unlike Obama, Palin had actual executive experience.
Y'know what, winter is coming so poor Alaska will soon get dumped on enough without me deriding its governorship as a pretty lame comparison to running the whole country.
And no, Palin is not anti-democracy.
When you carry on as though your loss of the last election constitutes some quasi-illegal coup that necessitates "taking the country back," as though the only
legitimate electoral outcome is the one where you win, then that is absolutely anti-democratic. What Palin and her tea-swilling followers don't seem to get is that if 100 or 75 or even 51 percent of the voters throw you out on your ass fair 'n square, then you are not (barring electoral fraud) the victim of some crime.
BTW, you hate Karl Rove? You SURE you are a Canadian? Because for a Canadian, you sure seem to care a LOT about American politics. Why would a Canadian care about Karl Rove?
I care about American politics for the same reason that someone who lives next door to a dynamite factory (and who isn't an
idiot) cares about that factory's management and safety practices. It's the same reason someone forced to sleep next to an elephant wants to know which side it favors when it lays down. Because America's politics don't just effect America's voters. Otherwise there'd be no such thing as the State Department. And I care because America-the-idea-- as a land of equality and justice-- occupies a place in my heart as a human being, and it offends me to see that idea abused by self-centered unjust thugs (like Karl Rove).
WMDs wasn't any lie, it was a failure of intelligence. But President Bush didn't lie the country into war. Thinking Hussein had ties to OBL was not a lie either, and Hussein did have ies [sic] to certain terrorists. On invading Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people, actually that was one of the original reasons for invading.
Bullcrap! We
watched it unfold, and Powell didn't testify to the UN that an intervention in Iraq was needed for the Iraqi people-- he
said Saddam had WMDs. He went on at length about yellowcake Uranium and centrifuges. "Freeing the Iraqi people" wasn't rolled out until after no WMDs were found (which the UN inspectors could have definitively told you if they'd been allowed to finish doing their jobs) and until after the Osama bin Laden argument was shown to be false. You're either divorced from reality, or you are deliberately lying.
Your claim of hegemon or oil would have merit if America had set up a formal colony that is being ruled by America, and given only American companies access to the Iraqi oil. Instead, Iraq is a fragile, but functioning, democracy, and got to do with its oil as it pleases.
No 'colony' or exploitation? Are you serious?? You
have heard of a little company called Halliburton, haven't you? How they've reaped obscene profits off of uncontested contracting with the U.S. military presence in Iraq? How they've overcharged for those same services so much that it borders on criminality? Or is that another one of those pesky reality-things you choose to ignore?
I do not understand why so many in the world really cared that the U.S. toppled Hussein, because he was a thug. If I was a Canadian for example, my attitude would be, "If America wants to expend the blood and treasure to do that, let them, the world won't be at a loss without Hussein."
It's insulting (but frankly not really surprising) how self-centered and indifferent you suppose everyone to be towards matters of international policy and law. I think a majority of people who
think about the United States from an observer's perspective-- as opposed to living inside it and taking its presumed 'righteousness' for granted-- saw a legally dubious invasion being launched and thought "well, if that's their brand of legality today, what the hell are they going to do tomorrow?" For many of us, the 'attitude'
in general is "as a sane person I meditate upon right and wrong, justice and injustice, law and illegality, reason versus irrationality-- I care that the right thing gets done but also that the rule of law counts for something and I recognize that sometimes it takes a bit of careful deliberation to tell one from the other-- and
something about this stinks." And rather than hold our noses and jump in we prefer to take five seconds to
think and make sure we aren't doing something that will late have even worse consequences than inaction.
Who was the biggest sender of relief during the earthquake in Haiti? How often does the story of the United States sending its military to provide relief to other nations occur?
A balanced-looking 'scorecard' doesn't absolve moral responsibility. A good deed doesn't 'un-do' the doing of a bad deed. America certainly deserves credit when she does good; by no stretch of the ethical imagination does that mean she
doesn't deserve to be rebuked when she breaks the law. In a just world you don't get a free pass on murdering one person just because you happen to have also saved a hundred; you've still committed
murder, and if that's held against you when you're in the red then it also counts when you're in the black.
BTW, you criticized the American education system in your original post. He was just pointing out that the reason the American educational system sucks is because it is a government-run system.
And I'm calling bullcrap again; if the problem with America's schools were that they're "government-run"-- that is,
that governments cannot run good schools-- then all the other countries with government-run schools would be faring as poorly. Many of the best-rated education systems in the world are in countries far more "socialist" or "big-government" than the U.S. That suggests the problems stem from elsewhere, and that placing the blame on 'government' in the abstract is disingenuous (or ignorant) rhetoric of an ideological agenda that cares nothing for facts.
The EPA is trying to regulate carbon dioxide emissions as a pollutant, well as it turns out, WATER is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. So the EPA decided they wanted to try and regulate that too, in the name of protecting us from global warming. That's taking it too far, and fell through from what I understand. If they can regulate water like a pollutant because water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, that opens up tons of things to government oversight.
Science is an interest of mine but not my specialty; nevertheless, that (water as a bigger greenhouse threat than CO2)
sounds like bullcrap to me. But for the sake of argument, supposing that it
is true-- your argument comes off as "well, now that we're talking about
water they shouldn't try to do anything about it, because that would mean 'tons' of government oversight. Because it's
water." Well, sure, it's water. But IF that water, used in certain ways without 'oversight,' is all but certain to make the world uninhabitable to human beings, then it bloody well
should be regulated! Regulate the crap out of that water if it means saving human civilization!
It's like these idiots I see on TV saying that environmental concerns take a back seat to the economy. 'Uoh, well, we
can't shut down the water-polluting, air-polluting Doomsday Device factory, that'll put a thousand people out of work.' Great! Fire 'em all! Because newsflash: without an environment we can
live in, "the economy"
won't exist. You don't need a job if there's no air, no water, and you're dead. It just isn't a post-life priority.
Whatever needs doing-- whatever needs regulating, whatever industry needs smothering to death, whatever jobs need cutting-- in order to give us the best chance of surviving as a species, let it be done. If we're alive we can get f*ing job re-training! If we're all dead then the "awful burden" of regulatory oversight is utterly f*ing moot. Is this
such a difficult concept for the deregulation/'free-market' shills to grasp? It
is within our capability to render this planet-- the only one we've got-- uninhabitable for ourselves. *Every other priority* comes in
behind averting that outcome.
I'm an island- peopled by scientists, bards, judges, soldiers, artists, scholars, & warrior-poets.
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broadsword2004
14 years ago
Y'know what, winter is coming so poor Alaska will soon get dumped on enough without me deriding its governorship as a pretty lame comparison to running the whole country.
She also ran a large town for years before becoming governor. And since Obama claimed his running his campaign counted as "experience," then I think that qualifies as well.
When you carry on as though your loss of the last election constitutes some quasi-illegal coup that necessitates "taking the country back," as though the only legitimate electoral outcome is the one where you win, then that is absolutely anti-democratic. What Palin and her tea-swilling followers don't seem to get is that if 100 or 75 or even 51 percent of the voters throw you out on your ass fair 'n square, then you are not (barring electoral fraud) the victim of some crime.
Palin doesn't carry on as though the loss of the last election was some quasi-illegal coup, that was Al Gore and the Democrats back in 2000. By "take the country back" (another phrase very favored by the Democrats during the Bush years) what Palin and such people are referring to is the hard big-government leftism that Obama and the Democrats are seeking to force down America's throat.
Bullcrap! We watched it unfold, and Powell didn't testify to the UN that an intervention in Iraq was needed for the Iraqi people-- he said Saddam had WMDs. He went on at length about yellowcake Uranium and centrifuges. "Freeing the Iraqi people" wasn't rolled out until after no WMDs were found (which the UN inspectors could have definitively told you if they'd been allowed to finish doing their jobs) and until after the Osama bin Laden argument was shown to be false. You're either divorced from reality, or you are deliberately lying.
Building a democratic and free Iraq was among the original reasons cited for invasion, but WMDs were the one most trotted (because as said, if freeing people was the sole reason, why Iraq? Why not Iran? North Korea? etc...). As for the UN inspectors, Saddam was preventing them from doing their jobs, that was part of the problem.
Irregardless though, WMDs did not constitute "lying."
No 'colony' or exploitation? Are you serious?? You have heard of a little company called Halliburton, haven't you? How they've reaped obscene profits off of uncontested contracting with the U.S. military presence in Iraq? How they've overcharged for those same services so much that it borders on criminality? Or is that another one of those pesky reality-things you choose to ignore?
Halliburton was one of the only companies qualified to do the job in Iraq. It also was the one that the government KNEW could do the job of putting out any oil fires that might get started, as it had put out 350 oil fires in Kuwait after the Gulf War. Allowing other companies to compete for this on the verge of war would have consumed too much time and allowed catostrophic oil fires. Halliburton also was known for the work it had done during the Clinton administration, in particular in the Balkans with the U.S. peacekeeping mission there (Al Gore's reinventing government panel actually praised Halliburton for its military logistics work).
You seem to be suggesting that the United States literally invaded Iraq solely to benefit one corporation. If that was the case, you'd have to say that Clinton involved the U.S. in the Balkans for the same reason.
It's insulting (but frankly not really surprising) how self-centered and indifferent you suppose everyone to be towards matters of international policy and law. I think a majority of people who think about the United States from an observer's perspective-- as opposed to living inside it and taking its presumed 'righteousness' for granted-- saw a legally dubious invasion being launched and thought "well, if that's their brand of legality today, what the hell are they going to do tomorrow?" For many of us, the 'attitude' in general is "as a sane person I meditate upon right and wrong, justice and injustice, law and illegality, reason versus irrationality-- I care that the right thing gets done but also that the rule of law counts for something and I recognize that sometimes it takes a bit of careful deliberation to tell one from the other-- and something about this stinks." And rather than hold our noses and jump in we prefer to take five seconds to think and make sure we aren't doing something that will late have even worse consequences than inaction.
I never said anyone is indifferent to matters of international policy and law. There was nothing "legally dubious" about the invasion of Iraq. Iraq consistently violated the cease-fire it had with the United States, it also violated the parts of the UN sanctions that required it to tell the United States exactly what it was doing regarding WMDs. Along with other violations. You know if China shoots at one of our aircraft, that's considered an act of war. If we shot at one of theirs, same thing.
Plus the fact Hussein was a brutal dictator, basically a Middle Eastern variant of Adolf Hitler, who was perceived as a major threat to global security.
So, aside from therabid anti-Bush or anti-America crowd, I really do not see why anyone would be upset the United States toppled Hussein and rid the world of a dictator. What the UN resistance showed was just how impotent the UN, and Europe overall, really are when it comes to these things.
A balanced-looking 'scorecard' doesn't absolve moral responsibility. A good deed doesn't 'un-do' the doing of a bad deed. America certainly deserves credit when she does good; by no stretch of the ethical imagination does that mean she doesn't deserve to be rebuked when she breaks the law. In a just world you don't get a free pass on murdering one person just because you happen to have also saved a hundred; you've still committed murder, and if that's held against you when you're in the red then it also counts when you're in the black.
Yes, in a just world, you don't get to commit murder. According to Europe and the United Nations however, you get to murder plenty. Hussein was a mass murderer, a man who used chemical weapons to kill tens of thousands, and brutally repressed and tortured his own people. The United States going in and toppling him does not mean the U.S. "absolved" any moral responsibility.
And I'm calling bullcrap again; if the problem with America's schools were that they're "government-run"-- that is, that governments cannot run good schools-- then all the other countries with government-run schools would be faring as poorly. Many of the best-rated education systems in the world are in countries far more "socialist" or "big-government" than the U.S. That suggests the problems stem from elsewhere, and that placing the blame on 'government' in the abstract is disingenuous (or ignorant) rhetoric of an ideological agenda that cares nothing for facts.
The more "socialist" leaning countries I believe emphasize more choice in their education systems, which the United States does not. In the U.S., a bureaucrat decides where your kid goes to school (you have to use the school in the area you live). The teachers unions are also ferociously opposed to any kind of choice in the school system. Also lack of ability to discipline the students. Although actually I agree with you, while private schools can provide fine educations, public schools, where parents are involved, teachers can discipline the students properly, etc...can teach the children fine.
Science is an interest of mine but not my specialty; nevertheless, that (water as a bigger greenhouse threat than CO2) sounds like bullcrap to me. But for the sake of argument, supposing that it is true-- your argument comes off as "well, now that we're talking about water they shouldn't try to do anything about it, because that would mean 'tons' of government oversight. Because it's water." Well, sure, it's water. But IF that water, used in certain ways without 'oversight,' is all but certain to make the world uninhabitable to human beings, then it bloody well should be regulated! Regulate the crap out of that water if it means saving human civilization!
So you're saying you would prefer to give up freedom for "security?" Again, there's a fine line here. It is really difficult to claim that people emitting water vapor into the air from say filling their child's pool with water is going to contribute to the world ending. Climate change, while it may be real, is a perfect excuse utilized by many simply to justify regulation and control of anything and everything they desire.
Strict regulation of water usage is if it is in severely short supply.
It's like these idiots I see on TV saying that environmental concerns take a back seat to the economy. 'Uoh, well, we can't shut down the water-polluting, air-polluting Doomsday Device factory, that'll put a thousand people out of work.' Great! Fire 'em all! Because newsflash: without an environment we can live in, "the economy" won't exist. You don't need a job if there's no air, no water, and you're dead. It just isn't a post-life priority. Whatever needs doing-- whatever needs regulating, whatever industry needs smothering to death, whatever jobs need cutting-- in order to give us the best chance of surviving as a species, let it be done. If we're alive we can get f*ing job re-training! If we're all dead then the "awful burden" of regulatory oversight is utterly f*ing moot. Is this such a difficult concept for the deregulation/'free-market' shills to grasp? It is within our capability to render this planet-- the only one we've got-- uninhabitable for ourselves. *Every other priority* comes in behind averting that outcome
Again, there's a fine line. By your standard, we might as well eliminate industrial society completely. Or regulate and control people's lives to the degree that we are a statist society.
You're correct, without an environment, no point in a free-market economy. But without a free-market economy, not much point in an environment either, unless you want humanity to return to tribal living and Middle Ages style living. When you have an industrial economy, you are going to produce pollution. You regulate to prevent pollution, but you also have to take into account jobs. You cannot destroy thousands of jobs in the name of "saving the environment" always.
You say, "whatever needs regulating, whatever industry needs smothering to death, whatever jobs need cutting---in order to give us the best change of surviving as a species, let it be done." You do that, and you will destroy civilization.
Many necessary industries are bound to pollute right now, we don't have a choice. You also forget that much of the rest of the world will continue polluting irregardless of what we do (like China and India right now). You also need to take into account that the environment itself "pollutes." There are vents in the ocean that spew various chemicals into the water for example.
One must find the appropriate amount of regulation that doesn't stifle and destroy industry and jobs and the economy so that people end up out of work and starving and losing their homes, but that provides adequate and doable protections for the environment.
BTW, the very fact that you are so concerned about the environment is a testament to the industrial economy providing you with a nice standard of living. People who are starving, or who don't know when their next meal is coming, who do not have access to clean water, food, healthcare, husing, heating, etc...do not give a crap about things like environmentalism.
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OttoVonB
9 years ago
Broadsword, it was very interesting to read your thoughtful and articulate comments, particularly as they give insight into how more economically conservative Americans feel about the situation.
A few thoughts about Iraq though:
As a European who has lived in America and worked with a lot of policy-related think-tanks and international organizations, I take exception to some of the defense of the intervention in Iraq. More than oil, freedom or WMD, that war as designed by the Bush administration was very much a pet project of Project for the New American Century alumni, many of which had key positions in the administration, and a genuine - I believe - conviction that removing Saddam would start a wave of democratic change throughout the region. So no, not oil, not territorial expansion, but longer-term stability than the wobbly status quo prevalent at the time. This, by the way, was definitely in America's economic interests, especially if it could - as was then hoped - lower the long-term chances of terrorist attacks as it would allow the US's military presence in the region.
I have little respect for people who argue against the war on grounds of legality: by any moral and legal standard, Iraq had long ago lost any claims to sovereignty as a nation, through its own violations, attempts to destabilize neighbors, or treatment of its population.
I find no fault with the aspiration as this is a region that desperately needs that, and was very sceptical of the "peace camp" being represented by, of all countries, France, Germany and Russia, the former two with significant economic interest in the status quo, and the latter... well...
What baffles me is the execution and the crucial points that were overlooked:
- Saddam Hussein had spent a quarter of a century exterminating political opposition... Who was expected to take over next? Expats locals knew nothing about?
- The lack of ethnic and religious unity was a huge potential time-bomb, yet it looks like nobody anticipated this. Given a Shia majority lying in the wings and what had happened in Iran in the not-so-distant past, that's surprising.
- Bremmer as viceroy... this gargantuan failure deserves its own book
- Managing the rebuilding in Iraq, sacking anyone related to the Baath Party... why do the exact opposite of what worked so well in Japan? This crucial mistake led to the creation of the insurgency!
The tragedy of Iraq is that the American intervention is directly responsible for the birth and rise of IS, something everyone in the region is now paying dearly for.
As far as economic and environmental policy goes, a few important questions as well:
"BTW, the very fact that you are so concerned about the environment is a testament to the industrial economy providing you with a nice standard of living. People who are starving, or who don't know when their next meal is coming, who do not have access to clean water, food, healthcare, housing, heating, etc...do not give a crap about things like environmentalism."
Sadly, they really should, given how strongly climate change affects food security.
It's a common misconception that you have to go through the obligatory heavy-industry stages rich countries went through to be where they are in order to join the club. In fact, poorer countries have an opportunity to jump entire stages and get there differently, mainly through investment in new technologies, which by the way has proven positive economic, social and environmental consequences.
China and India are notable culprits as far as your example goes, and here China uses its centralized planning to its advantage: photovoltaic installations and their energy output have doubled in the past few years and are likely to increase, following to some extent the US's example. China understands that being left behind in the race for efficient, renewable energy is essential to remaining economically significant in the long term.
Consider now how adversely the deterioration of the environment affects the world in political and social ways: the Syrian Civil War owes its origins not to to Iraq but to steady consecutive droughts in the countryside, which led to mass migration to cities, which led instability there and, coupled with rising food prices (resulting from crop shortages in Russia and elsewhere) created riots, violence, and eventually civil war. This is apparent elsewhere in the buildup to the Arab Spring. You can even observe this through satellite imagery now!
In short: rising temperatures and non-renewing water sources leads to loss of agriculture --> food insecurity --> migration --> social unrest and strain on institutions --> collapse and war --> more migration... and repeat elsewhere. Now think about what increased polar ice cap melting and resulting ocean rise would do to make that much, much worse (flooding huge coastal metropolitan areas) and you get why the environment isn't just "a factor" or even an important one. It is everything.
I agree regulation must not ruin jobs and the economy, but without powerful incentives that not just punish bad behavior but reward good behavior (tax cuts for companies investing in renewable or efficient energy use), things will deteriorate to the point where we can't go back or salvage anything.
The world's leading scientists and Academics understand this and are leading the way. Time for the most powerful country in the world to do so as well.
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