The Good Post Gallery

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Nobody here said "Libya was better off under Gaddafi" though, given BRTD's total lack of reading comprehension, I wouldn't expect him to notice such difference.

While the intervention succeeded in removing the madman from power (and face of the earth), the world, after proclaiming "mission accomplished", left the Libyan people to deal with their huge problems by themselves and that's a fiasco. The only real result is replacement of a over-controlling regime with a lack of an effective government. The new regime hardly controlls most of the country. Political persecution has been replaced with a lawlessness, especially political. Calling the government a "democratic" is ridiculous. At most Libya returned to a very loose confederation of tribes, hardly an improvement on that area. The situation of women is actually worse than under Daffy: that's a big fail.

So no, Libya was not "worse off" than under Daffy. One f**ked up situation was merely replaced by other. But of course, nobody cares, as long as the coalition can claim their success.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

PNAC needs a 3rd Pearl Harbor.

This also doesn't make sense as it borders on 9/11 "truth"erism, and refers to an essentially defunct organization (PNAC) and there's no neoconservative influence on the current administration*. It's not 2003 anymore.

*Being hawkish and being a neoconservative are not the same thing, McCain and Lindsey Graham for example are not neoconservatives by any meaningful definition of the word even if their foreign policy views are horrible and default to warmongering. "Neoconservative" is actually a very narrow term in who it refers to, the co-opting of it by some liberals to mean "Anyone more hawkish than me" or by paleoconservatives and libertarians to essentially mean "anyone I disagree with" is a grammatical atrocity. There isn't even really anyone in elected office who could accurately be called a neoconservative, the closest person to one was Joe Lieberman, but he's no longer in elected office either.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Anyway, calling our position "hawkish" is stupid. The so-called "peace" position basically boils down to allowing (and implicitly encouraging!) Assad to continue to indiscriminately massacre Syrian civilians, while confirming to all other dictators in the world that the use of chemical weapons is no longer taboo. How is that any more anti-war than our position?

Deaths will if anything spike if we get involved, and given that all of the fighting is in urban areas against a far more competent military force than Qaddafi's, anything more than a limited strike on chemical weapons assets (which obviously won't stop the killing or harm the regime's warmaking capacity in any way--95%+ of deaths have been from conventional weaponry, which is somehow okay) will result in massive collateral damage that won't do much to improve Syrian civilians' opinion of us.

A foreign imperial power trying to bring peace with bombs will only cause more suffering than there already is in Syria, but of course the military contractors whose tentacles extend into our government media won't let that view see the light of day. Why do you think MSNBC, a network of Obama hacks, is so gung-ho about bombing Syria? Why, they're owned by GE, which also owns the presidency. Like all wars, the owning class sends the working class to battle.

Getting back to Syria, a large chunk of the opposition is Sunni Islamists and that chunk is growing daily, leading me to suspect that if Assad is somehow ousted, he would be replaced with either bloody chaos or an Islamist regime. If the latter happens, expect it to be whitewashed like how Kosovo's president is a horrifically corrupt mob boss who butchered Serbs for their organs or how Libya is on the brink of collapse into tribal warfare while Islamists are cracking down on women's rights and making Rick Santorum look like Dan Savage in their homophobic rhetoric.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

PNAC needs a 3rd Pearl Harbor.

This also doesn't make sense as it borders on 9/11 "truth"erism, and refers to an essentially defunct organization (PNAC) and there's no neoconservative influence on the current administration*. It's not 2003 anymore.

*Being hawkish and being a neoconservative are not the same thing, McCain and Lindsey Graham for example are not neoconservatives by any meaningful definition of the word even if their foreign policy views are horrible and default to warmongering. "Neoconservative" is actually a very narrow term in who it refers to, the co-opting of it by some liberals to mean "Anyone more hawkish than me" or by paleoconservatives and libertarians to essentially mean "anyone I disagree with" is a grammatical atrocity. There isn't even really anyone in elected office who could accurately be called a neoconservative, the closest person to one was Joe Lieberman, but he's no longer in elected office either.

Ben, since you're commencing a chickenhawkish dick waving every time words "military" and "intervention" are spelled, perhaps you're not the right person to touch the subject.

[Paul Kemp]

Anyway, calling our position "hawkish" is stupid. The so-called "peace" position basically boils down to allowing (and implicitly encouraging!) Assad to continue to indiscriminately massacre Syrian civilians, while confirming to all other dictators in the world that the use of chemical weapons is no longer taboo. How is that any more anti-war than our position?

Deaths will if anything spike if we get involved, and given that all of the fighting is in urban areas against a far more competent military force than Qaddafi's, anything more than a limited strike on chemical weapons assets (which obviously won't stop the killing or harm the regime's warmaking capacity in any way--95%+ of deaths have been from conventional weaponry, which is somehow okay) will result in massive collateral damage that won't do much to improve Syrian civilians' opinion of us.

A foreign imperial power trying to bring peace with bombs will only cause more suffering than there already is in Syria, but of course the military contractors whose tentacles extend into our government media won't let that view see the light of day. Why do you think MSNBC, a network of Obama hacks, is so gung-ho about bombing Syria? Why, they're owned by GE, which also owns the presidency. Like all wars, the owning class sends the working class to battle.

Getting back to Syria, a large chunk of the opposition is Sunni Islamists and that chunk is growing daily, leading me to suspect that if Assad is somehow ousted, he would be replaced with either bloody chaos or an Islamist regime. If the latter happens, expect it to be whitewashed like how Kosovo's president is a horrifically corrupt mob boss who butchered Serbs for their organs or how Libya is on the brink of collapse into tribal warfare while Islamists are cracking down on women's rights and making Rick Santorum look like Dan Savage in their homophobic rhetoric.

Tedious teenage wannabe Howard Zinn posts do not belong here.

[Oakvale]

Scott should be banned for submitting that post here.

[tik 🪀✨]

Scott should be banned for submitting that post here.

A more appropriate punishment would be to strike his home with cruise missiles.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

ut whatevs Dawg (TM Cathcon).

[King]

Tedious teenage wannabe Howard Zinn posts do not belong here.

[Antonio the Sixth]

No. We have no proof that it was Assad that used the chemical weapons

Oh? Let's look at the evidence, starting from the top. This has been a concern for months now. First off, there's the fact that Syria has the world's third largest stockpile of chemical weapons. They suddenly started tests on firing systems for these weapons about a year ago. Around the same time they began causing a lot of concern in the West because they began moving their stockpiles around, and the Syrian government communicated through Russia that this was just a relocation effort to put them all in one place so the rebels couldn't capture any. Just a few months after that, allegations of different incidents began trickling in.

December 2012:Al Jazeera reports 7 in a rebel-held town are dead from gas attack
January 2013: State Department cable say they're pretty sure Syria is using chemical weapons on civilians
March 2013: Rocket with chemical weapons payload was used on civilians
April 2013: Syrian general straight up confesses that he was ordered to use chemical weapons, but switched out the poison gas with a harmless disinfectant
April 2013: Syrian government suspiciously forbids UN inspectors access to test soil samples for chemical weapons use
May 2013: A group of French reporters personally witness Syrian government chemical weapons attacks

As for the August attack in Ghouta specifically, which is the primary issue here, just look at the wikipedia page. Chemical weapons delivered via rocket during an unexpected government attack on an important opposition stronghold? There's nobody else it could logically be, unless you're going to go into conspiracy territory bordering on trutherism.

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The entire reason we're threatening intervention is to prevent Syria from using any more chemical weapons. That threat is meaningless if we don't have advance permission from Congress to act because otherwise they'd obviously just call our bluff. The strategy as stated by the administration is to use force (cruise missiles and maybe bombings on military targets) to force the Syrian government to stop it. Obviously we're not going to publish our specific plans (and especially not our plans to withdraw) because it'd be ridiculous to let Syria know in advance exactly when, where, and for how long we will be attacking them.

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From the resolution that passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

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tl;dr: Chemical weapons have been used and there's no realistic suspects besides Syrian govenrment forces, it's naive to just assume we can publicly state our entire strategy but that's covered under the congressional authorization

[Lief 🗽]

Yup, came here to post that. Fantastic fact bomb, BK.

[patrick1]

I think that it's wrong to dismiss the argument that the taboo on using chemical weapons is worth maintaining. That said, the information that's available to the public fails to provide a coherent case for intervention and doesn't provide a clear answer to a few serious objections.

First, the probability of at least some civilian casualties in the aftermath of a strike is high. Assad may even move civilians to likely target zones prior to an attack or fabricate reports of deaths. Besides adding to horrific body count, this presents a high risk of negative political ramifications for the United States in Syria and across the Middle East.

Second, if our attacks do weaken Assad's regime - which, prior to the Ghouta attack, had begun to gain a clear advantage over rebel forces in much of the country - we run the risk of A) drawing out a war that Assad will eventually win anyway, B) pushing Assad's forces into a desperate situation in which they resort to killing more civilians with conventional weapons or further chemical attacks, or (less likely) C) giving the rebels enough of an advantage that they triumph and either lose control as the country fails into chaos, or proceed to massacre Alawites and other groups that have allied themselves with Assad in their victory.

It's also plausible that our strikes won't have much effect at all. If Assad, his allies, and his forces emerge unscathed and undiscouraged, what kind of message would that send? It certainly wouldn't strengthen the taboo against using chemical weapons. Whatever happens, are we prepared to take ownership of the situation that we'll now have had a significant role in creating? Like any good liberal internationalist, I would say that we should. If we don't have the stomach for all that entails, which we (including myself) clearly do not, we probably shouldn't do anything in the first place.

I wouldn't want my Congressional representatives to rule out intervening before they have reviewed all of the information that will be made available to them. Members of Congress should enter the administration's briefings with both open minds and historically-informed skepticism. I would also want them to weigh alternatives to cruise missile strikes. It's not as if intervention is the only response that has been proposed. But as long as we in all of our ignorance are debating this among ourselves, I'm not going to accept the administration's case on blind trust.

[opebo]

Do we charge people and send them to prison for coughing in public while suffering from influenza?

There was no malicious intent.  15 years per victim is a crime in and of itself and this will only serve to further stigmatize those living with HIV.

Be honest, be up front, USE A F**KING CONDOM.  But seriously... watch the prudes make this guy out to be some monster now in 3...2...1...

[Lief 🗽]

More truth bombs dropped on the pro-Assad folks.

You guys are aware it was the rebels that did the chemical attacks and are framing Assad. We shouldn't get involved at all.

1. The chemical weapons were fired from rockets that the rebels have no indication of possessing the capability to launch
2. Since the start of the conflict the Syrian government has been stockpiling their chemical weapons in a single location to prevent rebels from capturing them
3. The attack was on civilians (and a small group of rebel fighters) in a suburb of Damascus very sympathetic to the rebels
4. The rockets were fired in the middle of an unexpected surprise attack by government forces on the rebels

So the two possibilities here are:

A) The government fired rockets that delivered chemical weapons as part of their offensive

OR

B) The rebels acquired chemical weapons in spite of the government's stockpile efforts, and they managed to rig up an effective launcher system, and aimed it directly at the civilian areas of their only sizeable stronghold in the greater Damascus area, with plans to fire it off and attack their own people just in case the Syrian government someday attacks, trading the lives of thousands of their own people in exchange for making the government look like the bad guys on the international stage and maybe hopefully possibly convincing someone somewhere to intervene against the Syrian government in some fashion


Sorry man but I think A is a bit more likely here.

[Lief 🗽]

I don't necessarily agree with this post, but I think it's an interesting perspective:

Female sports journalists are incredibly common given how sports are male dominated, and the reason why there aren't very many great female politicians.

If Barack Obama were born a girl, she'd probably be an anchor for ESPN or a news network.  Charismatic women with good command of the English language are pushed more into these kind of journalism/show business roles than their male counterparts, who might use charisma as a reason to get into business or law--which is more of a career path for a politician.  There's also more money for that kind of woman on camera than the glass ceiling of business and law. 

Even if you disagree with her politically, someone like Megyn Kelly, for example, could probably have been a firestorm if she had stuck to law and jumped into public service instead of becoming a journalist.  MSNBC and FOX have plenty of women who could make great politicians for both sides.  But they're unelectable in their career paths as broadcast journalists.

At least that's my opinion. 

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It is an unprincipled tautological argument trotted out by idiots.  I've never heard  an articulation of this "I oppose redefining marriage but am alright with civil unions" argument that wasn't a pile of garbage.

For God sakes, just admit you're homophobic or trying to curry favor with homophobes.  You can't believe the law of the land should insult me and then tell me I shouldn't be insulted. 

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Imagine if in the 21st century, a bearded, bespectacled intellectual were to claim that children are innately obsessed with sex, particularly with their own parents.  He'd probably be lynched, figuratively speaking.

[H. Ross Peron]

Actually, the "redefining marriage" argument makes much more sense to me than the bullsh*t that Republicans spew on economic issues. It's rooted on the idea (which, sure, is stupid, but not logically inconsistent) that tradition is inherently good and that some things should just not be changed ever. The GOP economic rationale is based on the ideas (among others) that tax cuts will allow us to balance the budget, that government expenditure never creates jobs EXCEPT military expenses, and that individuals should not be "dependent on the government" but that Medicare is great.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

I agree with this 100% but he stated very well, as usual.

Best of the best.  The problem with the death penalty today is not the punishment per se, but that the process takes too long and is applied so rarely as to lose its deterrent effect.  I'm pro death penalty, but given a choice between the existing system and no death penalty at all, I'd favor abolition.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

meh

Being fat is a bad thing.  Being fat and getting pissed when people point it out is a bad thing.  It's not like being black or gay as there is nothing wrong with being black or gay AND there is nothing one can do about being black or gay.  The vast majority of fats can change, they just chose not to.

On the other hand, fat guy knows he's fat, do we really need to point out the obvious?  Do we really need to shame them?  There are good reasons to shame people (against GM crops, believing in big foot, fear of fluoride, etc), but being fat probably shouldn't be one of them.

But people that use phrases like "fat shaming" seem to be under the impression that if you're 50lbs overweight you aren't at a greater risk to become ill, die early or be a major burden on the health care system....science tells us that you will die young and be ill more.  Blaming the guy telling you that isn't going to make you live as long as the guy that isn't 50lbs over weight.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Anyway, Cory's ideas are fundamentally silly if you follow their intended course as I tried to do earlier in this thread. That doesn't mean that they aren't worth debating or that he should be on mod review. They need to be fleshed out and displayed as the farce that they are from as many perspectives as possible. It's the thorough thing to do, really.

He disregards human autonomy and sees us as ants in a colony. As defective ants who happen to be fully aware of our own defects (aware we have AIDS), we should kill ourselves for the benefit of the colony. He kind of has an.. idea.. there, but of course fundamental aspects of humanity (self-awareness, compassion, technological advancements, etc) make this wholly unnecessary and ridiculous.

So Cory remains someone who is basically entirely disconnected from what makes humanity humanity. The only logical course of action from his very own perspective is that he therefore kill himself for potentially harming the colony. But, of course he won't, because he is self-aware and can think through to see that even though he has his faults, perhaps his mind can benefit the colony in the future. Little ant Cory can learn that there is much more to life than genetics and the betterment of the species. There is what make humanity human - a free will, emotion, the ability to create, and love. Yes, someday little ant Cory will grow up. Or, you know, be formally diagnosed as a sociopath.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Came here to post that.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Old, but recently discovered and so very informative. I don't think I've ever seen as much detailed history on this topic as this before:

I have trouble believing that only 1/4 of the forum would have supported the Bolsheviks in 1917, without hindsight/foresight.

You don't know the history. At the time the Bolsheviks were just one of the many sociallist parties, not even the most popular, nor was it even the only Marxist party. A lot, if not most, of the "white" politicians were actually sociallists and/or Marxists themselves.

At the beginning of 1917 the most popular Russian party was the non-sociallist Constitutional Democratic Party ("cadets"). They formed the first Provisional government at abdication. Unfortunately, they did not believe they could do anything until the Constituent Assembley could be elected and convened. In particular, they refused to withdraw from the War. When the telegram from the FM (the party head Milukov) to the allies promising to continue fighting was published in April, the government was forced to resign. During the summer, after they were linked to a military coup attempt, they were banned outright.

When the Bolsheviks took over (overthroughing what was by then a 5-party sociallist coalition), they still allowed an election to the Constituent Assembley to happen (they took over just a couple of weeks prior). They lost, and they lost miserably. The winner of the election was the Sociallist Revolutionary Party ("eser") - a non-Marxist Agrarian Sociallist party, that had always been viewed as the main violent threat to the Imperial Government, since it was linked to a major terrorist organization. Bolsheviks got just under a quarter of the seats, mostly from the military, since they were the only party calling for the immediate withdrawal from the war. Mensheviks (non-Communist Marxist Social-Democrats), other sociallists, Constitutional Democrats (though barely, due to them having been banned for most of the campaign) and a whole bunch of ethnic minority parties were represented as well. Most of the rural vote went to the Sociallist Revolutionaries, most of the working class vote went to Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks took the soldiers' vote.

The Sociallist Revolutionaries split into the more radical "Left SR" and the more moderate "Right SR". Though the Left SR were allied to the Bolsheviks at first, the Right SR still could control the Constituent Assembley. The Assembley was convened right after the start of 1918 and in its first action elected the Right SR Chernov as its Chairman. At the end of the first day of procedings, the Bolshevik guards entered the hall and announced that "the guards are tired". The Assembley was never allowed to reconvene. A demonstration in its favor a week later was met with gunfire.

The first Commie gov't was, actually, a coalition of the Bolsheviks and the left SR. However, unlike the Bolsheviks, the left SR were not willing to conclude peace w/ Germany at any cost. After the Bolsheviks went ahead and surrendered to the Germans Ukraine, a left SR Blumkin (remember, SR had always been terrorists) assassinated the German ambassador von Mirbach in June 1918. The Bolsheviks used this as a pretext to ban the left SR (together with the other opposition parties).

Note, that all of this happened before the actual start of the Civil War (up until then there had been only minor skirmishes). The Civil War started later that summer, after the Bolsheviks went on to create the "Committees of the Poor" in the countryside, charged with confiscating grain from all but the poorest peasants to be redistributed between the village poor and the urban "proletariat". Most of the peasants took this - rightly, since Bolsheviks always openly despised the peasant majority, believing it to be inferior to the urban proletariat - to be an attack on them and rebelled. Of course, the opposition party politicians as well as monarchist generals (as well as many other groups) joined in the rebellions, and the Civil War started.

By the start of the Civil War,  the population had already directly experienced a wave of "Red Terror", the economic disintegration of the "Military Communism", etc. The Bolsheviks were just one of the many sociallist parties, and they had been physically destroying their sociallist opponents, including those, like SR, that had been much more popular and had been much more prominent in the pre-revolutionary anti-monarchist movement. Their primary strength was concentrated among the rank-and-file soldiers, whom they had promised to take out of the World War. They had little support either among the Sociallist-Revolutionary peasants, or among the Social-Democratic workers, or elsewhere.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Wow, that was a truly fascinating read. I had no idea about all this.

[Kitteh]

Center-left", "center-right", "social issues", and "economic issues" are  hopelessly vague and thus, meaningless terms, especially in the context of American politics.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^