U.S. Politics

[TerraPrime]

That still means its something a GOP administration would not do that a Democratic administration just did.

Oh quite true. No argument there. I'm just saying that an independent who thinks that the two parties are the same might not really care, that's all.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Oh quite true. No argument there. I'm just saying that an independent who thinks that the two parties are the same might not really care, that's all.

Essentially correct. Particularly when said independents recognize that our list of foreign aid recipients is a regular who's who of human rights abusers, and that this is essentially a bullshit proclamation that means nothing and does nothing.

Call me when there's a vote in the house that addresses foreign policy in a meaningful way, or when someone who doesn't have Goldman Sachs halfway up their asshole gives a meaningful speech that gets press.

[Fez]

Essentially correct. Particularly when said independents recognize that our list of foreign aid recipients is a regular who's who of human rights abusers, and that this is essentially a bullshit proclamation that means nothing and does nothing.

And that's why this is a directive to look to use that as leverage now to accomplish something. And even if this doesn't accomplish much of anything its still a step in the right direction that can be built upon in the future; a step that a McCain White House for instance would not have taken.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

This is getting into a very old argument, but do you believe that Gore would have invaded Iraq? Or Steve Forbes had he somehow beaten McCain and Bush?

I have no clue what Gore would have done. I know what he DID do which was preside over an 8hour year bombing campaign in Iraq combined with economic sanctions that killed 600,000 Iraqi children. He has just as much Iraqi blood on his hands as Bush.

[DanteGabriel]

A bombing campaign and economic sanctions have a far far different cost from an invasion, on many different levels, and you know that. I don't think Gore would have been stupid enough to invade Iraq. He didn't have a daddy complex to motivate him and he wouldn't have had Cheney's cabal of useful idiots pushing for that bullshit.

I also doubt he would have ignored the initial warnings about Al Qaeda targeting commercial airliners like Bush did, since the Clinton intelligence people were warning Bush about bin Laden during the transition.

[DanteGabriel]

I thought about bringing up the cost metric, but I'm just fixating on the 600,000 children number. I'm fully aware that there was a containment strategy of bombing and sanctions, but if I missed that there were this many casualties I'll be really embarrassed. But it's such a stunning number that normally I'd dismiss it outright, so I guess it's a testament of my respect for Tormund's reliability that I'm pondering it.

To be perfectly honest, I'm considering it from the costs borne by the United States -- military expenditures, all those soldiers away from home, pressures on the home front, foreign policy tension, loss of world standing, etc. Considered separately from what has happened in Iraq, the United States is very much worse off for having invaded.

[Atreides]

Although very harmful in terms of human life, there are two things which the invasion did that were worse than sanctions. First, it cost the US a ton of money, several thousand dead, and tens of thousands of seriously wounded who now have to be cared for. Second, it killed just as many Iraqis as the sanctions, with the added benefits of instability, ethnic violence, and small-scale civil war to make things even worse. So I think a case can be made that the invasion was more costly and harmful for everyone involved. The only benefit was getting rid of Saddam and his terror.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_sanctions#Estimates_of_deaths_due_to_sanctions

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Map of us military presence in the middle east.

Go on...keep pretending we're not at war with Iran.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/1.-us-bases-in-the-middle-east-a.jpg

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

No argument there. The Clinton strategy cost us little beyond the moral realm (which is not to say that the moral realm is not very important). The Bush invasion cost us so much. God damn it.

The Clinton strategy of "containing" the Hussein regime required a perpetual, significant U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, an extremely sensitive issue for many muslims. OBL issued a fatwa in 1996 against the U.S. specifically because of that presence: "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places."

As of 2000, there was not even the vaguest hint that this U.S. presence would be anything other than permanent, akin to the fifty-year (and still ongoing) U.S. presence in South Korea. I'd suggest that such a strategy had pretty hard "costs" to it apart from the "moral" realm, even if we ignore the more esoteric issue of permitting Hussein to continue openly defying the terms of the ceasefire. One result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq is that it ended the need for that presence.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2984547.stm

I'm not saying the "costs" of the invasion of Iraq were worth the benefits. But at the same time, we shouldn't underestimate the "costs" of the prior strategy of indefinite containment.

[The Iceman of the North]

Map of us military presence in the middle east.

Go on...keep pretending we're not at war with Iran.

http://www.lewrockwe...ddle-east-a.jpg

So, based on that map, I assume the US is aljeady at waj with Yemen, Palestine, Jodjan and Syjia, as well?

[TerraPrime]

I have no clue what Gore would have done. I know what he DID do which was preside over an 8hour year bombing campaign in Iraq combined with economic sanctions that killed 600,000 Iraqi children. He has just as much Iraqi blood on his hands as Bush.

This is where the independents lose me: the refusal to acknowledge the differences. You might say that the differences won't matter, but to simply refuse to acknowledge the difference is a bit like an ostrich's head in the sand.

Consider this: Gore is not known to have advisors who have ties to a group of hawkish conservatives that published an article citing the good reasons behind invading Iraq with ground troops a couple years before.

But, whatever. Go on and continue to be all angry and upset and righteous about the corrupt system. It's the least you can have, as a consolation prize.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Damn, I almost hope that Iran hurries and develops the bomb so we'll start treating them like a grown-up country. Although, the way we've been dealing with Pakistan recently doesn't give me much hope of that either.

Well, we might if they started acting like one.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

So, based on that map, I assume the US is aljeady at waj with Yemen, Palestine, Jodjan and Syjia, as well?

Either directly or by proxy, yeah. Except Jordan, we just pay them off.

This is where the independents lose me: the refusal to acknowledge the differences. You might say that the differences won't matter, but to simply refuse to acknowledge the difference is a bit like an ostrich's head in the sand.

Consider this: Gore is not known to have advisors who have ties to a group of hawkish conservatives that published an article citing the good reasons behind invading Iraq with ground troops a couple years before.

But, whatever. Go on and continue to be all angry and upset and righteous about the corrupt system. It's the least you can have, as a consolation prize.

I acknowledge that Democrats start DIFFERNT wars than republicans and kill different millions of people.

I don't know that anyone could say what Al Gore would or wouldn't have done at the time, except Al Gore, and I doubt that he's be reliable to tell you the truth in hindsight.But, I do know that when Gore was in the White House we WERE at war with Iraq, and we WERE killing hundreds of thousands of people. If you want to argue semantics over whether he would have invaded or not go ahead I guess. He approved of killing hundreds of thousands of their children, which his Secretary of State said was "worth it"

Would Al Gore have invaded Sudan?

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Anyway, to get off ground that has perhaps been rather well-tread already (at least by me), Obama gave a big speech recently that is being lauded by some on the left as one for the ages. The lack of commentary here suggests that few are aware of it (which is itself kind of funny), but I thought the content was really interesting.

In essence, he argued that legitimacy of American society has been based on a form of social contract, where if you do "the right things", you can send your kids to college, get a decent house, savings for retirement, etc. He invoked Teddy Roosevelt, etc., and essentially blames Wall Street and the Republicans for breaking that contract.

http://hosted.ap.org...-12-06-14-04-33

The thing for me is that I have a problem with his entire premise -- that the "American Way" is premised on a social contract theory of material acquisition. For at least a majority of this country's history, that was not the case. The "deal" with the government wasn't a chicken in every pot. The "deal" was simply individual freedom, which is fundamentally different from social contract theory based on distribution/acquisition of material goods. An ideology based on individual freedom permits failure by some individuals, and is far more focused on the process than the results. But the way I read Obama, he envisions that there is some sort of affirmative right to the material goods promised in his version of that social contract.

The reason I see that as such a problem is that I view the real "American Dream" material mythology as a product of the post-war boom, where the U.S. was the only real industrial power in the world, and had massive competitive advantages over every other nation in virtually every aspect. That gave rise to expectations that simply could not last when the rest of the world stated catching up, and we lost some of those competitive advantages. The days of America forging the steel for the rest of the world are simply gone, and they are never coming back. So whereas a basic high school education and a willingness to work would get you a well-paying factory job with great benefits 50 years ago, that is simply not the case now. The sheer luck of being born in the U.S. doesn't confer the same relative life advantage it did 50 years ago because the rest of the world has caught up, or is catching up.

And this concerns me because I see Obama's speech and the philosophy behind it as selling Americans (and to some extent, it is happening elsewhere as well) a bill of goods based on unreasonable expectations that can no longer be fulfilled. So as reality keeps punching us about the head and shoulders, and we find that competitive advantage declining even more, people will get more and more discontented because they're not getting "the stuff" to which they believe they are morally entitled. It's not really the "discontent" that bothers me, but rather that the whole POV seems to lead to an existential dead-end, where we are not producing as a nation the goods our citizens have been promised as their "right".

Now, I get the argument that the Wall Street types have screwed people over, but the truths about America's loss of competive advantage exist indepenent of those financial problems. Take the Wall Streeters out of the equation, and those problems will still be there. So who do we rob next to sustain the unreasonable expectations that the President is telling people are perfectly valid? And who after them? Because at some point, there won't be any boogeymen left, and we'll just be left with outrageous expectations that can't possibly be met because the cupboard is completely bare.

[DanteGabriel]

Finally Democrats are starting to push back against the bullshit "job creators" term that the GOP managed to sneak into national discourse.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/patty-murray-the-one-percent-arent-job-creators.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

[Guest Raidne]

The thing for me is that I have a problem with his entire premise -- that the "American Way" is premised on a social contract theory of material acquisition. For at least a majority of this country's history, that was not the case. The "deal" with the government wasn't a chicken in every pot. The "deal" was simply individual freedom, which is fundamentally different from social contract theory based on distribution/acquisition of material goods. An ideology based on individual freedom permits failure by some individuals, and is far more focused on the process than the results. But the way I read Obama, he envisions that there is some sort of affirmative right to the material goods promised in his version of that social contract.

Interesting. So, for you, if the results of our actions are logically tied to them, we're not free? Like, you have to be able to plan well and study hard in a marketable field and buy a house at a good price in a good neighborhood and still be fucked by an unplanned for disability that's not covered by your unregulated long-term disability insurance policy and bankrupted in order to be "free"?

Sure, let's be more focused on the process than the results, but the process really has no meaning unless it leads to fairly predictable results. Surely you require some amount of relationship between people who work hard and smart and not getting boned in order to play this game?

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

It's not about robbing anyone. It's about making sure people play fair, and pay their fair share. It's about making sure that Wall Street, with their short-sighted overemphasis on quarterly profit, doesn't exacerbate the problem that you describe. And it's not as if the right doesn't have boogeymen of its own.

I think there are some problems with the anti-Wall Street mentality, though that doesn't mean I think there aren't some legitimate concerns. But for these purposes, that disagreement really isn't material. Because as you say, Wall Street may exascerbate the problem, which is a recognition that there is a significant problem apart from Wall Street. And there's data out there showing that even if we deprived all the rich Wall Street types of all their money, it wouldn't go very far.

My concern is that by focusing so much on Wall Street, we are creating a boogeyman that permits us to ignore the more fundamental problems we face. I think one of those problems is that the materialistic aspect of the "American Dream", as it is painted by some, is no longer attainable. Americans can no longer enjoy a better standard of living than the rest of the world while unless they want to work a lot harder, and surrender other things that reduce the amount of purely material goods that we produce. Yet the expectation, the sense of entitlement, is paradoxically much greater than it was during the legendary heyday of the post-war boom, and the President is just fueling that.

Maybe it's just part of the human condition that comparative luxury simply breeds greater expectations.

[Atreides]

Carter learned the hard way about telling Americans the truth. Obama isn't going to say "America is no longer more competitive than the rest of the world by virtue of being America, so we're going to have to work a lot harder just to maintain parity in economic competitiveness with places you've never heard of, or like to mock." And it's not just the president. Republicans love harping on about American Exceptionalism, and I bet most people don't have any idea that it really just means that America is supposed to be a place of unrivaled opportunity. Most people probably just hear it and think it means that the US is the greatest place on Earth, and thus is entitled to such material success.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Interesting. So, for you, if the results of our actions are logically tied to them, we're not free? Like, you have to be able to plan well and study hard in a marketable field and buy a house at a good price in a good neighborhood and still be fucked by an unplanned for disability that's not covered by your unregulated long-term disability insurance policy and bankrupted in order to be "free"?

It's crass, overly specific, and negative focused, but I'll own it and say "sure". Everyone assumes their own risks. That's a pretty central tenet of freedom.

For you, if the results of our actions are divorced from the outcomes, it's not fair? Like, you have to be able to be depressed and have your doctor say you're "mentally disabled", and never work again while being supported by other people's money in order for things to be "fair"?