US politics: back to school

[Shryke]

shryke,

That's an excellent reason to change the law, but not for killing people and bombing the shit our of a region you then have to hang around and rebuild, the whole while loathed and mistrusted and likely more than occasionally attacked by the survivors you're ostensibly trying to help.

It seems to me that attacking people in contravention of the Security Council is the more dangerous precedent than not attacking because it's conveniently illegal to do it.

I think the opposite since I don't think directly contravening the Security Council is all that bad in alot of cases considering it is, again, nothing more then a self-elected group of the biggest, strongest kids on the block. It doesn't give it a ton of credibility in many circumstances.

I don't know, maybe this point of view would have greater credibility among it's detractors if we didn't in other cases find convenient excuses for breaking the same laws I would now have us uphold, but I can't help that.

I can see going -- maybe -- but only with much broader support.

Which point of view are you referring to here?

[awesome possum]

I'm pretty sure "massacring syrian civilians" is not part of any plan being drawn up. Casualties are inevitable in any military action, but of course people are gonna keep dying in different ways if nothing is done to. So it's more a matter how "which action leads to the best outcome?".

People will keep dying but not by American hands if we stay away from there. The action that leads to the best outcome is letting them fight it out themselves. Or let someone else intervene for once. How's that letter to your MP or Senator coming, by the way?

I feel for the people who are suffering but I feel more for the people who are suffering near me. I feel for the family next door, where an 80-year-old grandmother has watched two of her daughters and three of her grandchildren move in with her over the last year. Whose great-granddaughter, my daughter's friend, eats here most weeknights because otherwise she'll be fed a frozen waffle for dinner - all they can afford right now.

I feel more for my sister, whose Crohn's disease was so bad she had to have most of her small intestines removed at 28 and as a result will be wearing a colostomy bag for the rest of her life. Whose disability payments and food stamps were recently cut to the point that I took in her eldest for the summer so that she could afford to feed her other two children.

These two examples might not be in danger of losing their lives or being forced from their homes by fighting but they are going hungry in a country that is saying its willing to spend billions of dollars to destroy and kill in a country that has never harmed anyone in ours. And I do not support that. I will not support that..

I would hope the US has no intention of using chemical weapons in the future and that they would be rightly condemned if they did so.

Oh, well, you hope they're condemned if they do but you want Syria bombed for doing it? And you have the nerve to call another argument stupid?

Past terrible actions are no excuse for future ones. I don't know why you keep acting like "why didn't someone do something earlier?" is a convincing argument to not consider doing something now.

It's not supposed to be a convincing argument because I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I'm stating my beliefs and my belief is that if 100,000 deaths weren't enough to do something then an extra several hundred shouldn't change that. And that the US is no authority when it comes to telling other countries they can't do something the US has done multiple times and allowed its allies to do without repercussions.

[Kouran]

The Onion continues to be on fire

Man I could get down with that plan, you have to love the Onion.

[Shryke]

People will keep dying but not by American hands if we stay away from there. The action that leads to the best outcome is letting them fight it out themselves. Or let someone else intervene for once.

Is it? It may be in this case, but given the sentence right after this one (and really, the one before it too), it seems far more like that's the real reason for you stating this and your are just saying the bolded to support the conclusion you've already reached.

I feel for the people who are suffering but I feel more for the people who are suffering near me. I feel for the family next door, where an 80-year-old grandmother has watched two of her daughters and three of her grandchildren move in with her over the last year. Whose great-granddaughter, my daughter's friend, eats here most weeknights because otherwise she'll be fed a frozen waffle for dinner - all they can afford right now.

I feel more for my sister, whose Crohn's disease was so bad she had to have most of her small intestines removed at 28 and as a result will be wearing a colostomy bag for the rest of her life. Whose disability payments and food stamps were recently cut to the point that I took in her eldest for the summer so that she could afford to feed her other two children.

These two examples might not be in danger of losing their lives or being forced from their homes by fighting but they are going hungry in a country that is saying its willing to spend billions of dollars to destroy and kill in a country that has never harmed anyone in ours. And I do not support that. I will not support that.

I don't see why them never having harmed anyone in the US is relevant to your point here.

Oh, well, you hope they're condemned if they do but you want Syria bombed for doing it? And you have the nerve to call another argument stupid?

I'm being realistic in that expecting anyone to intervene if the US decides to use chemical weapons is about as likely as the US intervening in China using them.

More to the actual point I was making, I don't think it's any better when anyone else does it and I sure hope the US or anyone else doesn't decide to go around dropping chemical weapons either.

It's not supposed to be a convincing argument because I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I'm stating my beliefs and my belief is that if 100,000 deaths weren't enough to do something then an extra several hundred shouldn't change that. And that the US is no authority when it comes to telling other countries they can't do something the US has done multiple times and allowed its allies to do without repercussions.

And I'm saying these stances are rather silly, since ignoring the previous dead civilians is no reason to continue to do so and the means of killing them does change the issue, since not all weapons are considered equal and for good reason.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Hey Shryke the army is hiring if you're so passionate about going to the middle east and killing some people.

[Guest Raidne]

I haven't heard that much "some people say" since I watched Greenwald's documentary on Fox News.

I don't think anyone paying attention to the veterans benefits situation would push for more military action. We can't afford what we've already spent.

ETA: that onion article is money.

[Shryke]

I don't think anyone paying attention to the veterans benefits situation would push for more military action. We can't afford what we've already spent.

On this front, I'm really curious what the costs (in money and people and all that) of the Libyan intervention ultimately work out to be. It'd be a very interesting case study for situations like this.

[Guest Raidne]

TGU - Veterans benefits after the civil war was the reason for enacting the federal income tax. Our Chief of Policy gives a fantastic lecture on this. WWII was the exception not the norm. The norm is to court the veterans' vote by promising ever increasing benefits while delivering them inconsistently and poorly at great expense while the country otherwise treats them like defective trash.

[Guest Raidne]

Shryke - What would the cost of the failed intervention in Libya show us? How cheap it is to intervene without benefit? Are you actually Ben Rhodes? How's the romance novel going?

[thecryptile]

Veterans benefits after the civil war was the reason for enacting the federal income tax...

I thought the income tax was a progressive measure that was meant to remove the dependency on excise taxes and pave the way for prohibition of alcohol (among other things).

[Shryke]

Shryke - What would the cost of the failed intervention in Libya show us? How cheap it is to intervene without benefit? Are you actually Ben Rhodes? How's the romance novel going?

How is Libya a failure?

And it would be useful in accessing the cost of various intervention strategies. We've already got a good idea what "invasion + decade long occupation" costs.

[The Progressive]

Weird ......... the Libya intervention is widely acknowledged by most foreign policy analysts as a model and successful limited intervention and cost the U.S. around 1.1 billion. Other NATO members also contributed to the effort as well.

For comparison purpose, the Afghanistan war cost about 500 billions to date, and the Iraq war cost about 1 trillion.

[The Progressive]

What do you mean still? I've never expressed that view.

You're right. I apologize for mistaken your post with the fringe view of lockesnow and thinkerx.

[The Progressive]

Good short article on that:

"Unlike previous generations, the Civil War veterans were numerous enough to have tremendous political power. There were two million Union veterans in a nation that cast just four million votes in the 1864 presidential election. (Lincoln won reelection in large part by halting the war in 1864 so that tens upon tens of thousands of soldiers — who overwhelmingly opposed the Democratic plan to sue for peace — could be shipped home to vote and carry states such as Pennsylvania and New York by narrow margins.)

After the war, veterans organized into major political groups, such as the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). Starting in 1866, the political history of the rest of the nineteenth century was about appealing to veterans as voters. To give just one example, in 1890 James Tanner was appointed to head the Pension Bureau and promptly promised to “drive a six-mule team through the Treasury.” As a result of the intense competition for the veteran vote, five GAR members became president and benefits were showered on veterans to the point where such benefits constituted a third to forty percent of the federal budget.

The extensive benefits for the Civil War veterans were ultimately extended even further to all veterans, regardless of length of service or disability. Moreover, such benefits payments did not peak until 1913. Not by coincidence, that was the same year that the Sixteenth Amendment was passed to create the federal income tax, because passing Prohibition was financially impossible without a substitute for alcohol taxes to fund Civil War pensions."

http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2013/06/a-semi-brief-history-of-veterans-benefits-in-america-part-i-the-revolution-through-the-civil-war.html

[Shryke]

It's good to know Palpatine was a supporter of veterans.

[Fez]

I haven't heard that much "some people say" since I watched Greenwald's documentary on Fox News.

I don't think anyone paying attention to the veterans benefits situation would push for more military action. We can't afford what we've already spent.

Don't think much of the whole "Personalized, Proactive, Patient-Driven Approach" strategy eh?

[lokisnow]

Well speaking of fringe views, do you still think the rebels planted the chemical attacks and the NSA fabricated the intel, awesome possum?

I think that was me. funnily enough I had dropped that belief based on recent reporting on the gas attacks by the NYT

On the other hand, on lunch break today, I hear on NPR that Iran alerted the international community in January that it believed a large amount of homemade Sarin Gas had just been acquired by Syrian rebels. The fingerprint of the recent gas attack isn't consistent with professional Sarin Gas, and seems to be homemade Sarin gas. Additionally, NPR said, the Russians have pointed out the delivery mechanism used for the Sarin gas wasn't weapons/military grade and wasn't consistent with the hardware they Assad has used in the past.

So the Mockingjay scenario is alive and well it seems, just is undereported in America because it's inconvenient and doesn't fit the war-war-rah-rah-rah narrative that's being pushed.

That Onion article is BRILLIANT!

[The Marquis de Leech]

I think the opposite since I don't think directly contravening the Security Council is all that bad in alot of cases considering it is, again, nothing more then a self-elected group of the biggest, strongest kids on the block. It doesn't give it a ton of credibility in many circumstances.

Directly contravening the Security Council is a recipe for something very ugly further down the track. With the Big Five's veto, you're ensuring that any intervention has both a solid foundation, and would be somewhat one-sided militarily (Rest of World vs. Pariah State will dissuade Pariah States from invading others). Without it, one could have situations where the UN is taking action against Russia over Georgia, or something, which is certainly a greater (and potentially nuclear) evil.

[Shryke]

I think that was me. funnily enough I had dropped that belief based on recent reporting on the gas attacks by the NYT

On the other hand, on lunch break today, I hear on NPR that Iran alerted the international community in January that it believed a large amount of homemade Sarin Gas had just been acquired by Syrian rebels. The fingerprint of the recent gas attack isn't consistent with professional Sarin Gas, and seems to be homemade Sarin gas. Additionally, NPR said, the Russians have pointed out the delivery mechanism used for the Sarin gas wasn't weapons/military grade and wasn't consistent with the hardware they Assad has used in the past.

So the Mockingjay scenario is alive and well it seems, just is undereported in America because it's inconvenient and doesn't fit the war-war-rah-rah-rah narrative that's being pushed.

???

The narrative being pushed doesn't seem all that rah-rah-war to me. If anything, it's getting serious pushback.

[Altherion]

So the Russians refuse to apologize for Putin calling Kerry a liar and instead blame it on a mistranslation. I found the original wording in Russian (see this article) and the translation is accurate -- the turn of phrase is both prettier and more concise in Russian (I think it comes from a book, but I can't remember which one), but the meaning is that Kerry is lying and he knows that he is lying. Looks like Putin has gotten to the point where he can't even be bothered to hide his contempt anymore. The truly sad part is that it is becoming hard to blame him.