an empire for centuries, are not close to that level. But rather, we have an Iraq we put in rock bottom and gave money to the world's most corrupt regime with no interest in any sort of development like preceding administrations were. Iraq's corruption since 2003 is very famous, I'm surprised you're not aware of it. India gets infinite investment, and the US pretty much built its tech industry and the British Empire developed India in every way they could, but still somehow it's as poor as poor can get. Corruption man.
Please, you can't just sweep centuries of history under the rug.
But I haven't at all. I was simply stating that a system and society was established that was peaceful and ordered. The general society was significantly more cohesive than it is today. The workings of foreign terrorists who flooded in when the US created this chaos have been quite profound. They've done a great job at intensely stratifying the society, far more than even Khomeini could have ever hoped to. Then again, he lost. In this scenario, these Islamic terrorists won.
What centuries of history have I swept away? Perhaps our American legacy of dominance and destruction? With that said, I'll be the first to admit that California (which we conquered from Mexico which was originally conquered by Spain from various indigenous peoples) is a paradise compared to the rest of the country and I've been all over this beautiful nation. However, I won't sweep even this under the rug.
There is no denial of that.
Yeah, not quite.
Glad to see we have consensus.
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@xdaunt
the iraq war is still ongoing, even though the imperial aggressor withdrew after getting its ass kicked.
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On June 22 2014 11:39 nunez wrote:
@xdaunt
the iraq war is still ongoing, even though the imperial aggressor withdrew after getting its ass kicked.
The US didn't get their asses kicked. I am sorry but this is not true. Insurgents of whatever factions and motivations stand no chance against heavy aerial bombardment. When it came to combat, obviously untrained guys with almost nothing besides rifles don't stand a chance against organized guys with heavy metal.
Rather, the US came to the realization that after 20 years of these direct actions in Iraq, we have created one of the world's biggest clusterfucks and decided to quietly leave. That's compounded by the fact we're having issues here at home, that we're mostly trying to keep at bay by borrowing and borrowing (and increasing the debt  ). War is very expensive.
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hey now, don't take all the glory, the us had some pals with it.
armament and casualty rate is not a good metric of success, it reflects premise of conflict, not outcome.
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The Israel Air Force struck several Syrian military targets on Monday night, in response to Sunday's cross-border missile shooting which killed an Israeli boy and wounded his father and two other civilians.
The strikes were carried out shortly after midnight. Nine targets belonging to the Syrian military were hit, among them command centers, according to a statement released by the IDF Spokesman.
Source
The Iraqi government appears to have lost control of its western borders after Sunni militants reportedly captured crossings to Syria and Jordan.
Officials said the rebels took two key crossings in Anbar on Sunday, a day after seizing one at Qaim, a town in the province that borders Syria.
The strategically important airport in the northern town of Tal Afar has also reportedly fallen to the rebels.
Source
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EPT
