James Arryn

So perfect I wonder if it’s satire/hoax. edit: do you suppose that when, centuries hence, future historians sift through the remaining records of our time, Brexit will be interpreted as some sort of national version of those monks who set fire to themselves to protest various actions?

For a specious idea, it sure gets a ton of mileage; what lessons is China going to learn from Russia’s unimpeded invasion of Ukraine/learned from Russia’s failing invasion of Ukraine? What lessons did the US take/not take from the USSR’s failed invasion of Afghanistan? Will George W. Bush’s destruction of the international diplomatic community (with us or against us) lead to superpowers increasingly ignoring global opinion and just grabbing what they want? In fact the entire field of international conflict & resolution is studying the actions and repercussions of past ~ similar actions to learn and apply them to future actions. I will be sure to inform my colleagues that Padraig has determined we are all just wasting our time. But, point taken, I should have reserved my comments on someone else’s comments* for the ‘List of repercussions the US has been forced to suffer for repeatedly fucking up lesser nations and their peoples’ thread**, though since the list is : 1) ? 2)… …it might not be a terribly instructive discussion. *which, as they were raised in agreement with your take on their relevance, received no pushback at all. Almost makes you wonder if sheer relevance is secondary to stance when it comes to generating exasperation. **edit2: shocker, turns out there is no such thread, probably because there’s literally nothing to talk about in isolation.

I. Did. Not. Raise. It. But yes, I am familiar with TQ. Are you familiar with ergo decido and relative privation?

Sigh. Thanks for the encouragement to read, it’s fundamental, but in response I suggest you reading my posts more or more carefully, where I called Putin’s justifications “wrong”, stated that they rise “nowhere near to anything like legitimacy”, said that Russians were buying it because they only get fed state-directed bullshit, said I completely supported Zelensky and the defense of Ukraine and called Putin “an incredible danger to world peace”. Possibly the language was too ambiguous, maybe you thought I meant ‘nowhere near legitimacy’ and ‘incredible danger to world peace’ in a complimentary way, or possibly you didn’t really read my posts and/or are being a bit knee jerk.

1) I agree this only applies in those regions and is being exploited by Putin to rationalize his actions. Again, I am not saying his justification is sufficient or legitimate…quite the opposite…just that it falls more in line with historical precedent re: war justifications than the US’s did. Likewise with flooding areas to change the dynamic for referendums. 2) The US invasion of Iraq was not a mistake, it was a deliberate and premeditated illegal war/war crime. Would you be satisfied with Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine being written off as a mistake? As far as your criticizing me for raising the issue in relation to Ukraine, first as I addressed to another poster I disagree as explained, but secondly I was not in fact the one to raise it, Toth was, and I was just responding to his comment.

First, I was responding to the idea that nothing should be said after ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’, with the reasons I articulated. Secondly, when you are accusing me of legitimizing Putin’s actions, you are directly contradicting what I said clearly and repeatedly in these posts. It feels like you’re a bit on autopilot, that because many Putin apologists do indeed try to cite past actions of others to justify their atrocities, therefore anyone citing any past actions must be doing the same regardless of how clearly they are condemning Putin’s actions. I’m not sure where you’re getting what you seem to think I’m saying from what I actually said/did not say. Beyond that, the kicking and all, I am indeed not understanding anything but your condescension and accusation of deceit, so thanks for that and we can leave it there, I’ll not ‘blabber’ in your direction anymore.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it perpetuates the kinds of things that are happening now in the Ukraine. If the past ceases to matter as soon as it becomes the past, then superpowers will always be allowed to flex their might and wipe the slate clean and, to be consistent, if 10 years from now China is invading Taiwan and Putin is claiming that’s a terrible thing for China to do, you’ll have to get onboard team Putin because the Ukraine is the past and therefore irrelevant now. Rinse, repeat. Why should they ever stop behaving this way if it ceases to matter the moment it’s over? Accountability can’t exist if it’s always selective. If something’s wrong, it’s wrong regardless of who did it. Otherwise we’re just choosing sides.

1) A week after the invasion, over 80% of Americans still supported the war. Possibly we have differing views on what huge opposition means. As to allies, freedom fries, all that, we agree. 2) As far as Saddam, I already noted he was horrible. His being horrible as a cause for ear, though, is highly suspect, especially when most of the killings/wars he did that you mentioned he did while a loyal ally of the US, some of it at least (Iran) with significant US encouragement/funding/military advisors and being directly protected by the U.S., as per his gassing of the Kurds, which the US tried to blame on…I forget who, Iran I think, but anyways, not their buddy Saddam, and veto’s UN resolutions re: same. Additionally, killing a bunch of people from country X to protect people from country X has a pretty poor historical record as just causes go. Burn the village and all that. 3) As far as directly annexing, no, since the U.S. annexed all the native territories and Mexican territories and Spanish territories and failed at annexing Canada it has preferred to topple regimes it doesn’t like, replace them with ones it does, and make sure that resource control is in their wheelhouse. I don’t think a casualty cares whether it was killed for land or profit or political control, though. To clarify, I fully support the Ukraine’s defense and think Putin an incredible danger to world peace. But that doesn’t change the fact that, along historical lines, he has more customary causi beli (areas where ~ majority want annexation, historical claim to incorporation, etc.) than the U.S. did, whose stated cause for war were WMDs that it’s own intel was publicly saying did not exist (NIE report) and would not be a threat to the U.S. if they did, AND to uphold the UN resolution/treaty that specifically stated that only the UNSC could determine was breached and if so, how to react. Iow, they were breaking the treaty they claimed to be going to war to uphold. I repeat, this is not raising Putin’s claims to anything like legitimacy, it’s pointing out how the US’s was even lower. In contrast, so far as we know, Russian intel has told Putin and the Russian people everything he wanted to hear, and he is not claiming to be upholding an agreement he’s breaking. And, in terms of the people, that’s the biggest difference e: the American people had full and open access to all the information that was telling everyone else that there was no cause for war, they were not subjected to the same kind of blinkered state-fed info that Russians are. All they had to do was read their own goddamn intel report, published on the front page of most major papers. Two minutes, three? They don’t have the same excuse that Russians do, and more, they were fully aware that the rest of the world strongly disagreed with their government’s position, but 4/5 still supported killing thousands of Iraqis, either because that kind of decision isn’t worth a few minutes reading, or because the US’s constant state of war has eroded the sense that going to war should be your very last solution to a problem. There are also probably even worse reasons, like just enjoying the US flexing it’s might, or religious bigotry, or revenge for 9-11 ( remember at the time a huge % of Americans thought Saddam was behind 9-11) or w/e.

Not to derail, and obv. two wrongs don’t make a right, but I can easily make the argument that the US invasion of Iraq was based on even less legitimate/historically accepted and more ludicrous/specious grounds and that the US population which supported it in the face of overwhelming international condemnation have more to be ashamed of than do the Russian population at present. OTOH Zelensky is approximately a million times more of a sympathetic leader than Hussein was, and the US was still enjoying the last vestiges of post-911 global sympathy at the time. Plus, flatly stated, the global community would put itself at much more risk by supporting their opposition to US aggression materially than they do by doing so now with Russia.

We’re flying back to Toronto from Italy-via-Munich on Tuesday. Anyone know if hurricanes are likely to either lead to grounding, redirection or very bumpy flights? The latter is of more concern than usual as it will be my two-year old girls second ever flight.

Of note, the US was often the black-light beacon of anti-democracy/authoritarianism throughout the Cold War, routinely overthrowing democratic governments for despotic murderous regimes in cases where the former leaned too left for US comfort, where US material interests were threatened by democratic will, or both. So if you apply US CW policy/priorities towards states like Iran and Gutamala, you could easily end up ~ making the same arguments that Chinese apologists make today, or arguably worse.

To be fair, I was pretty confidently expecting hm to inform me that ‘it’s not that simple’ or similar, so the emoji came as a kind of nice surprise.

If editing is un-cool, I am blazing hot. Hell, I’ll edit hours later sometimes, maybe even the next day. I could blame it on a lot of things…raised by academics, weird combination of laziness and pedantry, tending to hand in first drafts, etc. but probably mostly down to my morally ambiguous but often profitable years as that shadowy guy on the fringes of the academic world who writes essays/theses for others.

The way she wrote of the death of Cromwell’s wife/daughters was among the most memorable and visceral I have ever read. Very much captured that sense of how we take loved ones for granted until it’s too late without having to explain that’s what she was saying, thus keeping it feeling real.

I just knew you would take this personally.