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Bip Roberts posted:How is Libya somehow purely an US operation in people's memory? Yeah. In my memory it was France and the UK (and maybe Italy?) that were pushing the hardest for the intervention. To me if felt like "we can do this by ourselves!" but they had ask the US to help when they ran out of bombs. The US from the start didn't seem especially keen on the deal, and when it got involved wanted the light footprint approach, hence the reliance on airstrikes, special forces and arming rebels. That, and no plan at all for what happened next. I didn't come out and oppose the intervention directly, but I did express my hand-wringing concern that it would sow chaos and more violence. I got called all sorts of things for that, I guess I loved genocide or something.
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Oct 26, 2015 21:24
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I actually do love genocide and that's why I supported the intervention in Lbja.
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Oct 26, 2015 21:36
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Fojar38 posted:So Tezzor in your opinion what action(s), if any, should have been taken when Ghaddafi was marching on Benghazi promising a massacre? I dunno. A) Did that actually happen and B) What action would most sate the pompous bloodlust of a war fanboy 10,000 miles away?
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Oct 26, 2015 21:41
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Typo posted:Nobody in D&D would be complaining about regime change in Libya if said regime portrayed itself as a right-wing regime rather than one portraying itself as a left-wing regime. Not true at all. The invasions of Afghanistan and definitely Iraq have been as heavily criticized and their leaders where closer to fascism (Baath or Taliban) than anything left-wing.
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Oct 26, 2015 22:02
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Fojar38 posted:So Tezzor in your opinion what action(s), if any, should have been taken when Ghaddafi was marching on Benghazi promising a massacre? It doesn't really matter, if the US haven't intervened, Tezzor would right now being screaming about how the US is evil and stands aside when genocide occurs because Qaddafi came into compliance with global neoliberalism's oil needs. The thing that actually matters is that as far as Tezzor is concerned the US overthrew another Socialist regime and thus consigns it even more into the dustbin of history, it makes a lot more sense when you realize a certain segment of the left never stopped fighting the cold war, and has the mentality of everyone who calls himself a Socialist and is anti-US are the good guys.
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Oct 26, 2015 22:03
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Antwan3K posted:Not true at all. The invasions of Afghanistan and definitely Iraq have been as heavily criticized and their leaders where closer to fascism (Baath or Taliban) than anything left-wing. That's because the US actually has shitloads of troops in those places for a decade and thus give reason to why people are complaining, that's not true of Libya.
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Oct 26, 2015 22:04
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Typo posted:That's because the US actually has shitloads of troops in those places for a decade and thus give reason to why people are complaining, that's not true of Libya. I guess the anti-war movement against Iraq was all a dream then?
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Oct 26, 2015 22:10
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Typo posted:That's because the US actually has shitloads of troops in those places for a decade and thus give reason to why people are complaining, that's not true of Libya. Yeah dude, it took five years before a substantial insurgency arose in Iraq or Afghanistan. You're acting as retarded as Tezzor right now, both of you concluding that methodology doesn't matter in foreign intervention.
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Oct 26, 2015 22:13
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Typo posted:It doesn't really matter, if the US haven't intervened, Tezzor would right now being screaming about how the US is evil and stands aside when genocide occurs because Qaddafi came into compliance with global neoliberalism's oil needs. This is another great thing about liberal war boosters: they don't feel the need to actually justify their failed and counterproductive policies because they have totally convinced themselves that their opponents are big ole meanies who hate Goodness and Truth, to the point that they take "if we didn't invade you'd want us to" arguments as though they were evidence and slam-dunk arguments, instead what they actually are, the purely unsubstantiated and counterfactual sour grapes hypotheses of warmongers who cannot imagine the existence of a human as who is not as without principle and motivated solely by team-spirit as they are.
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Oct 26, 2015 22:21
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Tezzor posted:This is another great thing about liberal war boosters: they don't feel the need to actually justify their failed and counterproductive policies because they have totally convinced themselves that their opponents are big ole meanies who hate Goodness and Truth, to the point that they take "if we didn't invade you'd want us to" arguments as though they were evidence and slam-dunk arguments, instead what they actually are, the purely unsubstantiated and counterfactual sour grapes hypotheses of warmongers who cannot imagine the existence of a human as who is not as without principle and motivated solely by team-spirit as they are. Let's lay out a proposal. A genocide is ongoing in a poor country, against an ethnicity concentrated near one of the borders. The military is being used to conduct the genocide. The neighboring nation is willing to accept refugee members of the ethnicity, as the ethnicity extends across the border and are integrated in the neighboring nation. It is suggested that a rich country use its air force to slow the advance of the genocidaires to help more people get away. So, how does this go wrong, Tezzor? How does it only make the world worse?
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Oct 26, 2015 22:51
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Effectronica posted:Let's lay out a proposal. A genocide is ongoing in a poor country, against an ethnicity concentrated near one of the borders. The military is being used to conduct the genocide. The neighboring nation is willing to accept refugee members of the ethnicity, as the ethnicity extends across the border and are integrated in the neighboring nation. It is suggested that a rich country use its air force to slow the advance of the genocidaires to help more people get away. Generally, there's not really any genocide by any coherent definition, group A are the traditional power structure of the country and at least as bad if not worse than group B, and group A, accustomed to dominance, started crying genocide when they started having to retreat. Because they're the allies of Rich Country, It's A Genocide And We Have To Help Them. This is not a dodge. There are many more examples of this sort of thing occurring than there are examples of great powers rushing because they really cared a lot about the Wretched of the Earth. These countries operate their militaries and foreign policies for their own interests, which usually means keeping their established toadies in power and weaving narratives about good guys and bad guys to dumb liberals.
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Oct 26, 2015 23:22
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Tezzor posted:Generally, there's not really any genocide by any coherent definition, group A are the traditional power structure of the country and at least as bad if not worse than group B, and group A, accustomed to dominance, started crying genocide when they started having to retreat. Because they're the allies of Rich Country, It's A Genocide And We Have To Help Them. So, you have no opposition to intervention as such. Well, poor job communicating that.
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Oct 26, 2015 23:40
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Effectronica posted:So, you have no opposition to intervention as such. Well, poor job communicating that. I do have a problem with "intervention." Your example is silly because it assumes Good Guys and Bad Guys when who the US supports is not the "good guys"(even if we had clear evidence of who really were the good guys, which we don't) but rather "our guys." You make many very shaky assumptions and assume that we all agree that they're the objective truth. Effectronica posted:Let's lay out a proposal. A genocide is ongoing in a poor country, against an ethnicity concentrated near one of the borders. The military is being used to conduct the genocide. The neighboring nation is willing to accept refugee members of the ethnicity, as the ethnicity extends across the border and are integrated in the neighboring nation. It is suggested that a rich country use its air force to slow the advance of the genocidaires to help more people get away. The Rhodesians are fleeing the rebellion and just need some bombing of rebel strongholds to help the white minority to get to South Africa. Only by the intervention of the British Navy can the North be stalled in time for ethnic Southerns to cross the border into their traditional homeland. The Gazans are being squeezed into an increasingly wretched ghetto. Jordan is willing to take refugees but Israel refuses to let any real number leave. Only we, Iran, can Tezzor fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Oct 26, 2015 |
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Oct 26, 2015 23:42
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Tezzor posted:The Rhodesians are fleeing the rebellion and just need some bombing of rebel strongholds to help the white minority to get to South Africa. Holy poo poo. Now you're conceding that interventions are justifiable or not based on the particulars of the situation? Amazing.
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Oct 26, 2015 23:43
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Don't think intervention in Libya really did much for us, neither would intervention in Syria or anywhere else in the ME. Let other people throw good money at bad there. Prop up Ukraine instead.
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Oct 26, 2015 23:49
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Effectronica posted:Holy poo poo. Now you're conceding that interventions are justifiable or not based on the particulars of the situation? Amazing. You asked how, according to your hypothetical, this could be a bad thing. I responded with examples that totally fit your requirements according to somebody's perspective but would generally be considered bad things. Yeah, if we knew for Objective Fact that Party A are the Good Guys and Party B were the Bad Guys and all we needed to do was stall the Bad Guys long enough for the Good Guys to get over the objectively-placed border and we're mostly doing it because we love humanity, then sure. And if I could eat nothing but a special type of ice cream that tastes great and causes me to lose fat and get huge shredded muscles with no side effects of course I'd eat nothing but that ice cream. Outside the realm of these absurd hypotheticals, you can't actually guarantee any of the things your hypothetical requires before you demand we run in dropping bombs, especially as a layman war-booster who doesn't know poo poo except for what the military and the papers tell him.
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Oct 26, 2015 23:52
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Tezzor posted:You asked how, according to your hypothetical, this could be a bad thing. I responded with examples that totally fit your requirements according to somebody's perspective but would generally be considered bad things. Yeah, if we knew for Objective Fact that Party A are the Good Guys and Party B were the Bad Guys and all we needed to do was stall the Bad Guys long enough for the Good Guys to get over the objectively-placed border and we're mostly doing it because we love humanity, then sure. And if I could eat nothing but a special type of ice cream that tastes great and causes me to lose fat and get huge shredded muscles with no side effects of course I'd eat nothing but that ice cream. Outside the realm of these absurd hypotheticals, you can't actually guarantee any of the things your hypothetical requires, especially as a layman war-booster who doesn't know poo poo except for what the military and the papers tell him. I asked how it would be a bad thing. This means that I was not asking for particular examples, but a general reason why interventions inherently cannot do any good. You have not provided such. Given your flailing about, I suspect you don't understand what you're saying on any intellectual level, and so will not ever provide such. So, is there any reason to converse with you, given that you are demonstrably unable or unwilling to defend what you say or think about it? Or should I focus on warning people away from attempting to engage with you? Which is it, Tezzor?
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Oct 26, 2015 23:57
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Effectronica posted:I asked how it would be a bad thing. This means that I was not asking for particular examples, but a general reason why interventions inherently cannot do any good. You have not provided such. Given your flailing about, I suspect you don't understand what you're saying on any intellectual level, and so will not ever provide such. So, is there any reason to converse with you, given that you are demonstrably unable or unwilling to defend what you say or think about it? Or should I focus on warning people away from attempting to engage with you? Which is it, Tezzor? Can a rape inherently not do any good? Yes, in the real world almost all rapes are bad, but: what if (a series of extremely improbable conditions I have no real way of knowing the truth of beforehand?)
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Oct 27, 2015 00:07
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Ardennes posted:I guess the anti-war movement against Iraq was all a dream then? I'm not sure what your point is, Iraq had a substantial larger anti-war movement from the onset than Libya because it required the commitment of substantial ground troops on far less justifiable grounds. To put it another way if there was a general uprising against Saddam in 2003 like there was in 1991 and the US/UK/France bombed Saddam to make sure he doesn't win and conduct another round of slaughtering Shiites and Kurds I don't think there would have being a very large anti-war movement. quote:Yeah dude, it took five years before a substantial insurgency arose in Iraq or Afghanistan. You're acting as retarded as Tezzor right now, both of you concluding that methodology doesn't matter in foreign intervention. I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion, also a substantial insurgency existed in Iraq by mid 2004 at the latest, hence why you had Fallujah
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Oct 27, 2015 00:09
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To put this in even more exhaustive detail, the main objection to foreign interventions has generally become that they are incapable of positive results inherently, and that no matter what, they will always turn out for the worst. This in turn doesn't have any real dividing lines that allow other forms of political violence to be different. Now, if you've developed the kind of despair-oriented politics from postmodern philosophy where revolution is impossible because we cannot think, let alone act, outside of the boundaries of capitalist society, that naturally follows, but, unfortunately for people like Tezzor, not everyone is going to give in to despondency and snipe at people online, or seek meaning in New Age spirituality and poo poo. Consequentially, the pacifism on display is, for many people who espouse it, morally abhorrent and childish, based on an abrogation of responsibility towards other people and a belief in magical contamination where the State's use of force poisoned the use of force for all time. Additionally, it's inconsistent with its "Hitler exceptions", but that's a small matter. In short, the basic arguments that intervention is inherently bad rely on either clinical depression or a belief in magic. Instead, we should retain a deep skepticism of intervention, because the people who plan them are generally people who operate under evil belief systems, and not let psychological disorders and belief in the healing power of crystals blind us to useful tools.
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Oct 27, 2015 00:10
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Tezzor posted:Can a rape inherently not do any good? Yes, in the real world almost all rapes are bad, but: what if (a series of extremely improbable conditions I have no real way of knowing the truth of beforehand?) You need to justify this analogy, if you want it to be convincing.
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Oct 27, 2015 00:12
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Effectronica posted:You need to justify this analogy, if you want it to be convincing. There is nothing to say that an intervention inherently cannot, on the whole, do some good, especially if we presume a thought experiment where we know everything ahead of time. But since nearly all of them don't end nearly as well as they're sold, and since they're all sold the same way, and since in the early parts of the intervention it's impossible to tell its long term benefits to any standard of robustness, they should be avoided to a vastly greater degree than they are today.
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Oct 27, 2015 00:17
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Tezzor posted:There is nothing to say that an intervention inherently cannot, on the whole, do some good, especially if we presume a thought experiment where we know everything ahead of time. But since nearly all of them don't end nearly as well as they're sold, and since they're all sold the same way, and since in the early parts of the intervention it's impossible to tell its long term benefits to any standard of robustness, they should be avoided to a vastly greater degree than they are today. So, you believe in magical contamination, because you are putting the blame on the concept rather than on the ideologies and people who promulgate them currently, but you're accepting a hypothetical where there are positive outcomes. It sure wasn't like pulling teeth to get to this point.
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Oct 27, 2015 00:20
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Typo posted:I'm not sure what your point is, Iraq had a substantial larger anti-war movement from the onset than Libya because it required the commitment of substantial ground troops on far less justifiable grounds. To be honest there would probably still be anti-war movement especially if the mission went from no-fly zones to regime change and then it kind of fell apart. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Oct 27, 2015 |
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Oct 27, 2015 00:20
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Tezzor posted:Can a rape inherently not do any good? Yes, in the real world almost all rapes are bad, but: what if (a series of extremely improbable conditions I have no real way of knowing the truth of beforehand?) Hmm that sounds like a good point.
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Oct 27, 2015 00:20
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Bip Roberts posted:Hmm that sounds like a good point. If we start pointing out all the criminal and god-awful analogies and metaphors Tezzor uses, we'll never stop and it'll be twenty years or more of work.
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Oct 27, 2015 00:23
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Effectronica posted:So, you believe in magical contamination, because you are putting the blame on the concept rather than on the ideologies and people who promulgate them currently, but you're accepting a hypothetical where there are positive outcomes. It sure wasn't like pulling teeth to get to this point. Haha. If anything is "magical" it's the thought: "We want result x. We use process y. 95% of the time we get result a, b or c. When we do get result x it takes several times as much effort as we initially predicted. Process y is fine and the problem is who's in charge"
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Oct 27, 2015 00:26
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Tezzor posted:Haha. If anything is "magical" it's the thought: "We want result x. We use process y. 95% of the time we get result a, b or c. When we do get result x it takes several times as much effort as we initially predicted. Process y is fine and the problem is who's in charge" Oh, I see. You think that "intervention" refers to a tight family of processes rather than a concept, such that there was literally no way to remove the Hussein family from power in Iraq without the 2003-2011 strategy being repeated in its entirety. Well, you are a well-known loving idiot.
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Oct 27, 2015 00:29
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Tezzor if only we'd just nuked Gaddaffi's HQ we could've saved tons of lives in the long run doncha think?
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Oct 27, 2015 00:30
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!|
For the case of Iraq, we could have recognized that the fall of the Ba'ath party would bring down retribution on the Sunni population, and taken a look at countries where the transition from minority rule to semidemocracy or democracy went with limited or minimal retribution, and focused our efforts on creating an Iraqi political movement to do what the ANC and ZANU did for their countries. This was not on the table because the goal of invading Iraq was to prove we could impose our views on reality and make them stick, rather than anything which cared about the Iraqi people.
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Oct 27, 2015 00:52
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If America bombed King Salman of Saudi Arabia they could boast all the moral ground they wanted, I wouldn't care. As for reality, it's all realpolitik, peoples lives are exchangeable for cash and oil. The Libyan national transition council organized pretty early and hunkered down on their cities while bidding for international aid, which they promptly received because while Gaddafi would gladly trade the countries resources to foreign nations through state companies he was a Sunni ruler marginalized by the grander sunni-saudi-gulf bloc, the USA's trusted allies, so gently caress him. Of course, he was a real scumbag who certainly deserved to die for his heinous actions, but i firmly believe that the USA only commit bombing campaigns to the cause of human rights when it's in their geopolitical interest to do so.
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Oct 27, 2015 01:53
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Actually people's lives should be exchanged for money and oil; human societies have always relied on the young men to secure resources and status through violence against rival tribes. Moreover, fossil fuels are a limited resource while human lives are not. If not for the distaste of admitting that other people's lives are less valuable than our own, it would be easy to conclude that the conversion of renewable human blood into scarce fossil fuels is rational.
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Oct 27, 2015 02:13
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bagual posted:If America bombed King Salman of Saudi Arabia they could boast all the moral ground they wanted, I wouldn't care. As for reality, it's all realpolitik, peoples lives are exchangeable for cash and oil. The Libyan national transition council organized pretty early and hunkered down on their cities while bidding for international aid, which they promptly received because while Gaddafi would gladly trade the countries resources to foreign nations through state companies he was a Sunni ruler marginalized by the grander sunni-saudi-gulf bloc, the USA's trusted allies, so gently caress him. Of course, he was a real scumbag who certainly deserved to die for his heinous actions, but i firmly believe that the USA only commit bombing campaigns to the cause of human rights when it's in their geopolitical interest to do so. On the contrary, Realpolitik is always ideological in nature. What constitutes "interests" is axiomatic. To put it simply, the reason the US does little that is humanitarian is because of the great many little Kissingers who are in positions of implementation and justification and advising for the greater monsters and more ordinary people, keeping them in the lines of a "reality" which they, demiurges, have created. To put it shortly, Karl Rove's statements about the "reality-based community" are entirely in line with the mental confusion endemic to American political elites and their spear-carriers.
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Oct 27, 2015 02:31
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Effectronica posted:On the contrary, Realpolitik is always ideological in nature. Which is a problematic statement when states with wildly differing ideologies share the same set of realpolitik interests
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Oct 27, 2015 03:33
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Typo posted:Which is a problematic statement when states with wildly differing ideologies share the same set of realpolitik interests Sounds like they don't actually differ in ideologies after all.
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Oct 27, 2015 03:45
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imo libia is better now
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Oct 27, 2015 04:05
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Bip Roberts posted:Sounds like they don't actually differ in ideologies after all. They usually do as far as domestic policy is concerned, just not in foreign affairs
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Oct 27, 2015 04:06
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Effectronica posted:On the contrary, Realpolitik is always ideological in nature. That's really wrong, but also right if you look at by another angle. The whole point of realpolitik is to go "well we think different, so what" and basically disregard anything not "objective" like how many and how good is what armament every countries has, what resources do have within their national boundaries, what role do they play in the grand scheme of geopolitics. This disregard of human angles has made the US spend billions of dollars to arm and train inherently corrupt and ineffectual national security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's high-level power-play between global state actors, with different states backing different rebels in different civil wars and so on. On the other hand, this whole meta-level of global politics is being driven by ideological drivel machines supported by all sides, each state has it's own lapdog media and they're going full spin full time on these international issues. The Syrian conflict is an example of this high level of bullshit being thrown by all sides at full speed, with false reports of all sorts of things popping up all the time to support the embattled media narratives. In the end a clash of national interests is it's own mini event horizon, where different actors take actions supporting their own interests, and where the narrative changes daily and the meaning of events will only be determined when hostilities ceases and some years pass by. At the same time, the players of this international have no choice but keep on with the bullshit until some endgame no actor can reasonably predict. This uncertainty pushes governments to push on tried-and-true tactics like media bullshit screens, "advisers", "voluntaries"..etc. because apparently it works at some level, I mean, if you had a whole propaganda machine set up what's the incentive to dismantle it? This leaves the world barrelling into a powder keg, with current crises going from bad to worse with no end in sight. quote:To put it simply, the reason the US does little that is humanitarian is because of the great many little Kissingers who are in positions of implementation and justification and advising for the greater monsters and more ordinary people, keeping them in the lines of a "reality" which they, demiurges, have created. To put it shortly, Karl Rove's statements about the "reality-based community" are entirely in line with the mental confusion endemic to American political elites and their spear-carriers. Well yeah, that's the situation for most of the world's elite. They have such a firm grip on power there's no incentive but to keep doing what they're doing and keep the blood and money flowing. Somehow all their disparate world narratives have meshed with the cold-blooded rationality of globalism, with fundamentalist Christians and oriental communists supporting the free market and Islamist fundamentalists supporting military dictatorships like the Al-Nour party in Egypt. This cacophony of ideological contradictions ensures regimes cling to realist economic, diplomatic and military perspectives, with the power struggle being defined by who back's what armed bands of people in some place or another, leading to situations like American media focusing on Shia militias in Iraq while ignoring the ongoing Saudi war on Yemen or Russia claiming to hit several ISIS targets while only targeting other rebel groups and so on. poo poo's so entangled there’s no way but forward.
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Oct 27, 2015 06:05
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Just curious, what prevented us from cooperating with the Libyan government for a joint-strike operation to help pacify crazy post-war tribes and push back ISIS? A lot of the time when I hear about Libya people seem to act like the only options were an Iraq occupation or nothing. Is collaborating with another military something that is only reserved for
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Oct 27, 2015 06:23
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Neurolimal posted:Just curious, what prevented us from cooperating with the Libyan government for a joint-strike operation to help pacify crazy post-war tribes and push back ISIS? A lot of the time when I hear about Libya people seem to act like the only options were an Iraq occupation or nothing. Is collaborating with another military something that is only reserved for Try selling boots on the ground in Libya in 2011.
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Oct 27, 2015 06:44
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