(December 30, 2015 at 5:15 pm)Minimalist Wrote: and let's be honest, France was still smarting over the results of the 7 Years War.

Which I consider the main reason. Getting back at the Brits.

(December 30, 2015 at 5:15 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

Quote:Perhaps, going forward, we should leave people under their despots and tyrants, the world over,

Rhythm, why is that our problem?  Don't the oppressed have a duty to rise up if they want to change their condition? 

They have neither the duty, nor, commonly, the opportunity.  It is only our problem insomuch as we would like to offer that opportunity. I can't personally label it our problem. I can only say that we have decided, from time to time that it is, and that many of us have been willing to make the personal commitment to that at ground level. I was willing to make it "my problem", and my government decided that it was "our problem". From thence I proceed. I cannot volunteer you, and you alone cannot prevent us, lol. We interfere because we are in a position to do so. Uniquely so, at present. We're clearly not uniformly in the right, our plans can clearly go wrong...but if we, in the US, can't help or shouldn't help when we are in such a position...I weep for the globe. Who can or should help, who is in a better position to do so?

Quote:No one helped the French or the Russians to overthrow oppressive governments.  Quite the opposite, the world lined up against the revolutionaries.  Even the French only came to our aid when we showed that we might actually prevail after Saratoga, and let's be honest, France was still smarting over the results of the 7 Years War.

-and in each case those elements are on the wrong side of history - as we have been ourselves. Supporting an oppressive orthodoxy through the consent of silence or inactivity.

(December 30, 2015 at 5:08 pm)Napoléon Wrote:

(December 30, 2015 at 4:18 pm)Rhythm Wrote: I seriously doubt conclusions that begin with the notion that keeping him in power is/was the only way any scenario better than the one we're currently in could have been arrived upon. 

Pretty sure it would have been a better scenario though.

A better situation for some who did -not- find themselves on the wrong end of his regime, sure.  I wonder if there might be people, who lived under that regime, who would disagree....lol.

(December 30, 2015 at 5:29 pm)Rhythm Wrote: A better situation for some who did -not- find themselves on the wrong end of his regime, sure.  I wonder if there might be people, who lived under that regime, who would disagree....lol.

Right, but you can say this in any scenario.

Sure, but the difference is a bit more salient under a regime like Saddams.  For example, there are people in the US who feel that they have been wrongly imprisoned.  There are further some who feel that they have been imprisoned for what they do not consider a crime, or what they feel should not -be- a crime  We expect these people to exist, we can listen to their greivance.  There is a different class of people, looking to get their thumbs out of a literal screw.  Who wish to at least -face- a trial for the crimes they have been accused of.  People who are under the threat of death for disagreement. So, while I can find dissenters among any population...I have to look in a particular tpype of place, a particular type of regime, in which their greivence is torture, or the attempted eradication of their ethnicity.

Iraq was such a place. Saddam's was such a regime.

(December 30, 2015 at 5:23 pm)Rhythm Wrote: but if we, in the US, can't help or shouldn't help when we are in such a position...I weep for the globe.   Who can or should help, who is in a better position to do so?

There's a reason why Roosevelt and Truman were behind establishing the UN. There's also a reason why Justice Jackson argued as he did at the Nuremberg tribunals. The reasons being the same - so that no country or person, unilaterally can decide to go to war again.

Utopia, I know. But an American Utopia. An ideal I admire, as opposed to American policy in the last two decades. At the very least. I'm really hard pressed to name even a handfull of American interventions after WWII I consider entirely justified and being aimed at the greater good. Kosovo, maybe, though even that, living in the extended vicinity, is up for debate. Bosnia and maybe Afghanistan. But that's about it. Everything else was about interests. Political and/or economical.

The UN is in desperate need of reform. True. But it's still better than one country, one person even, if he or she manages to be backed by the houses, calling the shots. That's not the world I want to live in, and given the American political system of being dependent on corporate donations to get into office, neither should any American. Since they are ultimately the ones bleeding out on the battlefields for interest unknown.

You don't think the US can drum the UN to war, right or wrong?  Seems to me that they haven't stood in our way all that often when we decided to bomb the shit out of someone.  While I think that it was ludicrous to ask the world to go to war over fake WMDs (what we did, effectively, in seeking support)...I don't think that it would have been impossible to get them to agree to regime change based upon factual information.  

Kosovo is my shit, btw, cut my teeth.  KFOR 4 Life! Tried, marginally, to get the wife to accept the idea of moving there, lol.

Quote:They have neither the duty, nor, commonly, the opportunity.

We handed "freedom" to Iraq.  The result has been nothing short of catastrophic.  Some things people need to do for themselves.

As has been noted in Syria, some politician asked why we do not recruit the refugees for the battle?  They are running away.  Not the best trait in a soldier.  If they don't care enough why should we?

Trying to be the world's policeman has gotten us nowhere except bankrupt.  The Rwandan genocide was an order of magnitude worse than what Saddam was doing.  We did nothing.  Such is the impact of oil on the world stage.

We most definitely did not hand freedom to Iraq, we handed Iraq to private contracts. Sometimes people are broken. When broken people run, we should head in the opposite direction to confront what broke them, hooah?

We -should- have done something about the Rwandan genocide. What we have done, juxtaposed against what we have not..is an embarrassment, not a reason to do nothing. Oil is important, undeniably, some people take it even further, oil is a religion. Those are the fuckers you have to watch.

(December 30, 2015 at 6:23 pm)Rhythm Wrote: You don't think the US can drum Nato to war, right or wrong?  Seems to me that they haven't stood in our way all that often when we decided to bomb the shit out of someone.  While I think that it was ludicrous to ask the world to go to war over fake WMDs...I don't think that it would have been impossible to get them to agree to regime change based upon factual information.   

Kosovo is my shit, btw, cut my teeth.  KFOR 4 Life!

There's a distinct line between being able to drum the world to war and that being justified. The distinction being made right after WWII and instantly forgotten in the cold war.

I'm talking about just wars as opposed to aggressive wars and enforcing interests. Including regime changes, as 1953 in Iran, 1973 in Chile or the attempt at the Sandinistas by financing and supporting the Contras, who were much worse than Ortega's regime could ever dream to be.