President Obama Re-Elected - Page 799

On October 16 2012 04:30 Jormundr wrote:

No, I don't think they will be ready to enforce our policies on their land in the next 5 years, the next 10 years, or even the next 25 years. I don't give a shit. We invaded a sovereign nation, shot a bunch of terrorists/extremists (as well as a bunch of civilians) and we are now somehow confused as to why there are still more and more people fighting against us.
PROTIP: When you invade someone's country and kill a bunch of people there will always be people who want to kill you in return.
I'm not making an argument for whether or not we can 'better' the country in 25 or 50 years. I'm not making an argument over whether or not the afghan government will have Taliban influences in it when we leave (I actually assume these influences never left). I'm saying that we never had any logical reason to go in and fight a guerrilla war alongside a frail and corrupt government against an enemy that bears no flag. The point is that our service men and women haven't been tasked with doing anything of a significant enough value to the United States or Afghanistan to justify the death toll. We are responsible for (by the lowest casualty count) 6 Afghan civilian deaths for every single person who died on 9/11. Explain to me what throwing away the lives of our soldiers is going to accomplish for us as a nation. Explain to me what this war on foreign soil is about, because I apparently don't understand the modern definition of defense and how it is so deeply intertwined with nation-building.

On October 16 2012 05:22 coverpunch wrote:

Let me take a swing at this. What you're missing is what 9/11 represented to US foreign policy. The attack was planned from the dark and neglected corners of the world, so that these obscure conflicts that you would say America should not care are precisely the areas where terrorism has fomented most actively. There is large agreement that the best way to stop terrorism is to have a prosperous, stable, strong government that encourages democratic and free market values. Hence the active nation-building started by Bush and continued and expanded by Obama.

You seem unaware that it was last Friday that the Obama administration announced it was expanding the War on Terror to Mali (hunting down the terrorists who attacked the embassy in Benghazi). The US isn't committing ground forces, but we will be arming and funding a militia of mixed African countries to occupy the country. Not that Romney would do anything very different, at least he isn't saying so.

What I'm trying to say is that the people who are really lost on foreign policy right now are liberal isolationists who think America should disengage from the world and only expand our influence if people want it. You don't have a leg to stand on in this election. Obama isn't that at all, he's been arguably more interventionist than Bush, it's just that people stopped bitching and moaning about it because he's a Democrat and they've been so traditionally reluctant that we broadly assume that if he says someone needs to be harshly interrogated or killed by a drone or invaded, then he probably means it.

On October 16 2012 05:39 Jormundr wrote:

I fully understand that terrorism thrives in an uneducated populace guided by powerful religious and political leaders. It also thrives off of nationalism and blind hatred, two things we were GUARANTEED to inspire when we occupied the country. There was no benefit in committing to a large scale occupation of the country. I would be fine with bombing them over and over for 10 years. I would be fine with surgical strikes to take out perceived Al Qaeda cells and training camps. What I'm not in favor of is making our troops sit on the ground for 10 years with a target on their head to bolster an imagined 'freedom' for the people of a country 7000 miles away. I'm fully aware that neither candidate is anti war, and that no career politician would ever say "yeah we're just going to withdraw the troops immediately" because that would be political suicide.

On October 16 2012 05:22 coverpunch wrote:

Let me take a swing at this. What you're missing is what 9/11 represented to US foreign policy. The attack was planned from the dark and neglected corners of the world, so that these obscure conflicts that you would say America should not care are precisely the areas where terrorism has fomented most actively. There is large agreement that the best way to stop terrorism is to have a prosperous, stable, strong government that encourages democratic and free market values. Hence the active nation-building started by Bush and continued and expanded by Obama.

You seem unaware that it was last Friday that the Obama administration announced it was expanding the War on Terror to Mali (hunting down the terrorists who attacked the embassy in Benghazi). The US isn't committing ground forces, but we will be arming and funding a militia of mixed African countries to occupy the country. Not that Romney would do anything very different, at least he isn't saying so.

What I'm trying to say is that the people who are really lost on foreign policy right now are liberal isolationists who think America should disengage from the world and only expand our influence if people want it. You don't have a leg to stand on in this election. Obama isn't that at all, he's been arguably more interventionist than Bush, it's just that people stopped bitching and moaning about it because he's a Democrat and they've been so traditionally reluctant that we broadly assume that if he says someone needs to be harshly interrogated or killed by a drone or invaded, then he probably means it.

On October 16 2012 05:22 coverpunch wrote:

Let me take a swing at this. What you're missing is what 9/11 represented to US foreign policy. The attack was planned from the dark and neglected corners of the world, so that these obscure conflicts that you would say America should not care are precisely the areas where terrorism has fomented most actively. There is large agreement that the best way to stop terrorism is to have a prosperous, stable, strong government that encourages democratic and free market values. Hence the active nation-building started by Bush and continued and expanded by Obama.

You seem unaware that it was last Friday that the Obama administration announced it was expanding the War on Terror to Mali (hunting down the terrorists who attacked the embassy in Benghazi). The US isn't committing ground forces, but we will be arming and funding a militia of mixed African countries to occupy the country. Not that Romney would do anything very different, at least he isn't saying so.

What I'm trying to say is that the people who are really lost on foreign policy right now are liberal isolationists who think America should disengage from the world and only expand our influence if people want it. You don't have a leg to stand on in this election. Obama isn't that at all, he's been arguably more interventionist than Bush, it's just that people stopped bitching and moaning about it because he's a Democrat and they've been so traditionally reluctant that we broadly assume that if he says someone needs to be harshly interrogated or killed by a drone or invaded, then he probably means it.

On October 16 2012 05:40 DoubleReed wrote:


...are you for real?

On October 16 2012 05:40 DoubleReed wrote:


...are you for real?

On October 16 2012 05:34 Souma wrote:


You can't compare Obama to Bush in this regard. Obama does not step on nearly as many toes when he decides to take action and has been putting more responsibility on the rest of the world. Also, liberals are not generally isolationist in regards to foreign policy, that would be libertarians. Liberals just don't believe the U.S. should be propping up dictators, assassinating democratically-elected leaders, getting into wars under false pretenses, etc.

On October 16 2012 05:40 DoubleReed wrote:


...are you for real?

On October 16 2012 05:59 coverpunch wrote:

You know how naive that sounds from an objective standpoint, right? For one, you have no comment on whether Obama is more interventionist or whether that's a good thing, you're just agreeing with me that people don't get as huffy about it as they did with Bush.

Second, liberals aren't supposed to be isolationist AT ALL, they're supposed to be all about spreading our values to the world. Conservatives are supposed to be isolationist because a small government does not intervene abroad unless it's absolutely necessary to promote domestic peace. Hence things like the Peace Corps, soft power, encouraging women's/minority rights around the world - that conforms to liberal philosophy, or at least it should.

And third, it's just blind to say the US doesn't get its hands dirty in international politics. I don't fault Obama or any other US president for that. It's part of the job that the US has to cut deals with bad people, especially in the dirtier parts of the world where good and evil don't have a bright line. But don't tell me that liberals are too good to deal with those kinds of people while conservatives just play in the mud like pigs because that's just wrong.

On October 16 2012 05:50 Jormundr wrote:

Why yes, I would definitely prefer if we spent the last 10 years just using air strikes on afghan soil instead of wasting the lives of our troops and any afghani civilians near our troops! It turns out that when you spend I don't know, say about $600 billion per year on 'defense' you often come up with methods of waging war which are more efficient (from a patriotic loss of life standpoint) than marching your troops in and setting up bases.

On October 16 2012 05:34 Souma wrote:


You can't compare Obama to Bush in this regard. Obama does not step on nearly as many toes when he decides to take action and has been putting more responsibility on the rest of the world. Also, liberals are not generally isolationist in regards to foreign policy, that would be libertarians. Liberals just don't believe the U.S. should be propping up dictators, assassinating democratically-elected leaders, getting into wars under false pretenses, etc.

On October 16 2012 06:06 DoubleReed wrote:


To your second point: why are so many republicans total hawks? Empirical evidence is just going against what you're saying.

Personally I don't think there is conservative foreign policy and liberal foreign policy. I don't think isolationism makes any sense at all as a global superpower, and it's only going to make less sense as globalization continues.

On October 16 2012 06:02 DoubleReed wrote:


Well, gee, I would prefer not bombing them for ten years over and over! What about that option??

On October 16 2012 05:50 Jormundr wrote:

Why yes, I would definitely prefer if we spent the last 10 years just using air strikes on afghan soil instead of wasting the lives of our troops and any afghani civilians near our troops! It turns out that when you spend I don't know, say about $600 billion per year on 'defense' you often come up with methods of waging war which are more efficient (from a patriotic loss of life standpoint) than marching your troops in and setting up bases.

On October 16 2012 05:59 coverpunch wrote:

You know how naive that sounds from an objective standpoint, right? For one, you have no comment on whether Obama is more interventionist or whether that's a good thing, you're just agreeing with me that people don't get as huffy about it as they did with Bush.

Second, liberals aren't supposed to be isolationist AT ALL, they're supposed to be all about spreading our values to the world. Conservatives are supposed to be isolationist because a small government does not intervene abroad unless it's absolutely necessary to promote domestic peace. Hence things like the Peace Corps, soft power, encouraging women's/minority rights around the world - that conforms to liberal philosophy, or at least it should.

And third, it's just blind to say the US doesn't get its hands dirty in international politics. I don't fault Obama or any other US president for that. It's part of the job that the US has to cut deals with bad people, especially in the dirtier parts of the world where good and evil don't have a bright line. But don't tell me that liberals are too good to deal with those kinds of people while conservatives just play in the mud like pigs because that's just wrong.

On October 16 2012 06:06 coverpunch wrote:

Let's ask the related question then:

Are you happy with the Obama administration's expansion of drone strikes? Do you think it's legally and morally justified? And do you believe the Obama administration when it says civilian casualties have been minimal, if not zero?

On October 16 2012 06:17 Souma wrote:


Of course I didn't say whether or not more interventionism was good or bad as that had nothing to do with the issue at hand. I don't perceive foreign policy as black or white and neither does the rest of the world. There's a difference between intervening when you have the support of the rest of the world and intervening when you don't have that support. If you wanted to know my personal opinion, I loved the fact that we intervened during the Arab Spring. I don't, however, enjoy propping up murderous tyrants and assassinating leaders that were fairly democratically elected.

Second, I'm not sure you're justified in defining what liberals are supposed to be about or not. As mentioned above, foreign policy, like most things in this world, is not black and white.

Third, I never said the U.S. doesn't get its hand dirty in international politics nor do I mind if the situation calls for it. Where in the world did you get that from? Is the world perceived through your eyes consisting of two colors?