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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:and then bankrolled the everloving poo poo out of the coup to be rid of it, in violation of US policy, because the alternative was letting a democratically elected government that didn't like us exist, but hey, details Continuing to provide military assistance to Egypt after the coup wasn't a highlight in terms of moral leadership, but saying he bankrolled the coup is misleading at best.
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Apr 30, 2019 19:33
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Sinteres posted:Continuing to provide military assistance to Egypt after the coup wasn't a highlight in terms of moral leadership, but saying he bankrolled the coup is misleading at best.
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Apr 30, 2019 19:37
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Rent-A-Cop posted:You're really reaching to make a distinction without a difference. No, there's a pretty big difference between funding the actual effort to take over vs accepting the reality that they're in charge of Egypt and not blowing up strategic relations with the country (and, notably, its immediate neighbor to the east) over it. Again, it's not a moral highpoint for Obama's administration, but he didn't actively seek to overthrow the democratic government.
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Apr 30, 2019 19:47
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Sinteres posted:No, there's a pretty big difference between funding the actual effort to take over vs accepting the reality that they're in charge of Egypt and not blowing up strategic relations with the country (and, notably, its immediate neighbor to the east) over it. Again, it's not a moral highpoint for Obama's administration, but he didn't actively seek to overthrow the democratic government.
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Apr 30, 2019 20:22
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Sinteres posted:No, there's a pretty big difference between funding the actual effort to take over vs accepting the reality that they're in charge of Egypt and not blowing up strategic relations with the country (and, notably, its immediate neighbor to the east) over it. Again, it's not a moral highpoint for Obama's administration, but he didn't actively seek to overthrow the democratic government. pop quiz: what does US law say we do to military aid to countries undergoing a military coup. what did we do in response to the egyptian military launching one. it turns out the dictatorship in Egypt has Made In The USA stamped on its rear end, real big and real bright.
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Apr 30, 2019 20:45
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If you think that US FP under Trump is the same as under Obama (or even Bush for that matter) then holy gently caress I have a bridge to sell you. You can accurately say that they are all bad and fundamentally operating out of various forms of self-interest (albeit personal interests more than national interests, frankly) and that is a correct statement. Still, the differences matter and bad is not a binary, it's a spectrum. Trump's foreign policy is terrible on both a practical and humanitarian level as well as just being clumsy and ill-informed and poorly conceived on a level that is absolutely a departure from the norm for US FP.
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Apr 30, 2019 21:16
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Trump's foreign policy is terrible on both a practical and humanitarian level as well as just being clumsy and ill-informed and poorly conceived on a level that is absolutely a departure from the norm for US FP. Kennedy clumsily attempted to invade Cuba and then stuck a bunch of medium-range ballistic missiles in Turkey, expecting the USSR to "just accept it". The USSR then promptly turned around and installed a bunch of medium-range missiles in Cuba, expecting the US to "just accept it". There was a small freakout, a blockade and we almost ended the human species there and then. Please tell me more about our well-informed and thoughtfully-conceived foreign policy actions from the past. Less snark: generally, the previous generations of presidents, no matter how crappy, didn't want to die in the hellfire of MAD. Trump's little addition to the FP rational actor equation has been a comical disregard for any kind of even superficial global stability.
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Apr 30, 2019 21:36
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Sinteres posted:Whereas you used a lot of words to say lol nothing matters. I'm not sure where you got the idea that I think nothing matters, but then again if you think roughly 250 words excerpted from a policy memo is "a lot of words" then maybe this is the wrong discussion topic for you. If you find yourself arguing that actually George W. Bush was a champion of middle eastern democracy then maybe you're the moral nihilist here given that you're bending over backwards to find ways to say that one of the worst war criminals in living memory was actually just a misguided idealist. Herstory Begins Now posted:If you think that US FP under Trump is the same as under Obama (or even Bush for that matter) then holy gently caress I have a bridge to sell you. You can accurately say that they are all bad and fundamentally operating out of various forms of self-interest (albeit personal interests more than national interests, frankly) and that is a correct statement. Still, the differences matter and bad is not a binary, it's a spectrum. As terrible as his foreign policy was Obama at least had the Iran nuclear deal, but what makes Trump so dramatically worse in substance than George W. Bush?
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Apr 30, 2019 21:36
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Pembroke Fuse posted:Kennedy clumsily attempted to invade Cuba and then stuck a bunch of medium-range ballistic missiles in Turkey, expecting the USSR to "just accept it". No he didn't? The Jupiter deployment to Turkey happened in 1958 and Kennedy was the one who removed them, one of the concessions to Kruchevs un-deployment of ss-4 & -5's to Cuba. It's almost like you have no idea of what you are talking about Pembroke.
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Apr 30, 2019 21:45
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:No he didn't? The Jupiter deployment to Turkey happened in 1958 and Kennedy was the one who removed them, one of the concessions to Kruchevs un-deployment of ss-4 & -5's to Cuba. Yes, I messed up. They weren't installed under Kennedy. The USSR's reaction was fueled by their installation and the Bay of Pigs fiasco, however. Again, Khrushev literally expected the US to just "accept the fact" of Cuban missiles in much the same way that the USSR was forced to "accept the fact" of nuclear missiles on their doorstep. Nothing suggests that any of this was good or rational foreign policy.
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Apr 30, 2019 21:58
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V. Illych L. posted:in a hosed up way, trump is probably the most honest president america's had in a very long time in terms of policy. this is objectively hilarious
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Apr 30, 2019 22:03
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By any standard that says the US "backed" the coup against Morsi, then they also backed Mubaraks ouster by the military that led to the transition to democracy. Which is to say, it would be a very loving stupid standard.
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Apr 30, 2019 22:13
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Helsing posted:I'm not sure where you got the idea that I think nothing matters, but then again if you think roughly 250 words excerpted from a policy memo is "a lot of words" then maybe this is the wrong discussion topic for you. Bush had a far higher bodycount (though all told Trump might well get there via famine and infectious disease due to american supported Saudi and Central American actions), but also had some semblance of a foreign policy. Hell there were even a couple issues that Bush did actual good with. Trump is the absence of any coherent, consistent policy other than who will funnel the most cash into Kushner's businesses. I'm actually legit curious if Trump has done anything philanthropic or humanitarian and I think he's the only US president I can remember who doesn't have a pet humanitarian issue that they push really hard. Like his charity was openly a slush fund for his family, idk if they actually gave anything at all charitably because they apparently weren't even doing required financial disclosures for a long time. Trump also seems to give wildly less of a gently caress about human life and suffering than Bush did, which is saying a hell of a lot. Even in the sociopathic world of politics, Trump is exceptionally disinterested in the well-being of people
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Apr 30, 2019 22:15
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Volkerball posted:By any standard that says the US "backed" the coup against Morsi, then they also backed Mubaraks ouster by the military that led to the transition to democracy. Which is to say, it would be a very loving stupid standard. I guess it depends on how you define "backed", which is inherently a vague term, but why do you think it's implausible to imagine that the US recognized that Mubarak's position was untenable and therefore offered tacit encouragement to get rid of him but then, upon realizing that their preferred factions weren't going to be competitive in a democracy, decided it was better to have the military return to power with a new strongman? Herstory Begins Now posted:Bush had a far higher bodycount (though all told Trump might well get there via famine and infectious disease due to american supported Saudi and Central American actions), but also had some semblance of a foreign policy. Hell there were even a couple issues that Bush did actual good with. Trump is the absence of any coherent, consistent policy other than who will funnel the most cash into Kushner's businesses. I'm actually legit curious if Trump has done anything philanthropic or humanitarian and I think he's the only US president I can remember who doesn't have a pet humanitarian issue that they push really hard. Like his charity was openly a slush fund for his family, idk if they actually gave anything at all charitably because they apparently weren't even doing required financial disclosures for a long time. You seem to be saying that even though Bush killed way more people and objectively did more harm that Trump is worse because he's more rhetorically unhinged? That's the only concrete difference you seem to be identifying. I don't really know what you mean by "coherent, consistent policy" in this context or how Bush's policy being "coherent" and "consistent" can be considered anything except bad.
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Apr 30, 2019 22:27
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Idk if you're aware of this, but famine death counts blow up really quickly and Yemen is on a terrifying track wrt that rn. Someone having some beliefs and values at all is a positive thing because it limits their evil a bit. Someone having literally no apparent values other than 'how much money did you give to Kushner' is a really terrifying person to have in charge because it means there really is nothing he would object to Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Apr 30, 2019 |
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Apr 30, 2019 22:30
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Helsing posted:If you find yourself arguing that actually George W. Bush was a champion of middle eastern democracy then maybe you're the moral nihilist here given that you're bending over backwards to find ways to say that one of the worst war criminals in living memory was actually just a misguided idealist. Again, I pretty clearly stated in the original post that Bush abandoned his democratic idealism the second he realized it wasn't going to be as convenient as everyone electing pro-American leaders, so I'm not saying he's a great guy or that he did the right thing. His commitment to democracy was skin deep. That said, it's more than Trump's, since he appears to be openly hostile to it in principle. As I said in another post, even cynical American leaders asked our dictatorial allies to put a nice face on things from time to time, but Trump openly admires killers, so as long as they're not screaming Death to Israel he's fine with all the rest. If you're an accelerationist I guess you could think that's better since it removes any pretense, but you don't seem to think there was much pretense to begin with, so Trump giving a green light to dictators to oppress their people as much as they want seems bad, particularly as he's labeling even non-extremist opposition as terrorists, making it that much more likely that future rebellions will be led/taken over by jihadists and forcing the devil's choice we ended up with in Syria. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Apr 30, 2019 |
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Apr 30, 2019 22:45
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https://twitter.com/laraseligman/status/1123314184429735936quote:BREAKING: Two @usairforce F-35As conducted an air strike at Wadi Ashai, Iraq, on April 30, marking the F-35A’s first combat employment. Via @USAFCENT Still, after the whole incident with the Wagner mercenaries it's one more plane in the air to completely outclass whatever incident happens on the ground. Saladin Rising fucked around with this message at 00:03 on May 1, 2019 |
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Apr 30, 2019 22:55
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Saladin Rising posted:https://twitter.com/laraseligman/status/1123314184429735936 I'm glad our expensive new stealth aircraft were able to get past the friendly radar in the area without incident.
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Apr 30, 2019 23:02
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Idk if you're aware of this, but famine death counts blow up really quickly and Yemen is on a terrifying track wrt that rn. Sinteres posted:Again, I pretty clearly stated in the original post that Bush abandoned his democratic idealism the second he realized it wasn't going to be as convenient as everyone electing pro-American leaders, so I'm not saying he's a great guy or that he did the right thing. His commitment to democracy was skin deep. That said, it's more than Trump's, since he appears to be openly hostile to it in principle. As I said in another post, even cynical American leaders asked our dictatorial allies to put a nice face on things from time to time, but Trump openly admires killers, so as long as they're not screaming Death to Israel he's fine with all the rest. If you're an accelerationist I guess you could think that's better since it removes any pretense, but you don't seem to think there was much pretense to begin with, so Trump giving a green light to dictators to oppress their people as much as they want seems bad, particularly as he's labeling even non-extremist opposition as terrorists, making it that much more likely that future rebellions will be led/taken over by jihadists and forcing the devil's choice we ended up with in Syria. If George W. Bush's "skin deep" commitment to "some beliefs and values" was actually consequential then you guys would be citing all the examples of how Bush's flawed principles made him a better foreign policy president than Trump.
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May 1, 2019 00:45
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I think it's a bit early to assume we fully know the consequences of Trump's foreign policy to boot. Knowing that it's bad and suspecting that it's even worse than we know is different from knowing for a fact how bad it got. Even the harshest critic of Bush didn't know for a fact everything we know now back in 2003.
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May 1, 2019 00:55
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Sinteres posted:even Bush seemed to genuinely believe in the transformative power of democracy Democracy as defined by Bush was "first we completely dismantle everything, and then we let the Glorious Free Market rebuild something else". I'm not gonna call it democracy.
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May 1, 2019 02:05
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Cat Mattress posted:Democracy as defined by Bush was "first we completely dismantle everything, and then we let the Glorious Free Market rebuild something else". It wasn't just Iraq though, he pushed for elections in Palestine too. That was more what I had in mind when I said his commitment was skin deep once democracy provided results he wasn't happy with, but I don't want to get too into the weeds on I/P here.
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May 1, 2019 02:46
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Saladin Rising posted:The F-35 did its first mission: dropping a JDAM in the middle of The F-35B dropped bombs in Afghanistan over 6 months ago. Because the Marines take being first in very, very seriously.
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May 1, 2019 04:44
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Sinteres posted:Again, I pretty clearly stated in the original post that Bush abandoned his democratic idealism the second he realized it wasn't going to be as convenient as everyone electing pro-American leaders, so I'm not saying he's a great guy or that he did the right thing. His commitment to democracy was skin deep. That said, it's more than Trump's, since he appears to be openly hostile to it in principle. As I said in another post, even cynical American leaders asked our dictatorial allies to put a nice face on things from time to time, but Trump openly admires killers, so as long as they're not screaming Death to Israel he's fine with all the rest. If you're an accelerationist I guess you could think that's better since it removes any pretense, but you don't seem to think there was much pretense to begin with, so Trump giving a green light to dictators to oppress their people as much as they want seems bad, particularly as he's labeling even non-extremist opposition as terrorists, making it that much more likely that future rebellions will be led/taken over by jihadists and forcing the devil's choice we ended up with in Syria. There is this narrative called "stumbling into empire" that frames every US FP decision as "America means well and then promptly fucks it up". Its pretty difficult for me to determine if its true or not, certainly: - The Philippine-American War wasn't supposed to turn into a giant imperial misadventure with mass executions of civilians, but it did - Kennedy didn't mean to almost trigger off a nuclear conflict with the Bay of Pigs, but he did - The CIA didn't mean for Ngo Dinh Diem to get assassinated, but he did - Able Archer '83 wasn't supposed to trigger off a nuclear standoff, but it did - Iraq wasn't supposed to turn into a civil war and a bloodbath, but it did - Afghanistan wasn't supposed to turn into a giant, 17-year-long quagmire, but it did Eventually, you kind of begin to realize that intentions don't matter, outcomes do. And whether by accident or through malice, the outcomes of interventionism are for the most part pretty crappy. So yeah, Trump openly lusts for the death of his enemies, while previous presidents wanted to maintain plausible deniability. The outcomes seem to be about the same though. Maybe Trump is worse because you can't hold him to a self-identified higher standard, but that hadn't made a significant different in the past (Nixon was happy to keep Vietnam going despite the protests). I'm not an accelerationist... but I do want people to look at Trump's foreign policy and reject it as the naked extension of the previous pattern of foreign policy, not as some kind of pivot or aberration from it. Trump is, after all, merely a symptom...
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May 1, 2019 05:20
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Pembroke Fuse posted:There is this narrative called "stumbling into empire" that frames every US FP decision as "America means well and then promptly fucks it up". Its pretty difficult for me to determine if its true or not, certainly: I generally don't think that the US means particularly well either as a body politic nor individually in the upper echelons of the state department and military, but when more liberal administrations are around, there's a concerted effort to pay lip service to more liberal values and actions that can't be framed in some kind of (even eye-rollingly bullshit) liberal or humanitarian way are more sparingly done. Even then it's still pretty terrible to be on the wrong-end of USFP, but it's night and day different from Trump openly defending the Saudi's right to capriciously starve Yemen for literally zero productive reason whatsoever. Under Clinton, that need to frame things in favorable terms was present albeit pretty loose. Under Bush it was more about framing actions as conducive to establishment of free market conditions. Obama made somewhat more substantial efforts to have an ideologically consistent (at least relative to the standards of USFP) narrative behind foreign policy decisions. They still did a lot of hosed up stuff, but on a policy level, there was an effort to avoid cruelty and violence that served no other purpose, which in the history of US overseas actions is actually rare af. Notably, Trump eliminated almost all the anti-collateral damage rules and practices of review that were placed on the military over the last 10-20 years. Normally it is indeed a bit up in the air how malicious vs how stupid or ill-conceived US foreign actions are. Under Trump they're just all malicious and/or self-enriching. Current admin doesn't give a gently caress about anyone who isn't a white christian american or who hasn't written a check to Kushner. That's not hyperbole. And they don't care who knows it either. That's a big change.
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May 1, 2019 09:22
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one might say that that's actually a good thing, because it means that you could argue against those bad things on their own terms and effectively refute them, as opposed to the ridiculous song and dance that happens whenever e.g. the NHS is discussed in the UK, where one mustn't question the tories' sincere commitment to the basic institution no matter how hard they try to undermine it it's harder to argue in principle for the NHS when the other guys also claim to be for the NHS, "but..."
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May 2, 2019 16:16
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imo it's a singular symptom of bourgeois narrowmindedness to see a reactionary doing reactionary things and say 'oh how i miss the days when they pretended to be less reactionary'
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May 2, 2019 16:19
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V. Illych L. posted:imo it's a singular symptom of bourgeois narrowmindedness to see a reactionary doing reactionary things and say 'oh how i miss the days when they pretended to be less reactionary' It's a symptom of leftist philosophical navel gazing to see an evil person doing evil things and not think there was any benefit in his predecessors at least making tentative steps toward accountability for human rights as opposed to handing dictatorships licenses to kill anyone who opposes their regime. Congrats, you identified that they were all flawed people who enabled evil in some way while failing to see that things can always get worse.
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May 2, 2019 17:20
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V. Illych L. posted:imo it's a singular symptom of bourgeois narrowmindedness to see a reactionary doing reactionary things and say 'oh how i miss the days when they pretended to be less reactionary' 
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May 2, 2019 17:51
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Sinteres posted:It's a symptom of leftist philosophical navel gazing to see an evil person doing evil things and not think there was any benefit in his predecessors at least making tentative steps toward accountability for human rights as opposed to handing dictatorships licenses to kill anyone who opposes their regime. Congrats, you identified that they were all flawed people who enabled evil in some way while failing to see that things can always get worse. The onus is on you to prove that there were incremental but measurable improvements in foreign policy over time. It's more reasonable to say that the foreign policy has swung like a pendulum back and fourth based on who was in power at the time and how war-weary the public has been of imperial misadventures. Bush won a second term on the back of Iraq. Obama rolled it back a bit (and instituted his own terrible droning policies). There is nothing to suggest that the next superficial or real crisis wouldn't trigger another misadventure under the correct circumstances (into Venezuela, North Korea, Iran, etc). Brian Williams getting a boner when Trump launched missiles at an airfield is more reflective of how ready the US political class for another round of glorious war. Pembroke Fuse fucked around with this message at 18:20 on May 2, 2019 |
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May 2, 2019 18:06
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Looks like the left is actually trying to stop a murderous war in Yemen. So much for navel-gazing. Where are your centrist heroes on this? https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1123991111234670598
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May 2, 2019 18:19
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Pembroke Fuse posted:Looks like the left is actually trying to stop a murderous war in Yemen. So much for navel-gazing. Where are your centrist heroes on this? I don't remember Bernie giving long speeches about how Trump isn't actually any worse than anyone else when you think about it real hard. He's more of a pragmatist than both some of his devout fans and some of his ardent detractors give him credit for, and realizes that in the real world Trump is making an already bad system/foreign policy worse.
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May 2, 2019 18:42
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Pembroke Fuse posted:Looks like the left is actually trying to stop a murderous war in Yemen. So much for navel-gazing. Where are your centrist heroes on this? you, uh, sorta picked a bad example because the resolution was supported by all Democrats in both House and Senate including the dreaded centrists
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May 2, 2019 19:49
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Sinteres posted:It's a symptom of leftist philosophical navel gazing to see an evil person doing evil things and not think there was any benefit in his predecessors at least making tentative steps toward accountability for human rights as opposed to handing dictatorships licenses to kill anyone who opposes their regime. Congrats, you identified that they were all flawed people who enabled evil in some way while failing to see that things can always get worse. i can both think trump is very bad and that his badness is pretty much of the same character as that of his predecessors do keep in mind that you're directly defending bush's foreign policy legacy here, and i'd say that iraq very handily beats anything trump has gotten up to. in fact, on a purely empire perspective i think trump is a good match to e.g. obama; where trump has yemen, obama had egypt, libya and the massive expansion of the drone programme &c. trump's main sin is being awfully vulgar about it all, but don't forget that obama was also pathetically friendly to the israeli fascists and to various america-aligned strongmen is trump worse? possibly. but he's still just a manifestation of the same underlying policy regime, no matter how abrasive his communications, and as he states it frankly and openly, being too stupid to realise the value of deceit, we can directly engage with it and hopefully take the fight directly to that policy regime
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May 2, 2019 21:12
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V. Illych L. posted:is trump worse? possibly. the part where trump has exercised no oversight except to occasionally exhort the US military to be more careless and brutal is worse.
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May 2, 2019 21:23
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Despite not being able to cite any specific examples people just known deep in their bones that Trump was worse than George W. Bush because Trump has to be uniquely terrible and bad in all areas by some kind of cosmic necessity. This isn't even a question that one can investigate, it's just true by definition in the same way that water is necessarily wet and 2+2 must be 4.
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May 2, 2019 21:27
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Helsing posted:Despite not being able to cite any specific examples The first page of google results. It took me longer to write this post than find these. Please, don't pull this poo poo if you're not going to put in any effort of your own.
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May 2, 2019 21:58
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Cease to Hope posted:the part where trump has exercised no oversight except to occasionally exhort the US military to be more careless and brutal is worse. yes, i agree that this part is worse, but obama actively and intelligently helping in the quashing of democratic movements in e.g. egypt is also worse. the lack of serious follow-up on the snowden leaks, for instance, makes obama also worse. obama was much better re: detente with certain traditional enemies; trump seems, bizarrely, better with regards to certain other traditional enemies. the point is, they're both bad for a lot of the same reasons, with trump's main distinguishing mark being that he's being awfully gauche about it but also kind of an idiot which limits the damage he does. the problem isn't so much what distinguishes trump from his predecessors, but what they have in common, which is most of the things i can actually grant you obama if it matters to you and consent to comparing trump to clinton and the bushes without it affecting my (or, as i understand it, helsing's) point to any significant degree
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May 2, 2019 22:08
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Cease to Hope posted:The first page of google results. It took me longer to write this post than find these. Bush wasn't shy about using drone strikes but the technology was barely being used until the last two years of his administration so this is a weird point of comparison, especially since by this metric you're saying that Obama was worse than George W. Bush.
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May 2, 2019 22:14
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Helsing posted:Bush wasn't shy about using drone strikes but the technology was barely being used until the last two years of his administration so this is a weird point of comparison, especially since by this metric you're saying that Obama was worse than George W. Bush. These are examples of Trump specifically ordering policies of increasingly indiscriminate bombing and covering up the extent of doing so.
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May 2, 2019 22:22
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