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Salon - On Hillary's warmongering in Libya, the devasation that followed.

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Yep.

From Robert Kagan who endorsed her last month:



Who is Robert Kagan?

But of course her supporters will handwave it away, even as they condemn the people behind the Bush administration. Though they're the same people behind Clinton.

That's why partisanship is such a cancer. It kills rational thinking.
 

params7

Banned
I said next to no material support. And it is almost nothing because they "trained" very few and gave very little in the way of weapons.

So like a squad or two? 4-5 fighters?

At least 10,000 trained fighters, shipment of so many arms they were ending up in Al-Nusra and ISIS marketplaces and that is just as of 2013.

Officials: CIA-backed Syrian rebels under Russian blitz

Only '4 Or 5' U.S.-Trained Rebels In Syria? Not Exactly.

Secret CIA effort in Syria faces large funding cut
 

Mael

Member
Seriously next we French want to fuck up a country we're bringing you yanks.
It's hilarious to see all the squirming about how it's really the fault of some US officials you don't like.
Russia really fucked up in Ukraine, if they could have got a public go ahead from the US, we would be discussing how it's really Hillary's fault that a commercial was shot down by Russian forces.
Man if you could convince French judges of the same, Sarkozy would be so happy he could run to be president again next year.
 

FiggyCal

Banned
I'm not sure why people are bringing up Reddit so much in this thread. What relevance does that have on Hillary's foreign policy?
 
Supporters of the U.S. action on Libya seem not to understand that even if one concedes on Gaddafi being a murderous butcher to his people that must be stopped, there is no mandate whatsoever for the U.S. to actively intervene to depose him. U.S. airstrikes could have indefinitely kept Gaddafi away from the Eastern parts of Libya, and maintained a stalemate there that could have eventually be amenable for a partition of the country, with some semblance of state control, unlike the current situation on the ground there

When did the US intervene to depose Gaddafi? This was a French/British led effort through NATO in support of UN mandate.
 

Mael

Member
When did the US intervene to depose Gaddafi? This was a French/British led effort through NATO in support of UN mandate.

Hey, now!
Don't you go trying to put that on us, it's clearly Hillary's fault.
She had secret meetings with the French/Brits/Italians to force their hands on this.
Didn't you hear about how Hillary put Berlusconi in a German suplex that so impressed Merkel she convinced Sarkozy that they had to drop kick Cameron into going in Libya?
 

Pedrito

Member
Seriously next we French want to fuck up a country we're bringing you yanks.
It's hilarious to see all the squirming about how it's really the fault of some US officials you don't like.
Russia really fucked up in Ukraine, if they could have got a public go ahead from the US, we would be discussing how it's really Hillary's fault that a commercial was shot down by Russian forces.
Man if you could convince French judges of the same, Sarkozy would be so happy he could run to be president again next year.

Not really. The usual uspects have quite a fondness for the russian government. So they would just blame Ukraine I guess.

This whole thing isn't really about Clinton. It's about the american foreign policy as a whole
(or western foreign policy), which is always wrong in the eyes of some. Of course, they're right in many ways, but their discourse is way too back and white. It's just easy to look at the decisions in the aftermath of a conflict and conclude that so and so should have been done instead...
 

Mael

Member
Not really. The usual uspects have quite a fondness for the russian government. So they would just blame Ukraine I guess.

This whole thing isn't really about Clinton. It's about the american foreign policy as a whole
(or western foreign policy), which is always wrong in the eyes of some. Of course, they're right in many ways, but their discourse is way too back and white.
Yeah I get it how some are so fond of Russian government that they don't even see a problem with the biggest political opponent getting shot in front of the Douma.

But seriously though if they manage to get a direct involvement of the US in the Ukrainian conflict, man would there be articles upon articles about how $hillary C£inton stashed her email server in the plane that she had to get shot down by the Russian forces.

To blame the US on the Libya story is really all kinds of funny from an European perspective.
Fuck had we known about this, we would have invited the US in Rwanda and stuffs!
 
I wish Hitchens was still alive to clear up Shillary's "record".

Insofar as is the point of this article, I still feel he'd be embarrassed to find himself more aligned with Hillary's foreign policy as it's portrayed here than anyone else's. I have no doubt he'd be a Bernie supporter and probably embarrassing himself making overly general comments about women, and probably arguing with Al Sharpton over black people being sheep. Of course, if he'd lived long enough, I think he'd no longer have nice things to say about Obama anymore either.
 

BowieZ

Banned
It was Hillary's decision to get involved, but it was Obama's decision to virtually abandon the country militarily afterwards.
Then she was clearly not an effective Secretary of State, if she couldn't get NATO to commit to a full nation-building exercise. The only valid (and safer and cheaper, and probably ultimately the more humane) alternative was to not fucking get involved...
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
There are countless dictators, war lords and groups that go around killing hundreds or thousands of innocent people, doesn't mean the US goes in to help every time.

Assad may have been killing his people, in this instance those that opposed his government (in the same way the US would do a similar thing were a violent rebellion to spring up), but at the time the US (Hilary and Obama incl) supported the rebels, many of whom ended up fracturing in to ISIS, despite the fact that Assad still had majority public support. The decision to back the rebels was a catastrophic failure, since it aided in prolonging the civil war, and essentially ended up creating ISIS. Had the rebel groups not had political and military backing from numerous other sides, Assad may have quashed them, or at least sooner rather than later.

And it's funny you talk about the opposing strategy being an idealist leftist isolationist agenda, when the opposite in my mind is akin to murderous madness.

To go through a few of your other points.

What's cold hearted to me is directly or indirectly being responsible for killing or displacing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, which is exactly what US foreign policy on Iraq, Libya, Syria, Palestine etc has directly or indirectly enabled.

How about where the policies of taking out dictators got you? Or did you forget that this all started with the power vacuum that was left behind by ousting Saddam, based on an illegal war promoted through lies and false intelligence (a war which Hillary supported), that cost trillions of dollars of US tax payer money, and hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. The region was further destabilised by what happened in Libya, and of course Syria too. But it pretty much all stems back to the catastrophic decision to go to war in Iraq, and get rid of Saddam.

But we can go further to track the madness of hawkish failing foreign policies from the US.

Who do you think put Saddam in power in the first place? Who do you think armed him with WMD's and didn't care when he was using them to mutual interest? That's right, the US.

Who do you think trained the Afghani's in terrorism tactics in the hopes that they might be useful against the soviets? Again, the US.

Who do you think allied with Gaddafi, and even used his institutions as secret torture facilities when it benefited them? The US.

How about the US's constant support of Israel and countless obstructionist votes in the UN, that have essentially allowed Israel to colonise and slowly wipe Palestine off the map, as well as uphold a brutal occupation?

The constant support, both political and military, of Saudi Arabia, that has led to further dangerous ramifications?

How about who was responsible for overthrowing the secular government in Iran in place of the Shah, simply because Iran wanted to nationalise their oil? Again, the US.

And just to put things in to greater topical perspective, in Iraq, there were zero suicide attacks in the country's history until 2003. Since then, there have been over 1,900. In Pakistan, there was one suicide attack in the 14 years before 9/11. In the fourteen years since, there have been over 490. United States foreign policy and military intervention continues to be one of the, if not the biggest indirect catalysts for terrorism out there.


There are so many more examples of how reckless, evil, damaging, and absolutely disgraceful US foreign policy has been over the years, especially in the Middle East (which is not to say certain other nations haven't also shared responsibility or had similarly reprehensible foreign policy), that I have to wonder how anyone could possibly actually be in favour of the status quo, or such repeated failing strategies.

Look you are preaching to the choir here. We are all liberals here. No one here is arguing that the Iraq War or the other Wars started by Republican Presidents was a good thing. Nor was the covert aid to dictators by Democrat Presidents. What we are saying is that blaming Hilary for the Iraq war and now Libya is disingenuous, and painting her as a hawk for trying to prevent massacres is even worse. Hilary voted for the Iraq war along with Joe Biden, John Kerry, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and John Edwards. Basically along with the democrat leadership in the Senate. And why wouldn't they? When someone as decorated and respected as Collin Powell goes to bat for the President, you have to set aside politics and work with the President. It turned out to be faulty intelligence, but they had the right reasons.

I also think it's disingenuous for you to blame the suicide bombings in Pakistan and various other arab countries on u.s foreign policies. It absolves Pakistani and Saudi terrorists of masterminding and executing 9/11 and puts the blame squarely on the shoulder of U.S because they once trained Afghan rebels + Osama's crew a couple of decades ago. Why not blame Pakistan for supporting terrorist organizations for half a century? Why not blame the Sunnis and Shias in Iraq for not getting along like normal human beings? I grew up in Pakistan and while there were secretarian clashes every few years, my best friend was Shia and we all lived together peacefully. Also, let's not pretend that ISIS wasn't welcomed with open arms in some Iraqi cities and that cowardly Iraqi soldiers didnt leave their post letting ISIS take over Iraq with absolutely no fightback. Let's not put all the blame on the white man and take some responsibility.

Lastly, the reason why I dont buy that Hilary is war mongering hawk like Bush is because she's still married to Bill. Bill did not intervene in Rwanda, and watched in horror as hundreds of thousands of civilians were massacred. And when he did intervene in Somalia and Bosnia, it was at a very small scale and did not prevent massacres or deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. Now Hilary is her own woman, but I refuse to believe that she will go off starting wars like Bush just because she advocated for 'helping' the rebels oust a dictator the ENTIRE world including European and Arabic countries agreed had to go. There were no U.S boots on the ground, no U.S casualties and we got rid of Gaddafi for a billion compared to the trillion it cost to oust Saddam. I'd say she did a much better job than Bush on that front.

Now did it work out for the best? Of course not. Is Hillary the only one to blame? Of course not. We did the right thing with the right intentions, and tried our best not to repeat the mistakes of the Iraq war, and we still failed because the Libyans did not come together to form a union. In fact, there wouldn't a Benghazi tragedy if Chris Stevens wasn't there working to eliminate ISIS.

The best example I can give of U.S non-intervention is Syria. Obama did not want to get involved and allowed Assad to brutally massacre his own people including using Chemical Weapons. Hundreds of thousands of people. It also created ISIS. That's the cost of inaction. That's what happens when you dont intervene. I am with you that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq. But helping Libyan civilians was the humane thing to do and the entire world was for it. Not just Hilary the Hawk.
 

noshten

Member

Mael

Member
Lastly, the reason why I dont buy that Hilary is war mongering hawk like Bush is because she's still married to Bill. Bill did not intervene in Rwanda,

Man fuck Bill, we could be talking about how the US fucked up Rwanda instead of this blemish smearing the French Army!

The US is in the business of choosing winners and looser on a global scale for example - much is made of the genocidal leaning of Gaddafi, while little is made of Turkey and how the Kurds have been killed in the last 5 years under Erdogan. But he is a dictator who the West likes, certain freedom fighters deemed OK to support while others deemed terrorists?

http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/20...ey/472122/?utm_source=SFTwitter#disqus_thread
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33690060

Yes, of course the US should intervene in a NATO nation and destabilize the government.

Did I end up posting in Bizarro Gaf from bizarro world or something?
 
No fly zones are aggressive and violent man.

Huge proportions of the Syrian population supported Assad before things got really bad. A huge proportion of the Syrian population still support him and far more believe him to be the best on a list of terrible choices. What do you propose American military might would do about that?



The US has been involved directly and indirectly from the get go.



One of the many tragedies of the US is that as a superpower, mere rhetoric from the country bolsters one side in a civil war more than active material support from other countries.

And as params7 points out the US has been providing material support in every way except direct military intervention from the start to one side in the civil war.

And don't forget that in picking a side in Syria the US put itself on the side of the terrible Gulf states at the regional level with all the terrible ramifications of that to boot.


A large part of the population went to government held areas, but at the same time 4 million people are not even in the country anymore and a large part of that was before ISIS started to become a much more powerful faction and it's own faction in Syria which was around late 2013-2014.

US was not direct or indirectly from the getgo. The US and some European nations supplied the rebels with none lethal support after a year. Around 2013 the US trained a quite a few rebel groups to use TOW missiles, and those rarely fell into extremist and ISIS hands( of course you are going to see ISIS or jihadists use them a few times, but the numbers are insignificant) . CIA also supplied thousands of rebels in the Southern Front( which borders Jordan and only a small part of the country ) whom didn't even have a ISIS front anyway so very few of them went to ISIS. The support that US gave to the rebels is a drop in the water to what the supplies the government gave up and what Turkey and the Gulf nations give.

Hillary was right in the sense that if we supported the rebels from the getgo then the war probably wouldn't have last as long as it did, but there were many jihadists and Islamist that was streaming into the country in 2011-2013 to fight against the government, but Obama didn't want to risk it and many assumed that the government will fall. Although, it didn't in large part to what some say was because of Iranian-backing.


Spending $500 million in training and equipping rebels and mercenaries sent from the Gulf states.

If that is providing no material support - then I'd like to know what qualifies as providing material support.

Here you go again with the misleading bullshit the program was strictly for fighting ISIS and those troops were deployed from Turkey so they had no choice besides to fight ISIS, but some of them got captured, a lot didn't join in the first place, management was pretty bad because it was a DoD thing and therefore was separated from the CIA program, and so the program failed because it was crappy. The US had more success with creating the SDF and then incorporating the trained individuals that did survive to the SDF.
 

Pedrito

Member
The US is in the business of choosing winners and looser on a global scale for example - much is made of the genocidal leaning of Gaddafi, while little is made of Turkey and how the Kurds have been killed in the last 5 years under Erdogan. But he is a dictator who the West likes, certain freedom fighters deemed OK to support while others deemed terrorists?

http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/20...ey/472122/?utm_source=SFTwitter#disqus_thread
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33690060

The comparaison would work better if the US had invaded a peaceful Libya to oust Gaddafi out of the blue because they felt like it.

Also, the Kurds are seen positively by the US and the West in general. I'm sure they're not thrilled by what Erdogan is doing.

If you want to point out real western hypocrisy, just point at Saudi Arabia.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
The US is in the business of choosing winners and looser on a global scale for example - much is made of the genocidal leaning of Gaddafi, while little is made of Turkey and how the Kurds have been killed in the last 5 years under Erdogan. But he is a dictator who the West likes, certain freedom fighters deemed OK to support while others deemed terrorists?

http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/20...ey/472122/?utm_source=SFTwitter#disqus_thread
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33690060

Sorry, but Erdogan is not a dictator. He was elected by the people of Turkey FOUR times as the Prime Minister and now the President. Maybe you should blame the people of Turkey for electing such a corrupt politicians and a despicable human being instead of U,S for supporting probably the only true secular Muslim country in the world.
 

Mael

Member
That's one problem we've never had and the reason I can't buy into the "country would have gone to hell anyway" excuse.

Or you can open a history book and check on the World wars, or Yugoslavia or other random conflicts where the US arrived late at the party.
 
There are countless dictators, war lords and groups that go around killing hundreds or thousands of innocent people, doesn't mean the US goes in to help every time.

Assad may have been killing his people, in this instance those that opposed his government (in the same way the US would do a similar thing were a violent rebellion to spring up), but at the time the US (Hilary and Obama incl) supported the rebels, many of whom ended up fracturing in to ISIS, despite the fact that Assad still had majority public support. The decision to back the rebels was a catastrophic failure, since it aided in prolonging the civil war, and essentially ended up creating ISIS. Had the rebel groups not had political and military backing from numerous other sides, Assad may have quashed them, or at least sooner rather than later.

And it's funny you talk about the opposing strategy being an idealist leftist isolationist agenda, when the opposite in my mind is akin to murderous madness.

To go through a few of your other points.



What's cold hearted to me is directly or indirectly being responsible for killing or displacing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, which is exactly what US foreign policy on Iraq, Libya, Syria, Palestine etc has directly or indirectly enabled.



How about where the policies of taking out dictators got you? Or did you forget that this all started with the power vacuum that was left behind by ousting Saddam, based on an illegal war promoted through lies and false intelligence (a war which Hillary supported), that cost trillions of dollars of US tax payer money, and hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. The region was further destabilised by what happened in Libya, and of course Syria too. But it pretty much all stems back to the catastrophic decision to go to war in Iraq, and get rid of Saddam.

But we can go further to track the madness of hawkish failing foreign policies from the US.

Who do you think put Saddam in power in the first place? Who do you think armed him with WMD's and didn't care when he was using them to mutual interest? That's right, the US.

Who do you think trained the Afghani's in terrorism tactics in the hopes that they might be useful against the soviets? Again, the US.

Who do you think allied with Gaddafi, and even used his institutions as secret torture facilities when it benefited them? The US.

How about the US's constant support of Israel and countless obstructionist votes in the UN, that have essentially allowed Israel to colonise and slowly wipe Palestine off the map, as well as uphold a brutal occupation?

The constant support, both political and military, of Saudi Arabia, that has led to further dangerous ramifications?

How about who was responsible for overthrowing the secular government in Iran in place of the Shah, simply because Iran wanted to nationalise their oil? Again, the US.

And just to put things in to greater topical perspective, in Iraq, there were zero suicide attacks in the country's history until 2003. Since then, there have been over 1,900. In Pakistan, there was one suicide attack in the 14 years before 9/11. In the fourteen years since, there have been over 490. United States foreign policy and military intervention continues to be one of the, if not the biggest indirect catalysts for terrorism out there.


There are so many more examples of how reckless, evil, damaging, and absolutely disgraceful US foreign policy has been over the years, especially in the Middle East (which is not to say certain other nations haven't also shared responsibility or had similarly reprehensible foreign policy), that I have to wonder how anyone could possibly actually be in favour of the status quo, or such repeated failing strategies.

Really Really sick of that shit these random justifications people use. Just because Obama wanted to do it doesn't make it right either.
 

noshten

Member
The comparaison would work better if the US had invaded a peaceful Libya to oust Gaddafi out of the blue because they felt like it.

Also, the Kurds are seen positively by the US and the West in general. I'm sure they're not thrilled by what Erdogan is doing.

If you want to point out real western hypocrisy, just point at Saudi Arabia.


Sorry, but Erdogan is not a dictator. He was elected by the people of Turkey FOUR times as the Prime Minister and now the President. Maybe you should blame the people of Turkey for electing such a corrupt politicians and a despicable human being instead of U,S for supporting probably the only true secular Muslim country in the world.

I could point to Saudi Arabia, but Ergdogan is far better comparison in the current situation and very little pressure is being applied to him.

- Press freedom undermined:

Reporters Without Borders has in its 2015 World Press Freedom Index ranked Turkey as 149 out of 180 countries, which is an improvement on the three previous years, when it ranked 154. However, this was due to the conditional release of 40 imprisoned journalists, who nonetheless continued to face prosecution. Turkey’s situation as a whole - when you consider such areas as cyber-censorship, lawsuits, dismissals of critical journalists and gag orders – actually worsened.

Journalists and media organisations have been physically attacked. Ahead of last November’s elections last year, a mob with alleged connections to the AKP’s youth branch attacked the offices of Dogan Media Group in Istanbul in September, which houses the secular daily Hürriyet, its English-language edition Hürriyet Daily News and another daily Radikal.

In October, Ahmet Hakan, a Hürriyet columnist and TV talk show host, was attacked by four men outside his home after leaving the studio.

Friday’s assault on Zaman’s offices followed the same pattern as October’s police raid on the offices of the Koza Ipek Media Group, which owned two newspapers and two TV stations. The court-appointed trustees have just closed both the TV stations and the newspapers.

Turkey’s Scarlet Pimpernel, the whistleblower Fuat Avni, who has predicted the AKP government’s moves with uncanny accuracy, tweeted on Thursday that President Erdogan had ordered the takeover of the Feza Media Group with the definite intention of silencing Zaman. After the Constitutional Court ruling which freed two journalists, Erdogan has made it clear he has no respect for the rule of law in Turkey, although the freedom of the press is safeguarded by several articles of the constitution.

- Judicial, Police and Opposition suppression and elimination:

The background to Erdogan’s frenzied actions is the probe into government corruption launched by Istanbul prosecutors and police in December 2013. Erdogan called this probe “a judicial coup” masterminded by a reclusive imam, Fethullah Gülen, resident in Pennsylvania.

The Gülen movement, which promotes interfaith dialogue, is believed to have some five million followers and controls a network of schools and universities in more than 100 countries. It also has many followers in the Turkish judiciary and police.

Consequently, Erdogan set about a purge of thousands of police officers and hundreds of judges and prosecutors. This witch-hunt has also extended to the civil service. A recent circular issued by the Prime Ministry calls for civil servants to be dismissed from their positions if they are suspected to be members of “illegal structures and organisations disguised as legal ones”.

Erdogan’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has even accused all three opposition parties represented in parliament of being illegal political parties “disguised as legal”.

The witch-hunt includes media groups as well as businessmen suspected of being members of what the AKP government calls FETO (The Fethullahist Terrorist Organisation). Ironically, it was Gülen’s cadres that helped Erdogan come to power - but after the revelations of widespread corruption in AKP circles, Gülen has become Erdogan’s arch-enemy.

There are rumblings of a split in the AKP, where former prominent members might form a new party to challenge Erdogan’s domination.

In the meantime, as Turkish novelist Elif Shafak wrote last week, a climate of intimidation and paranoia dominates the country – a country which is under the thrall of what opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu called “a tinpot dictator”.

- Treatment of Kurds:

The British based human rights group Amnesty International has strongly condemned Turkey’s crackdown on Kurdish rebels, accusing the government of collective punishment against the people living in the predominantly Kurdish southeast.

Amnesty International’s report accuses Turkish security forces of using reckless force with little disregard for civilians lives in military operations against the Kurdish rebel group the PKK.

Amnesty Turkey researcher Andrew Gardner says the situation is alarming.

"What we have seen, people who killed who are clearly not fighters, old people, young children, these killings are perpetrated by state forces either of which is targeted or in a way which is reckless," he said.

The Amnesty report condemned the widespread use of 24 hour curfews imposed across much of the predominantly Kurdish southeast, in many cases lasting for weeks. Amnesty’s Gardner says the report calls the curfews collective punishment.

Impact on people's lives

"The impact on the ordinary people living in these areas is in immense, people unable to access emergency health care, not even able to leave their house to get their food, severe cuts to water including drinking water, and electricity. Really a situation which amounts to collective punishment against the tens and thousands of people living in these areas," he said.

Ankara insists all is being done to insure civilian safety, and that it has the right to fight to terrorism. The PKK is designated as a terrorist organization by both Washington and the European Union. Amnesty International also criticized the failure of the international community to sufficiently condemn the ongoing operations.

I have seen the authoritarian move of Erdogan as well as his attack on the secular Turkish State and I find it deeply troubling. I also view the west complicit inactivity in the matter as a huge problem because it does present an obvious double standard and allows the situation to get out of control.
 

Mael

Member
I could point to Saudi Arabia, but Ergdogan is far better comparison in the current situation and very little pressure is being applied to him.

- Press freedom undermined:



- Judicial, Police and Opposition suppression and elimination:



- Treatment of Kurds:



I have seen the authoritarian move of Erdogan as well as his attack on the secular Turkish State and I find it deeply troubling. I also view the west complicit inactivity in the matter as a huge problem because it does present an obvious double standard and allows the situation to get out of control.

So you're going to point to other NATO countries and say how it's hypocritical that the US isn't toppling these governments too?
 
Or you can open a history book and check on the World wars, or Yugoslavia or other random conflicts where the US arrived late at the party.

Somehow, maybe you can explain to me how engaging in one war justifies engagement in another? Or are WW1 and Libya the same? The 200+ conflicts the US has engaged in since WWII have largely been about regime change and special interests, not humanitarian efforts. But let's pretend for a second that US policy-makers mean well and just don't know how to pilot this big clumsy war machine. How does the complete demolishment of a nation help anyone but the terrorists we claim to want gone?
 

Mael

Member
Somehow, maybe you can explain to me how engaging in one war justifies engagement in another? Or are WW1 and Libya the same? The 200+ conflicts the US has engaged in since WWII have largely been about regime change and special interests, not humanitarian efforts. But let's pretend for a second that US policy-makers mean well and just don't know how to pilot this big clumsy war machine. How does the complete demolishment of a nation help anyone but the terrorists we claim to want gone?

the quote you replied to emphasized how the US was never criticized for not intervening in a war or something.
That's patently not true, their late involvement in both World War resulted in a death toll significantly higher.
You cannot use shitty policies to dictate that the US should be isolationist in the same way you cannot use good policies to dictate that the US should intervene everywhere all the time.
There's such a thing as a middle ground.
And I can't believe anyone is actually serious in implying that if the US was consistent it should do something about a key nation in NATO.
In the same way how deep your head is in your ass if you blame the whole Libya affair solely on US foreign policy.
WIth or without the US, Gaddaffi was going down fast.
 

Azih

Member
When someone as decorated and respected as Collin Powell goes to bat for the President, you have to set aside politics and work with the President. It turned out to be faulty intelligence, but they had the right reasons.
I disagree with that completely and absolutely. Their job wasn't to go moon eyed and fanboy/girl over Colin Powell but examine what he said. The WMD intelligence was shit. The UN inspectors found nothing. Hans Blix is the only person to come out of that insanity looking good.

I also think it's disingenuous for you to blame the suicide bombings in Pakistan and various other arab countries on u.s foreign policies. It absolves Pakistani and Saudi terrorists of masterminding and executing 9/11 and puts the blame squarely on the shoulder of U.S because they once trained Afghan rebels + Osama's crew a couple of decades ago.
There is plenty of blame to spread around. Blaming the US for the terrible things it has done does not absolve the terrible things Pakistan or Saudi have done. But we should never forget that the Bush administration did not even try to diplomatically get Bin Laden away from the Taliban, they wanted a war. And they turned a stable nation (terrible, horrible, ugly, backwards, oppressive but stable) into an unstable one (and just as terrible horribly ugly backwards and oppressive as before), and this instability in Afghanistan has destablized Pakistan. This is a fact. And it didn't even fucking get rid of the Taliban.

Why not blame the Sunnis and Shias in Iraq for not getting along like normal human beings?
The causes for this is the fallout from the end of the Ottaoman empire in WWI, Saddam Hussien's policies, the Gulf State's proxy war with Iran yes. But we shouldn't forget the most recent tipping point was Paul Bremer's insane strategy of Debaathification which left the Sunnis in Iraq feeling completely defenceless.

Let's not put all the blame on the white man and take some responsibility.
Not putting all the blame on the West is not the same as putting none of the blame on the West. Seems to me you're veering to much in the opposite direction.

The best example I can give of U.S non-intervention is Syria.
The US has been intervening in Syria from the start. As has Iran, as has Turkey, as have the Gulf states.

Seriously Slimy, what possible violent intervention do you think the U.S could have carried out that would have made the situation better? A huge proportion of Syrian citizens support Assad!. How the hell are so many people in this thread completely ignoring that fact? Intervention against Assad is also intervention against these civilians.

http://www.sott.net/article/313862-...Support-Assad-Reject-Phony-Foreign-Revolution

It's impossible to say now who Syrians support. But does anyone here not seriously think that a large proportion support Assad?

And frankly no one will ever know who was responsible for the chemical attacks. The fog of war is too deep.

Hillary was right in the sense that if we supported the rebels from the getgo then the war probably wouldn't have last as long as it did
Are you kidding me? The rebels were a splinter of the Syrian army with the rest of the Army fully supporting Assad. A majority of Syrians were SUPPORTING Assad until at least Jan 2012.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/17/syrians-support-assad-western-propaganda

And I would think (no proof) that the influx of Gulf state backed foreign jihadis was not seen as a good thing by the vast majority of Syrians.

No victory from the 'moderate rebels' would have been fast. And Gulf state backed jihadis streaming into the chaos was going to happen no matter what.

Edit: Just want to be clear that I know sott.net is in no way a reliable site. I'm just trying to demonstrate that the assumption that all Syrians hate Assad isn't one that holds any water. And if they don't all hate Assad (and they don't) then just going in like cowboys and killing the bad man in the black hat was never something that would work.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I could point to Saudi Arabia, but Ergdogan is far better comparison in the current situation and very little pressure is being applied to him.


I have seen the authoritarian move of Erdogan as well as his attack on the secular Turkish State and I find it deeply troubling. I also view the west complicit inactivity in the matter as a huge problem because it does present an obvious double standard and allows the situation to get out of control.
I have no idea what you guys want anymore lol. If we intervene, it's bad. If we dont intervene, its bad.

The guy has been elected by his people. his people have the power to recall him. His people like him. not all of them. turkey has the biggest collection of sane muslims in the world, and yet even they are ok with the guy doing all those things you listed above.

At some point, you have to respect the wishes of the people and pick your fights. we need Turkey in the fight against Syria and ISIS and we should let Turkish people decide if they want their rights taken away by people they have elected. They can always go and vote for the opposition in the next election.
 

Mael

Member
I have no idea what you guys want anymore lol. If we intervene, it's bad. If we dont intervene, its bad.

The guy has been elected by his people. his people have the power to recall him. His people like him. not all of them. turkey has the biggest collection of sane muslims in the world, and yet even they are ok with the guy doing all those things you listed above.

At some point, you have to respect the wishes of the people and pick your fights. we need Turkey in the fight against Syria and ISIS and we should let Turkish people decide if they want their rights taken away by people they have elected. They can always go and vote for the opposition in the next election.

Adn that's without going into how the US interfering with the internal politics of a NATO nation is all kinds of stupid.
 
the quote you replied to emphasized how the US was never criticized for not intervening in a war or something.
That's patently not true, their late involvement in both World War resulted in a death toll significantly higher.
You cannot use shitty policies to dictate that the US should be isolationist in the same way you cannot use good policies to dictate that the US should intervene everywhere all the time.
There's such a thing as a middle ground.
And I can't believe anyone is actually serious in implying that if the US was consistent it should do something about a key nation in NATO.
In the same way how deep your head is in your ass if you blame the whole Libya affair solely on US foreign policy.
WIth or without the US, Gaddaffi was going down fast.

Let me be clear. US-led NATO bombing is why Libya looks like Fallout and why refugees are pouring into neighboring nations. It is also why Sharia Law will likely spread throughout Libya and it too (like Syria) will end up a breeding ground for anti-American, anti-Western extremists. Libya is not better off now than before the US-led NATO bombing. Do you dispute this?
 

noshten

Member
So you're going to point to other NATO countries and say how it's hypocritical that the US isn't toppling these governments too?

I have no idea what you guys want anymore lol. If we intervene, it's bad. If we dont intervene, its bad.

The guy has been elected by his people. his people have the power to recall him. His people like him. not all of them. turkey has the biggest collection of sane muslims in the world, and yet even they are ok with the guy doing all those things you listed above.

At some point, you have to respect the wishes of the people and pick your fights. we need Turkey in the fight against Syria and ISIS and we should let Turkish people decide if they want their rights taken away by people they have elected. They can always go and vote for the opposition in the next election.

If I though toppling governments would improve the condition I wouldn't even be taking part in this thread. Please read my original post if you have questions on my position in this thread.
 

Mael

Member
Let me be clear. US-led NATO bombing is why Libya looks like Fallout and why refugees are pouring into neighboring nations. It is also why Sharia Law will likely spread throughout Libya and it too (like Syria) will end up a breeding ground for anti-American, anti-Western extremists. Libya is not better off now than before the US-led NATO bombing. Do you dispute this?
I dispute the US-led part.
It's pretty clear that it was going to happen with or without the US.
If they blame the US for a something the EU countries largely did, it's pretty fantastic for the EU countries foreign policies.
If I though toppling governments would improve the condition I wouldn't even be taking part in this thread. Please read my original post if you have questions on my position in this thread.
So you understand why Turkey is different than the other countries in Eurasia?
 
Going off a tangent.

This whole "Turkey supports ISIS" narrative is getting boring.

Turkey doesn't give a fuck about ISIS, just as every other state that's used them as puppets (including France, USA, England, Syria, Rissia, Saudi Arabia, etc..). Turkey's concern (and rightfully so BTW IMO) is the greater autonomy the Kurds have been getting throughout this war. Turkey sees the Kurds as the greater enemy, and thus they play their cards how they see best. If you want to know why Turkey thinks the greater enemy is the Kurds then see the 30 year civil war between Turkey and PKK (and allies)... thousands and thousands dead, massacred.

Ask yourself what a future middle-east would look like if Kurds got full autonomy in the region, it would truly be a shitfest with the neighbouring countries on ALL SIDES. USA knows this, which is why they can't fully support the YPG (the backbone of the SDF) considering they have connections to the PKK.

I want the Kurds to have their independence, autonomy and nation.. But it's just not gonna happen.
 

params7

Banned
Here you go again with the misleading bullshit the program was strictly for fighting ISIS and those troops were deployed from Turkey so they had no choice besides to fight ISIS, but some of them got captured, a lot didn't join in the first place, management was pretty bad because it was a DoD thing and therefore was separated from the CIA program, and so the program failed because it was crappy. The US had more success with creating the SDF and then incorporating the trained individuals that did survive to the SDF.


The White House apologist appears! Read my next post to this. U.S. did try to interfere wherever they could and its clear their participation only fueled the war.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I disagree with that completely and absolutely. Their job wasn't to go moon eyed and fanboy/girl over Colin Powell but examine what he said. The WMD intelligence was shit. The UN inspectors found nothing. Hans Blix is the only person to come out of that insanity looking good.

I agree, and lol I want to stress that I am with you guys on the Iraq war being a mistake. That said, I dont know who was on the Senate intelligence committee at the time and i was too young to remember if CIA and other U.S intelligence agencies were complicit. At the end of the day, even the senate committees relied on intel provided by u.s intelligence and if you can point to Hilary ignoring hard evidence provided by these agencies in favor of a war then I will concede.
There is plenty of blame to spread around. Blaming the US for the terrible things it has done does not absolve the terrible things Pakistan or Saudi have done. But we should never forget that the Bush administration did not even try to diplomatically get Bin Laden away from the Taliban, they wanted a war. And they turned a stable nation (terrible, horrible, ugly, backwards, oppressive but stable) into an unstable one (and just as terrible horribly ugly backwards and oppressive as before), and this instability in Afghanistan has destablized Pakistan. This is a fact. And it didn't even fucking get rid of the Taliban.

The U.S did ask Taliban to hand him over and they declined.
In 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden and expel al-Qaeda; bin Laden had already been wanted by the United Nations since 1999. The Taliban declined to extradite him unless given what they deemed convincing evidence of his involvement in the 9/11 attacks[38] and declined demands to extradite other terrorism suspects apart from bin Laden. The request was dismissed by the U.S. as a delaying tactic, and on 7 October 2001 it launched Operation Enduring Freedom with the United Kingdom.

Also, Pakistan is responsible for destabilizing Pakistan. You seem to very well versed in this subject so I am sure you know how ISI has cultivated and supported the Pakistani taliban and other terrorists groups.
Seriously Slimy, what possible violent intervention do you think the U.S could have carried out that would have made the situation better? A huge proportion of Syrian citizens support Assad!. How the hell are so many people in this thread completely ignoring that fact? Intervention against Assad is also intervention against these civilians.

It's impossible to say now who Syrians support. But does anyone here not seriously think that a large proportion support Assad?

And frankly no one will ever know who was responsible for the chemical attacks. The fog of war is too deep.

I am not saying that we should've gone into Syria. I was just pointing out that we did not go after Assad like Gaddaffi and it had even worse consequences. Chemical Weapons being used against civilians, hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, ISIS being formed, and Iraq getting overtaken by ISIS. So Obama did what you guys wanted him to do. Stay back, dont police the world and dont put U.S troops on the ground in another arab country. We tried sanctions, diplomatic pressure on Assad but he still murdered thousands of his own anyway.

The funny thing is that I agree that we shouldn't have intervened. Not even in the passive and indirect way Obama did by supporting the rebels. I am just saying that's the price we pay we for sitting back and not doing anything. ISIS attacked Paris and killed over a hundred civilians. They have inspired many others in the U.S to launch attacks on their behalf. I still think we should just let things play out in Syria, but what I dont agree with it is blaming Hilary and Obama for not doing enough/ or doing too much.
 
Are you kidding me? The rebels were a splinter of the Syrian army with the rest of the Army fully supporting Assad. A majority of Syrians were SUPPORTING Assad until at least Jan 2012.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/17/syrians-support-assad-western-propaganda

And I would think (no proof) that the influx of Gulf state backed foreign jihadis would have not been seen as a good thing by the vast majority of Syrians.

No victory from the 'moderate rebels' would have been fast. And Gulf state backed jihadis streaming into the chaos was going to happen no matter what.


Sorry but I am not going to take articles from opinion articles and random websites , especially websites that has extremely biased headlines. Try again.
Also you don't know what you are talking about when it comes to the rebels firstly you are talking about the FSA which was the deserters, but many of the rebels are Syrians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_opposition and the rebels are formed of many different groups some of whom are foreigners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_groups_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War#Free_Syrian_Army


Jihadists have been going to Syria for a long time and SA has very little to do with it in terms of jihadists arriving to fight the government.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-in-syria-grow-as-radicals-rally-to-the-fight
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/07/26/228473.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/30/syria-foreign-jihadists-aleppo-al-qaida
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/23/syria-foreign-fighters-joining-war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_rebel_fighters_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War#cite_note-wi-3
 

Macam

Banned
I'm not sure why people are bringing up Reddit so much in this thread

As I've said before, there's a subset of NeoGAF that frequents Reddit, hates the shittiness of wherever on there they go there, and have, without a hint of irony, decided to bring that same shittiness to NeoGAF. I don't know why, but it makes for great straw man arguments and derailing.

Also, we already had this Libya discussion. I think there are plenty of valid critiques about the whole thing, but I think it's a little much to dump this all on Clinton's lap, or to say it was necessarily the wrong thing to do (not a Clinton fan btw, so save your ire for HilGAF).

Humanitarian intervention, in my view, is not inherently bad, but it must be coupled with a longer term, coherent plan. We really didn't do that and, while Libya isn't Iraq, it's not too dissimilar from the approach taken there.
 

Kite

Member
I'm not sure why people are bringing up Reddit so much in this thread. What relevance does that have on Hillary's foreign policy?
It's used to deflect criticism and derail conversation. Go look at the tumblr shoplifting thread for more examples.
 

Azih

Member
The U.S did ask Taliban to hand him over and they declined.
The US issued an ultimatium, the Taliban tried to neogtiate, the US said fuck you to that and HERE WE ARE. This is not diplomacy. And what's the consequence? Afghanistan is still shit and Pakistan is way shittier than it was before.

Also, Pakistan is responsible for destabilizing Pakistan. You seem to very well versed in this subject so I am sure you know how ISI has cultivated and supported the Pakistani taliban and other terrorists groups.
I'm from Pakistan and I'm very well aware that Pakistan was way better off before 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan than it is now. There is a clear link here Slimy. Also the ISI cultivate the Afghani Taliban which aren't the same as the Pakistani Taliban. The Pakistani Taliban's attacks make it harder for the ISI to support the Afghani Tablian and the Afghani Taliban are pretty unhappy with their Pakistani counterparts because of that. Anyway interesting tangents aside my point isn't to defend Pakistan for anything. It's just to point out that there's a hell of a lot of blame to spread around and treating Pakistan as the scape goat to end all scape goats is dishonest and isn't an accurate reflection of reality.

what I dont agree with it is blaming Hilary and Obama for not doing enough/ or doing too much.

My point here isn't to blame Hilary for everything. That's a strawman some are raising here. My point is that Hilary's foreign policy instincts are terrible and she's a hawk based on her positions. Hell if she lives up to her hawkish rhetoric on Iran one of the greatest FP achievements of Obama, starting to break the vice like grip Saudi has over US Middle Eastern policy, will be rolled back.
 

davepoobond

you can't put a price on sparks
Those are bad and I don't back them, but you're bringing in policies about interrogation of suspects in terrorism charges in a topic about policies which impact millions of people and their nations. Priorities.

I'm not going to back a candidate who is going to slam Trump on waterboarding, only to turn around and declare war in Middle East resulting in more suicide bombing, destruction of civil life, spread of Salafist extremism and death and destruction all around. So candidates saying we shouldn't go fight these wars should get credit.

that's assuming a lot. there's a reason why i didn't include "build a wall and make a trade war with China" -- THOSE aren't related.

its wishful thinking to think that imposing a ban on Muslims doesnt effect millions of people. Its also an outright ban on refugees from half of the world. Trump is also on a warpath when it comes to ISIS, and who knows what that really means when you "bomb the hell out of them" and that's assuming he doesnt fly off the handle elsewhere.

openly accepting torture also has an effect on perception around the world. blaming Clinton 100% for Libya is a tortured look at the situation and accepts a lot of the Republican fairy tale.
 

Abounder

Banned
Hillary laughing about her warmongering is a bad look as well, not exactly presidential material there. She's very experienced which basically amounts to namedropping like no other candidate, but she seemingly learned nothing from all the unintended consequences in Libya/Iraq/etc other than to try & try again. USA and Co. needs to leave the Bay of Pigs and Kissinger ideas in wargames, it takes too many casualties to nation-build countries like a South Korea.
 
Trash articles like this and the people who perpetuate them are why there's so many folks on the internet who'll vote Trump in the GE. I can't even blame the people who see Hillary as a secret conservative, because they're constantly fed stupid bullshit like this.

There are solutions for this you know... Hillary should not be so hawkish or the Democratic party should not push her down our throats.

If the Democrats lose the general election, it's their fault.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
It's strange to see otherwise progressive people advocate and defend imperialism.

Nah, we are just pragmatic. Sometimes you have to suck it up and know that if you do the progressive thing and stay out of it, hundreds of thousands of people will die. None of us here want to police the world. We aren't republicans. Obama and Hillary dont want to police the world, but they are pragmatic leaders who know that sometimes it's necessary to get your hands dirty to do the right thing.

if you want people who stick to their principles no matter what, go vote for Ron Paul and Tea Party Republicans.
 
The White House apologist appears! Read my next post to this. U.S. did try to interfere wherever they could and its clear their participation only fueled the war.

I'm a white house apologist that you end up correcting yourself after I corrected you about the Syrian conflict and ISIS? So what are you a Putin and Trump dick rider now?Lmao, no. I like to correct foolish statements in an area I know something about in comparison to people who just read headlines and sprout ignorance about a conflict they just got into in the last few months. I don't see how I am one when I only corrected you about stuff no different from you trying to explain the actions of Putin.

US was not direct or indirectly from the getgo. The US and some European nations supplied the rebels with none lethal support after a year. Around 2013 the US trained a quite a few rebel groups to use TOW missiles, and those rarely fell into extremist and ISIS hands( of course you are going to see ISIS or jihadists use them a few times, but the numbers are insignificant) . CIA also supplied thousands of rebels in the Southern Front( which borders Jordan and only a small part of the country ) whom didn't even have a ISIS front anyway so very few of them went to ISIS. The support that US gave to the rebels is a drop in the water to what the supplies the government gave up and what Turkey and the Gulf nations give.

Hillary was right in the sense that if we supported the rebels from the getgo then the war probably wouldn't have last as long as it did, but there were many jihadists and Islamist that was streaming into the country in 2011-2013 to fight against the government, but Obama didn't want to risk it and many assumed that the government will fall. Although, it didn't in large part to what some say was because of Iranian-backing.

If you going to say I am wrong about something then go ahead because I already explained that . The US barely fueled the war in comparison to what the Gulf nations, Turkey, Syrian government, Russians, and the Iranians did. You can talk about how those last two are supporting the legitimate government that doesn't control more than 30% of it's territory, but no one can't ignore the fact by fighting the rebels the Iranian government used their own military and used Shiites militias to fight a mostly Sunni rebel groups those making it more of a international sectarian war and the Russians who bomb and kill many civilians and supports the government that is very unpopular worldwide, if drone strikes are bad than how is this better if at all?

With the government also conducting mass barrel bombings which kill innocents as well and is known to torture mass numbers of people and I'm sure you can come up with how the Gulf nations and Turkey made it bad to, but how is the US is the one the fueling the war? You think the actions that those other countries don't perpetuate the war at all and don't cause resentment and hatred in the ME as a whole? You don't think that Russians and Iranians actions somehow doesn't cause many Arab nations to escalate the war in Syria? Like I said the US didn't do shit in comparison to what the Gulf nations, Turkey, what the government, Iranians, or the Russians did themselves.
If the government and others like Russia is trying to unite the country they are doing a poor job.
 

Azih

Member
Sorry but I am not going to take articles from opinion articles and random websites , especially websites that has extremely biased headlines. Try again.
Hey you're going to dismiss any source I post. That's fine but the basic point remains.

An incredibly large proportion of Syrians support Assad. Are you honestly denying that?

Also you don't know what you are talking about when it comes to the rebels firstly you are talking about the FSA which was the deserters, but many of the rebels are Syrians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_opposition and the rebels are formed of many different groups some of whom are foreigners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_groups_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War#Free_Syrian_Army
None of that refutes any of what I've said. The FSA was the only rebel group that had any hope of replacing Assad and keeping control of the nation and even they would never have won quickly no matter what the US did

The idea that if the US/West had just done something differently the rebels would have quickly ousted Assad is ridiculous. There was no such something because of the massive amount of support for Assad from the civilian population and the armed forces of the country. Any rebel success was always going to lead to a long terrible civil war and foreign jihadis streaming in.

Jihadists have been going to Syria for a long time and SA has very little to do with it in terms of jihadists arriving to fight the government.
Oh please. The Gulf states are throwing all of their influence into fighting 'Shias' in Syria. Just like the Turks are throwing as much as they can into fighting Kurds in Syria.

So here's my three points.

  • An incredibly large proportion of Syrians support Assad
  • Because of this there was nothing the West could have done that would have led to a quick ouster of Assad
  • Hillary's foreign policy doesn't seem to acknowledge any of this. She's a hawk with a capital H

http://www.thenation.com/article/in...on-on-iran-policy-sanders-is-right-heres-why/
 
I'm not sure why people are bringing up Reddit so much in this thread. What relevance does that have on Hillary's foreign policy?

Deflection. Salon is opposite of Reddit in many respects and everyone knows this. That both demographics disagree with Hillary on this says a lot.
 
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