fanaskin
Well known agitator
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War with Syria
- Thread starter AladainAF
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
What? No.
A euphemism is not fallacious in and of itself. It is simply the use of a less offensive term in a phrase that might otherwise contain a derogatory, profane or 'naughty' word or phrase. Example: "Don't listen to Tom, he's a little light in the loafers." Now, that may well be a core part of presenting a fallacious argument but the euphemism itself is not a part of the fallacy and one can certainly use euphemisms within a valid series of statements.
A dysphemism is indeed the opposite and we use them a lot on the tubes. Basically any time you sub in a derogatory word for effect rather than just as a slur, it is a dysphemism. E.G.: "Tummy is not so bad for a pig."
Erronius
<WoW Guild Officer>
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What if I start pulling quotes from books I have at my side and type them out? I mean, you could still just refute any and all counterarguments, so I'm honestly not sure it's even worth it. What's even worse about the entire debate is that honestly, without the Israelis themselves volunteering particularly damning information (never going to happen), there simply won't ever be enough evidence to sway anyone who is already skeptical that it was anything more than an accident or the result of gross negligence.
From "James Scott: The Attack on the Liberty" pp 84 - 86
===========================
===========================
Now don't ask me why they were running a nuclear weapons drill with actual nuclear weapons and not dummies, you would probably have to ask a squid.
TrollfaceDeux
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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fanaskin
Well known agitator
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It's Israel that is causing the violence you dumb mother fucker, not the other way around. They invaded a land that does not belong to them and you expect everyone to just "get over it" or something? Wow you're fucking stupid.All this is a fucking distraction anyway. Araysar and many others try and use the USS Liberty as proof that Israel is evil or anti the US. That shit occurred in 1967 during the Six day war and pales in comparison to all the shitty things the countries around Israel have done to us.
The relationship between the US and Israel is much better than it was at the time and Israel is the only bright light in a sea of shitty anti-US countries in the middle east (well, lebanon isn't too bad). Yes, Israel has some radical religious problems. However, they fucking pale in comparison to any of its neighbors. I'm proud to be an ally of Israel, our only friend (though often a troublesome one) in the Middle East. The hatred of Israel by so many in the US saddens me. If we were surrounded by countries filled with religious fanatics that would rather die than live in peace with us, I hope we would be as restrained as Israel has been.
They make us look like shit on the world stage.
I guess we are comfortable bed fellows.
hodj
Vox Populi Jihadi
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In the context of debate, using euphemistic terms is a fallacy. Which was what I said.
Stop being an idiot, I got an A in syllogistic logic I don't need you to educate me on what a fallacy is.
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/s...html#euphemism
http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/i...otive-language
Siddar
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Quote Originally Posted by khalid View Post
I could cherrypick quotes from the wiki also and claim you need to educate yourself on the other end. Just remember, Lumie is on your side with this one. Think on that.
What if I start pulling quotes from books I have at my side and type them out? I mean, you could still just refute any and all counterarguments, so I'm honestly not sure it's even worth it. What's even worse about the entire debate is that honestly, without the Israelis themselves volunteering particularly damning information (never going to happen), there simply won't ever be enough evidence to sway anyone who is already skeptical that it was anything more than an accident or the result of gross negligence.
Quote Originally Posted by Zhaun View Post
We had a thread on FoH about the USS Liberty. I specifically remember reading in several places and watching in a few videos government and navy people at the time saying that nuclear armed aircraft from the US Fleet were ready to go nuke Cairo when the USS Liberty was sunk, initially thinking it was a preemptive Egyptian attack. The thinking being at the time this was just another USA vs. USSR proxy war in the larger Cold War.
From "James Scott: The Attack on the Liberty" pp 84 - 86
On the bridge of the AMERICA, Captain Donald Engen chatted with NBC News reporter Robert Goralski. Engen's 77,000 ton carrier - completed less than 3 years earlier at a cost of $293 million - had become a temporary home for as many as 30 reporters from major television networks, wire services, and newspapers, all eager to cover the events of the Middle East war. When the Combat Information Center alerted Engen of the attack over the squawk box, the skipper ordered the reporter off the bridge. News of the attack had come at an inopportune time. Not only did reporters swarm the carrier, but the AMERICA also was in the middle of a nuclear weapons drill. The drill required sailors to bring nuclear weapons up the bomb elevators and simulate arming the planes. Not until the weapons could be safely stored belowdecks and planes rearmed with conventional munitions could the AMERICA launch, a process Engen estimated could take approximately one hour.
The SARATOGA's communication's officer personally delivered the news of the attack to Captain Joseph Tully, Jr., on the bridge of that carrier soon after the radioman picked up the Liberty's distress calls. Unlike the AMERICA, the SARATOGA had a strike group ready within minutes. Tully would later write that he immediately turned into the wind and launched fighters only to have his superiors order him moments later to recall the fighters and wait for the AMERICA.
===========================
"We are on the way," the AMERICA's flight leader announced over the departure frequency. "Who is the enemy?"
No one knew. The LIBERTY had not identified the nationality of the attackers in its distress calls. Many of the senior commanders, who had monitored the Soviet fleet for days off Crete, doubted the USSR had done it but could not rule out Egypt. Because Egypt was allied with the Soviets, Navy commanders had to be careful. The officers wanted to protect the LIBERTY without provoking a larger confrontation with another country. Even the small number of planes launched was designed to signal that purpose. [4 A-1s from SARATOGA, 4 (?) A-4s from AMERICA]
===========================
[Vice Admiral William] Martin waited for his fighters to reach the LIBERTY. The SARATOGA had estimated its propeller driven Skyraiders would take approximately 3 hours to cover the distance to the battered spy ship. Martin had told his superiors that he expected the faster jets to arrive in half that time. Soon after the fighters left the carriers, a flash message from the American naval attache in Tel Aviv rolled off the ship's teletype. "Israeli aircraft and MTB's [Motor Torpedo Boats] erroneously attacked U.S. ship," Commander Ernest Castle wrote in the 4:14 PM message. "IDF helicopters in rescue operations. No other info. Israelis send abject apologies and request info of other US ships near war zone coasts." The admission that Israel had attacked the LIBERTY by mistake changed everything. The assault was over. Fighters were no longer needed. Martin ordered the mission aborted before the planes ever reached the LIBERTY: "Recall all strikes repeat recall all strikes."
Now don't ask me why they were running a nuclear weapons drill with actual nuclear weapons and not dummies, you would probably have to ask a squid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Compare the above with Araysars nutcase source.
I could cherrypick quotes from the wiki also and claim you need to educate yourself on the other end. Just remember, Lumie is on your side with this one. Think on that.
What if I start pulling quotes from books I have at my side and type them out? I mean, you could still just refute any and all counterarguments, so I'm honestly not sure it's even worth it. What's even worse about the entire debate is that honestly, without the Israelis themselves volunteering particularly damning information (never going to happen), there simply won't ever be enough evidence to sway anyone who is already skeptical that it was anything more than an accident or the result of gross negligence.
Quote Originally Posted by Zhaun View Post
We had a thread on FoH about the USS Liberty. I specifically remember reading in several places and watching in a few videos government and navy people at the time saying that nuclear armed aircraft from the US Fleet were ready to go nuke Cairo when the USS Liberty was sunk, initially thinking it was a preemptive Egyptian attack. The thinking being at the time this was just another USA vs. USSR proxy war in the larger Cold War.
From "James Scott: The Attack on the Liberty" pp 84 - 86
On the bridge of the AMERICA, Captain Donald Engen chatted with NBC News reporter Robert Goralski. Engen's 77,000 ton carrier - completed less than 3 years earlier at a cost of $293 million - had become a temporary home for as many as 30 reporters from major television networks, wire services, and newspapers, all eager to cover the events of the Middle East war. When the Combat Information Center alerted Engen of the attack over the squawk box, the skipper ordered the reporter off the bridge. News of the attack had come at an inopportune time. Not only did reporters swarm the carrier, but the AMERICA also was in the middle of a nuclear weapons drill. The drill required sailors to bring nuclear weapons up the bomb elevators and simulate arming the planes. Not until the weapons could be safely stored belowdecks and planes rearmed with conventional munitions could the AMERICA launch, a process Engen estimated could take approximately one hour.
The SARATOGA's communication's officer personally delivered the news of the attack to Captain Joseph Tully, Jr., on the bridge of that carrier soon after the radioman picked up the Liberty's distress calls. Unlike the AMERICA, the SARATOGA had a strike group ready within minutes. Tully would later write that he immediately turned into the wind and launched fighters only to have his superiors order him moments later to recall the fighters and wait for the AMERICA.
===========================
"We are on the way," the AMERICA's flight leader announced over the departure frequency. "Who is the enemy?"
No one knew. The LIBERTY had not identified the nationality of the attackers in its distress calls. Many of the senior commanders, who had monitored the Soviet fleet for days off Crete, doubted the USSR had done it but could not rule out Egypt. Because Egypt was allied with the Soviets, Navy commanders had to be careful. The officers wanted to protect the LIBERTY without provoking a larger confrontation with another country. Even the small number of planes launched was designed to signal that purpose. [4 A-1s from SARATOGA, 4 (?) A-4s from AMERICA]
===========================
[Vice Admiral William] Martin waited for his fighters to reach the LIBERTY. The SARATOGA had estimated its propeller driven Skyraiders would take approximately 3 hours to cover the distance to the battered spy ship. Martin had told his superiors that he expected the faster jets to arrive in half that time. Soon after the fighters left the carriers, a flash message from the American naval attache in Tel Aviv rolled off the ship's teletype. "Israeli aircraft and MTB's [Motor Torpedo Boats] erroneously attacked U.S. ship," Commander Ernest Castle wrote in the 4:14 PM message. "IDF helicopters in rescue operations. No other info. Israelis send abject apologies and request info of other US ships near war zone coasts." The admission that Israel had attacked the LIBERTY by mistake changed everything. The assault was over. Fighters were no longer needed. Martin ordered the mission aborted before the planes ever reached the LIBERTY: "Recall all strikes repeat recall all strikes."
Now don't ask me why they were running a nuclear weapons drill with actual nuclear weapons and not dummies, you would probably have to ask a squid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Compare the above with Araysars nutcase source.
I rest my case confirmed nutcase.
BoldW
Molten Core Raider
- 2,081
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SYRIA SAYS IT ACCEPTED RUSSIAN WEAPONS PROPOSAL
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...45a_print.html
Whew! A good end to this crisis, eh?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...45a_print.html
hmm...
hodj
Vox Populi Jihadi
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Apparently retracting a statement in a book is now evidence of insanity according to Siddar.
Anyway back on topic, oh look who happens to be against the plan for Assad to hand over all his chemical weapons to the international community...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...id-strike.html
Chalk more evidence up that the chemical attack was conducted by the rebels on their own people to garner international support for their cause.
Anyway back on topic, oh look who happens to be against the plan for Assad to hand over all his chemical weapons to the international community...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...id-strike.html
Gee I wonder why that could be.
Chalk more evidence up that the chemical attack was conducted by the rebels on their own people to garner international support for their cause.
Siddar
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Doesn't matter what Obama's people want to do Congress is not going to approve a strike against Syria. So they can take the fig leaf Putin has offered them are they can take nothing and look even more foolish.
Loser Araysar
Chief Russia Reporter. Stock Pals CEO. Head of AI.
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The "Nutcase" Lieutenant Commander of the US Navy James Ennes did correct himself in the 2007 reissue of the book, vis-a-vis nuclear weapons:
http://www.ussliberty.org/addendum.htm
Eventually a message from Washington authorized the second launch of aircraft, but they were not sent until long after the shooting had stopped. These aircraft, too, were recalled moments after they were launched - this time because Israel had admitted responsibility and the aircraft were presumed to be no longer needed.
Although America could not send conventionally armed jets, reports still come in that four jet bombers were catapulted from the carrier America with nuclear bombs aboard. Even today there is no official confirmation of that launch and much high-level denial. A nuclear launch has been strongly denied by Secretary McNamara, Admiral Martin (now deceased), Admiral Geis (deceased), Admiral Moorer, and America's skipper, Admiral David Engen (deceased) and others. Yet eyewitness reports persist. Clearly no such launch could have been intended for offensive purposes. Surely nuclear weapons would not have been used in defense of the USS Liberty.
It is clear that I was mistaken about the aircraft involved, as F4s do not carry nuclear weapons. Others tell me that the aircraft that were launched carried Bullpup missiles, which might easily be mistaken for nuclear bombs. And we learned much later that the USS America was involved in a nuclear weapons loading drill at the very time the ship learned of the attack on the Liberty and that this drill is one factor that delayed America's response to our call for help. It is also possible that those were the weapons seen by our sources.
Also confusing this issue is an oral history report from the American Embassy in Cairo, now in the LBJ Library, which notes that the Embassy received an urgent message from Washington warning that Cairo was about to be bombed by US forces, presumably in mistaken retaliation for the USS Liberty attack. That strange message was never explained or cancelled.
Loser Araysar
Chief Russia Reporter. Stock Pals CEO. Head of AI.
- 83,270
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...ples-every-law
Obama's rogue state tramples over every law it demands others uphold
For 67 years the US has pursued its own interests at the expense of global justice - no wonder people are sceptical now
George Monbiot
The Guardian, Monday 9 September 2013 15.30 EDT
US fire white phosphorous at Taliban
US troops fire a white phosphorous mortar towards a Taliban position on 3 April 2009 in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Photograph: John Moore/Getty
You could almost pity these people. For 67 years successive US governments have resisted calls to reform the UN security council. They've defended a system which grants five nations a veto over world affairs, reducing all others to impotent spectators. They have abused the powers and trust with which they have been vested. They have collaborated with the other four permanent members (the UK, Russia, China and France) in a colonial carve-up, through which these nations can pursue their own corrupt interests at the expense of peace and global justice.
Eighty-three times the US has exercised its veto. On 42 of these occasions it has done so to prevent Israel's treatment of the Palestinians being censured. On the last occasion, 130 nations supported the resolution but Barack Obama spiked it. Though veto powers have been used less often since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the US has exercised them 14 times in the interim (in 13 cases to shield Israel), while Russia has used them nine times. Increasingly the permanent members have used the threat of a veto to prevent a resolution being discussed. They have bullied the rest of the world into silence.
Through this tyrannical dispensation - created at a time when other nations were either broken or voiceless - the great warmongers of the past 60 years remain responsible for global peace. The biggest weapons traders are tasked with global disarmament. Those who trample international law control the administration of justice.
But now, as the veto powers of two permanent members (Russia and China) obstruct its attempt to pour petrol on another Middle Eastern fire, the US suddenly decides that the system is illegitimate. Obama says: "If we end up using the UN security council not as a means of enforcing international norms and international law, but rather as a barrier . then I think people rightly are going to be pretty skeptical about the system." Well, yes.
Never have Obama or his predecessors attempted a serious reform of this system. Never have they sought to replace a corrupt global oligarchy with a democratic body. Never do they lament this injustice - until they object to the outcome. The same goes for every aspect of global governance.
Obama warned last week that Syria's use of poisoned gas "threatens to unravel the international norm against chemical weapons embraced by 189 nations". Unravelling the international norm is the US president's job.
In 1997 the US agreed to decommission the 31,000 tonnes of sarin, VX, mustard gas and other agents it possessed within 10 years. In 2007 it requested the maximum extension of the deadline permitted by the Chemical Weapons Convention - five years. Again it failed to keep its promise, and in 2012 it claimed they would be gone by 2021. Russia yesterday urged Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control. Perhaps it should press the US to do the same.
In 1998 the Clinton administration pushed a law through Congress which forbade international weapons inspectors from taking samples of chemicals in the US and allowed the president to refuse unannounced inspections. In 2002 the Bush government forced the sacking of Jos? Maur?cio Bustani, the director general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He had committed two unforgiveable crimes: seeking a rigorous inspection of US facilities; and pressing Saddam Hussein to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention, to help prevent the war George Bush was itching to wage.
The US used millions of gallons of chemical weapons in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It also used them during its destruction of Falluja in 2004, then lied about it. The Reagan government helped Saddam Hussein to wage war with Iran in the 1980s while aware that he was using nerve and mustard gas. (The Bush administration then cited this deployment as an excuse to attack Iraq, 15 years later).
Smallpox has been eliminated from the human population, but two nations - the US and Russia - insist on keeping the pathogen in cold storage. They claim their purpose is to develop defences against possible biological weapons attack, but most experts in the field consider this to be nonsense. While raising concerns about each other's possession of the disease, they have worked together to bludgeon the other members of the World Health Organisation, which have pressed them to destroy their stocks.
In 2001 the New York Times reported that, without either Congressional oversight or a declaration to the Biological Weapons Convention, "the Pentagon has built a germ factory that could make enough lethal microbes to wipe out entire cities". The Pentagon claimed the purpose was defensive but, developed in contravention of international law, it didn't look good. The Bush government also sought to destroy the Biological Weapons Convention as an effective instrument by scuttling negotiations over the verification protocol required to make it work.
Looming over all this is the great unmentionable: the cover the US provides for Israel's weapons of mass destruction. It's not just that Israel - which refuses to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention - has used white phosphorus as a weapon in Gaza (when deployed against people, phosphorus meets the convention's definition of "any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm").
It's also that, as the Washington Post points out: "Syria's chemical weapons stockpile results from a never-acknowledged gentleman's agreement in the Middle East that as long as Israel had nuclear weapons, Syria's pursuit of chemical weapons would not attract much public acknowledgement or criticism." Israel has developed its nuclear arsenal in defiance of the non-proliferation treaty, and the US supports it in defiance of its own law, which forbids the disbursement of aid to a country with unauthorised weapons of mass destruction.
As for the norms of international law, let's remind ourselves where the US stands. It remains outside the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, after declaring its citizens immune from prosecution. The crime of aggression it committed in Iraq - defined by the Nuremberg tribunal as "the supreme international crime" - goes not just unpunished but also unmentioned by anyone in government. The same applies to most of the subsidiary war crimes US troops committed during the invasion and occupation. Guant?namo Bay raises a finger to any notions of justice between nations.
None of this is to exonerate Bashar al-Assad's government - or its opponents - of a long series of hideous crimes, including the use of chemical weapons. Nor is it to suggest that there is an easy answer to the horrors in Syria.
But Obama's failure to be honest about his nation's record of destroying international norms and undermining international law, his myth-making about the role of the US in world affairs, and his one-sided interventions in the Middle East, all render the crisis in Syria even harder to resolve. Until there is some candour about past crimes and current injustices, until there is an effort to address the inequalities over which the US presides, everything it attempts - even if it doesn't involve guns and bombs - will stoke the cynicism and anger the president says he wants to quench.
During his first inauguration speech Barack Obama promised to "set aside childish things". We all knew what he meant. He hasn't done it.
Obama's rogue state tramples over every law it demands others uphold
For 67 years the US has pursued its own interests at the expense of global justice - no wonder people are sceptical now
George Monbiot
The Guardian, Monday 9 September 2013 15.30 EDT
US fire white phosphorous at Taliban
US troops fire a white phosphorous mortar towards a Taliban position on 3 April 2009 in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Photograph: John Moore/Getty
You could almost pity these people. For 67 years successive US governments have resisted calls to reform the UN security council. They've defended a system which grants five nations a veto over world affairs, reducing all others to impotent spectators. They have abused the powers and trust with which they have been vested. They have collaborated with the other four permanent members (the UK, Russia, China and France) in a colonial carve-up, through which these nations can pursue their own corrupt interests at the expense of peace and global justice.
Eighty-three times the US has exercised its veto. On 42 of these occasions it has done so to prevent Israel's treatment of the Palestinians being censured. On the last occasion, 130 nations supported the resolution but Barack Obama spiked it. Though veto powers have been used less often since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the US has exercised them 14 times in the interim (in 13 cases to shield Israel), while Russia has used them nine times. Increasingly the permanent members have used the threat of a veto to prevent a resolution being discussed. They have bullied the rest of the world into silence.
Through this tyrannical dispensation - created at a time when other nations were either broken or voiceless - the great warmongers of the past 60 years remain responsible for global peace. The biggest weapons traders are tasked with global disarmament. Those who trample international law control the administration of justice.
But now, as the veto powers of two permanent members (Russia and China) obstruct its attempt to pour petrol on another Middle Eastern fire, the US suddenly decides that the system is illegitimate. Obama says: "If we end up using the UN security council not as a means of enforcing international norms and international law, but rather as a barrier . then I think people rightly are going to be pretty skeptical about the system." Well, yes.
Never have Obama or his predecessors attempted a serious reform of this system. Never have they sought to replace a corrupt global oligarchy with a democratic body. Never do they lament this injustice - until they object to the outcome. The same goes for every aspect of global governance.
Obama warned last week that Syria's use of poisoned gas "threatens to unravel the international norm against chemical weapons embraced by 189 nations". Unravelling the international norm is the US president's job.
In 1997 the US agreed to decommission the 31,000 tonnes of sarin, VX, mustard gas and other agents it possessed within 10 years. In 2007 it requested the maximum extension of the deadline permitted by the Chemical Weapons Convention - five years. Again it failed to keep its promise, and in 2012 it claimed they would be gone by 2021. Russia yesterday urged Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control. Perhaps it should press the US to do the same.
In 1998 the Clinton administration pushed a law through Congress which forbade international weapons inspectors from taking samples of chemicals in the US and allowed the president to refuse unannounced inspections. In 2002 the Bush government forced the sacking of Jos? Maur?cio Bustani, the director general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He had committed two unforgiveable crimes: seeking a rigorous inspection of US facilities; and pressing Saddam Hussein to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention, to help prevent the war George Bush was itching to wage.
The US used millions of gallons of chemical weapons in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It also used them during its destruction of Falluja in 2004, then lied about it. The Reagan government helped Saddam Hussein to wage war with Iran in the 1980s while aware that he was using nerve and mustard gas. (The Bush administration then cited this deployment as an excuse to attack Iraq, 15 years later).
Smallpox has been eliminated from the human population, but two nations - the US and Russia - insist on keeping the pathogen in cold storage. They claim their purpose is to develop defences against possible biological weapons attack, but most experts in the field consider this to be nonsense. While raising concerns about each other's possession of the disease, they have worked together to bludgeon the other members of the World Health Organisation, which have pressed them to destroy their stocks.
In 2001 the New York Times reported that, without either Congressional oversight or a declaration to the Biological Weapons Convention, "the Pentagon has built a germ factory that could make enough lethal microbes to wipe out entire cities". The Pentagon claimed the purpose was defensive but, developed in contravention of international law, it didn't look good. The Bush government also sought to destroy the Biological Weapons Convention as an effective instrument by scuttling negotiations over the verification protocol required to make it work.
Looming over all this is the great unmentionable: the cover the US provides for Israel's weapons of mass destruction. It's not just that Israel - which refuses to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention - has used white phosphorus as a weapon in Gaza (when deployed against people, phosphorus meets the convention's definition of "any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm").
It's also that, as the Washington Post points out: "Syria's chemical weapons stockpile results from a never-acknowledged gentleman's agreement in the Middle East that as long as Israel had nuclear weapons, Syria's pursuit of chemical weapons would not attract much public acknowledgement or criticism." Israel has developed its nuclear arsenal in defiance of the non-proliferation treaty, and the US supports it in defiance of its own law, which forbids the disbursement of aid to a country with unauthorised weapons of mass destruction.
As for the norms of international law, let's remind ourselves where the US stands. It remains outside the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, after declaring its citizens immune from prosecution. The crime of aggression it committed in Iraq - defined by the Nuremberg tribunal as "the supreme international crime" - goes not just unpunished but also unmentioned by anyone in government. The same applies to most of the subsidiary war crimes US troops committed during the invasion and occupation. Guant?namo Bay raises a finger to any notions of justice between nations.
None of this is to exonerate Bashar al-Assad's government - or its opponents - of a long series of hideous crimes, including the use of chemical weapons. Nor is it to suggest that there is an easy answer to the horrors in Syria.
But Obama's failure to be honest about his nation's record of destroying international norms and undermining international law, his myth-making about the role of the US in world affairs, and his one-sided interventions in the Middle East, all render the crisis in Syria even harder to resolve. Until there is some candour about past crimes and current injustices, until there is an effort to address the inequalities over which the US presides, everything it attempts - even if it doesn't involve guns and bombs - will stoke the cynicism and anger the president says he wants to quench.
During his first inauguration speech Barack Obama promised to "set aside childish things". We all knew what he meant. He hasn't done it.
hodj
Vox Populi Jihadi
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- 18,378
Aaron
Goonsquad Officer
- 9,180
- 22,269
This whole farce with the US stating that Syria could avert a strike by handing over their chemical weapons, and then promptly backtracking on that once it looked like Syria actually would do that just goes to showwhyno one in the international community trusts a word the US says any more.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
This whole crisis has also shown what many suspected before, that love him or hate him, Vladimir Putin is in an entirely different league of diplomatic statescraft thananycurrent Western politician. If only we could boot out most of our reactionary live-by-the-day poll-watching "politicians" and get some real statesmen of the old school (think Roosevelt, Kennedy, de Gaulle, Adenauer or others who dramatically changed the nation they lead). But it would seem in the day of Reality TV and Twerking that people continue to vote for gut- and spineless politicians.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
This whole crisis has also shown what many suspected before, that love him or hate him, Vladimir Putin is in an entirely different league of diplomatic statescraft thananycurrent Western politician. If only we could boot out most of our reactionary live-by-the-day poll-watching "politicians" and get some real statesmen of the old school (think Roosevelt, Kennedy, de Gaulle, Adenauer or others who dramatically changed the nation they lead). But it would seem in the day of Reality TV and Twerking that people continue to vote for gut- and spineless politicians.
khalid
Unelected Mod
- 14,071
- 6,775
It is because you would have to be painfully naive to think he would actually turn them over and that it isn't just a complete stalling tactic.
You are right, he is in a different league than any western politician. He is a dictator. I will take a democratically elected weak noodle like Obama over a dictator any day.aaron_sl said: