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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29444 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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Doesn't this just establish how Chaotic Evil the US is as a political entity?

George W. Bush (the hanging chad to Trump's virgin 'unlawful means') invaded Iraq with a lie, recklessly oversaw a pointless, insane war in Afghanistan. He has rivers of blood on his hands, a good chunk of it American. How many US soldiers have killed themselves from their pointless service in his pointless, retarded wars? But this is all Presidential and Acceptable so he gets off scot-free. The most anyone thinks of it is when he makes a Freudian slip in the standard anti-Putin diatribe and suffers a little embarrassment:

Instead, while criticising Russia’s political system, he said: “The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.

“I mean, of Ukraine,” he said quickly.

He then said “Iraq too” to laughter from the crowd.

Is it a mask-off moment? Is there even a mask?

Trump... moved some documents about that he shouldn't have? Had his supporters come into the Capitol where they were shot at and then left peacefully once they turned on the announcement system telling them to leave? And this is the most awful and terrible thing to ever happen to US democracy? This is the man who needs to go to prison, out of all living US presidents?

What kind of insane world is this? Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize before he even did anything, back in 2009 'for fostering nuclear non-proliferation and reaching out to the Muslim World'. He then preceded to wreck Libya. He should've been getting Nobel Prizes for War or Destruction of Functioning Countries.

This reminds me of Nixon too. Nixon could bomb Laos into oblivion without any approval for war and that was totally fine, apparently. It happened before and after Nixon too, it's basically standard practice. Yet Nixon authorizes somebody to break into a journalist's apartment and that's just beyond the pale? It's a parody of justice, anarcho-tyranny on a grotesque scale.

It's not even Chaotic Evil where one is unabashed and upfront about doing whatever one pleases. It's Chaotic Evil dressed up as Lawful Good, how the US is some noble Paladin defending the Rules-Based International Order (though just what those Rules are is never made clear, for obvious reasons). 'Wink wink, nudge, nudge, the International Criminal Court is based in one of our vassal states and if that's not enough, we'll invade the Hague the moment a US service member is brought there.'

This reminds me of Nixon too. Nixon could bomb Laos into oblivion without any approval for war and that was totally fine, apparently. It happened before and after Nixon too, it's basically standard practice. Yet Nixon authorizes somebody to break into a journalist's apartment and that's just beyond the pale? It's a parody of justice, anarcho-tyranny on a grotesque scale.

Reminder: Nixon didn't authorize the Watergate break-in, was not even aware that it was going to happen, and was only ever implicated in trying to get the FBI to drop the investigation. He also destroyed a few minutes of tape recordings that, until Congress had asked for them, had been his private property.

Counterreminder: Nixon knew what Liddy and Hunt were after they botched the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. He had ample room and opportunity to fire them, and chose not to - presumably because he wanted them to do something similar to Watergate. The fact that he didn't know about that particular burglary in advance is good mafia opsec, but it doesn't affect his culpability.

I think as a practical point, the "system" almost never punishes highups for "high crimes and misdemeanors" where the primary victim is foreign (or Black or Indian pre-civil rights era, which basically counted as foreign), but often does so when the scandal is purely domestic. For example, nobody ever suggested punishing Nixon for Laos etc. but was taken out over Watergate. During the Reagan administration, only one person was jailed for their role in Iran-Contra (and that was for tax evasion), but a double-figure number of people were jailed for their roles in relatively trivial contract-rigging scandals. And Clinton was impeached for lying to cover up his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, not for bombing a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum to distract media attention from it.

I don't know why you are conflating "doing bad things" with "doing illegal things." They are not the same thing, not in the US or anywhere else. Maybe they should be the same, but they aren't. Were Trump being charged with conducting bad policy, that would be one thing. But he isn't, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to complain that "This is the man who needs to go to prison, out of all living US presidents?" Either he committed a crime, or he didn't. Whether some other President did something morally worse or not is irrelevant.

BTW, as for Bush, if we are counting lives lost and lost saved, he is probably on the positive side of the ledger.

'Wink wink, nudge, nudge, the International Criminal Court is based in one of our vassal states and if that's not enough, we'll invade the Hague the moment a US service member is brought there.'

? The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court, so this is a very odd example of the US pretending to be defending the rules-based international order.

I don't know why you are conflating "doing bad things" with "doing illegal things." They are not the same thing, not in the US or anywhere else. Maybe they should be the same, but they aren't.

In this case, one of the illegal things is "Whoever corruptly (1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or (2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so." Another is conspiring with others to do that. And "official proceeding" includes, in part, literally any "a proceeding before the Congress" or "a proceeding before a Federal Government agency which is authorized by law".

There have, to be very blunt, been a lot of intentional lies and concealed records from Congress, done knowingly and in many cases for personal political gain. There are ways to cordon of this particular matter as the only time that the statute need be used this way, and huadpe has tried to do so (and I'm sure if pressed enough on the gaps, will eventually come up with a fine enough reference class). But there's little if any reason for anyone to think these chalk lines matter, compared to the text.

What does that have to do with what OP said about wars waged by Bush, etc?

I don't agree with the position, but there were quite a lot of claims that Bush et all pushed and continued the Iraq War through false information provided to Congress, as well as concealed information (both on request, and from general scrutiny) in ways that violate other (if poorly enforced) laws, or by selectively (sometimes unlawfully) leaking information.

Not every alleged lie or concealed matter in question was before Congress in a way subject to 18 USC 1001, or otherwise obviously unlawful or wrong enough to trigger the 'corruptly' prong; not every claim was presented to "obstruct, influence, or impede' an official proceeding. But many people claimed that there were enough, especially by the standards presented in this indictment.

I understand how some might make that argument, but I understood OP's argument to be very different.

Yes, I'd expect @RandomRanger's argument is more "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?", where the decision to have laws one direction and not the other is an explicit choice, and one that undermines the legitimacy of the law.

There's even a hybrid steelman that points out that even where the actual text of a rule is broken by those favored, or where the disfavored are technically within operating within text of the law, or where a 'law' wasn't actually passed in accordance with the rules, new interpretations and concepts and exceptions and excuses precipitate out of thin air or it turns out that no one can ever have standing.

But if your position is that Trump's prosecution should be deliminated solely on the matter that "Either he committed a crime, or he didn't", it's relevant whether other people at similar levels of power committed a crime, or didn't.

BTW, as for Bush, if we are counting lives lost and lost saved, he is probably on the positive side of the ledger.

American troops die for Israel alone in the desert, thousands of miles from their families, but hey Bush saved some Africans from AIDs so it all balances out.

Well they banned you for a bit so I suppose I won't get an answer right away, but if you're game, I'd dearly like to hear an actual rigorous definition of exactly which wars America has fought in the last few decades were "for Israel" and why. Near as I can tell, none of them were suggested or approved by the Israeli state, and none were particularly beneficial to it.

I think I could make a better argument that the US in it's war-making has been rather hostile to Israel. Israel was not permitted to join in on Operation Desert Storm. Saddam launched some SCUDs at them anyways in hopes of provoking a direct response. The US forbade Israel from responding directly and attempted to stop Saddam themselves.

Well, the article says 25 million. If so, it does indeed balance out. Especially since I would bet that some of those dead troops were Jewish, while none of those Africans were. By the only metric you seem to care about, Bush should be your favorite person!

  • -10

By the only metric you seem to care about

In context this appears to be, at best, an incredibly hostile non sequitur. Too antagonistic, don't do this please.

In broader context, at least what I saw from that person until I blocked them, it appears to be on the mark. If not to a particular comment, then definitely to the particular personality.

I apologize, but to be clear it was a reference to dude's constant postings about "the Jooz." Edit: And, his reference to "dying for Isreal." So not much of a non sequitur.

I apologize, but to be clear it was a reference to dude's constant postings about "the Jooz." Edit: And, his reference to "dying for Isreal." So not much of a non sequitur.

Oh, your meaning was clear. But I can't ban a user for single-issue posting if everyone else keeps trotting out that user's hobby-horse for them. Israel is a foreign power. Treating it as a synonym for "Judaism" is something its advocates and critics do interchangeably, depending on the point they want to make. That kind of disclarity is objectionable, here, but so is making uncharitable assumptions about which meaning is intended.

The user to whom you were responding is not the most artful user we have, in terms of disingenuously cloaking objectionable insinuations in plausibly neutral language. But that does not excuse uncharitable jabs from other, similarly artful posters.

We want, in short, for people to have room to change their minds, however minutely. Comments like yours discourage that.

It balances out if you are mentally deranged- maybe you would be happy to trade your child or friend or neighbor being killed for no good reason, so long as a random African is saved from AIDs, then you can consider "the ledger balanced". That's due to a derangement in your value system and not mine.

That's due to a derangement in your value system

You are free to explore value disagreement, but dropping to accusations of derangement is too much heat. I might let it slide if it were some passionate rhetoric in the midst of an effort post, but this comment seems to just be pure heat. Three day ban.

Be that as it may, OP was clearly complaining not just about the loss of American lives but rather the loss of the lives of non-Americans. Hence his reference to Nixon bombing Laos, Obama wrecking Libya, and the "rivers of blood' on Bush's hands, only some of it American. Hence, my reference to foreign lives saved.

That's due to a derangement in your value system and not mine.

This seems to imply that it ethically "deranged" for a US President to endanger the life of a even a single serviceman in order to save the life of non-American civilian children. So, it is unethical to stop a genocide, if it puts American servicemen at risk. It was unethical to evacuate Vietnamese from Saigon. Heck, I guess Hugh Thomson was unethical as well; look at the American lives he endangered.

Did he commit a crime isn’t convincing. He probably did but that doesn’t escape a lawfare question. Are the laws being applied equally or do they only apply to Trump?

If I get called to Trump jury I’ve already decided on jury nullification. And I’ve never voted for him. A nation of laws must have some concept of laws apply to all in the same way.

Are the laws being applied equally or do they only apply to Trump?

Yes, that is precisely my point. The issue is not whether former presidents did bad things, as OP seems to think. It is, as you say, whether they violated a criminal statute.

Every government official for decades has violated criminal statutes. The Logan Act is constantly violated but only applied to Flynn. Biden and Pence both had confidential documents. violating criminal statutes isn’t enough.

Merely having confidential documents is not enough to violate the law. The law requires knowing and intentional retention.

? The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court, so this is a very odd example of the US pretending to be defending the rules-based international order.

? Not being a member of an international organization, gives anyone the right to invade a sovereign country, if a your citizen is being held their for a trial?

Since I said nothing of the sort, the answer is obviously "no,"

Then it was a very odd objection to the point he was making.

If you think that, then you have misapprehended the particular point I was responding to, which was specifically about the ICC being part of the rules based international order.

Or you have misapprehended his point to begin with.

All I know is:

  1. Using the ICC as an example of the US pretending to support the rules based international order makes no sense;
  2. Inferring therefrom that I think that the US has the right to invade the Hague makes even less.

The issue is the US thinks it has the right to invade Hague. Whether or not it is a part of the ICC is irrelevant re whether or not that makes a mockery of the "rules based order".

More comments

Do you think W personally doubted there were WMDs in Iraq? It’s an interesting question.

I sometimes wonder if Saddam Hussein was aware there were no WMDs in Iraq - up to the point where resolution 1441 passes the UNSC, he acts like a man who has WMDs and expects to lose power if he gives them up.

I also think that W would have received a sufficient amount of stovepiped intelligence to convince anyone who doesn't start out with the prior that the entire US national security elite are lying liars that there were WMDs in Iraq. Apart from the fact that the national security establishment are lying liars who knew what the White House wanted to hear and were happy to provide it, Cheyney and Rumsfeld were exceptionally able DC power players, partially controlled the flow of intelligence to the Oval Office, and wanted the war even more than Bush.

The theory I heard is that Hussein was trying to pretend he had WMDs in order to intimidate potential rivals in the region like Iran, and accidentally did too good of a job.

The theory I heard is that the neocons in the Whitehouse wanted to find any kind of plausible reason to sell an invasion of Iraq to the American people, and just lied and lied and lied until they got it. I think there's more justification for this theory than the one you heard, however.

"There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up. That devastated me."

I don’t think W’s personal motivations for the Iraq War had anything to do with WMDs, and so said intelligence was likely superfluous, his reasons were primarily that he wanted to avenge his father and secondarily that as a born-again Evangelical he had some weird eschatological views about war in the Middle East in general.

I agree that it’s unclear that Saddam knew he didn’t have WMDs until quite late, and given the extreme levels of grift in the Baathist party and Iraqi military pre-invasion it’s entirely believable that his own officials had repeatedly lied to him and claimed they did (I don’t know if there’s ironclad proof of this). Obviously he strongly encouraged the perception that he did until late 2002 as you say.

his reasons were primarily that he wanted to avenge his father and secondarily that as a born-again Evangelical he had some weird eschatological views about war in the Middle East in general.

This is such a self-serving narrative, the blueprint for regime change in Iraq was written down by Zionists embedded in the American government for years before Bush II's invasion of Iraq, with the fabricated intelligence on WMDs likewise coming from Zionists in key positions in the highest places in American government. The last ingredient was 9/11, which created the American public demand for reprisal against the Arab world.

A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (commonly known as the "Clean Break" report) is a policy document that was prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then Prime Minister of Israel.[1] The report explained a new approach to solving Israel's security problems in the Middle East with an emphasis on "Western values." It has since been criticized for advocating an aggressive new policy including the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and the containment of Syria by engaging in proxy warfare and highlighting its possession of "weapons of mass destruction".

I remember reading the "Bush invaded Iraq as revenge for his father" in high school, and looking back it is astonishing those textbooks do not mention Zionists influence as playing any role whatsoever in the war, and likewise the Wikipedia article on PNAC makes not a single mention of Zionism or Israel. How long can that charade last, and can you ignore the elephant in the room?

We’ve had this discussion before, but in any case I wasn’t saying that Bush’s personal motives were the reason that the Iraq War happened, simply that they had very little to do with WMDs (or neoconservatism, for that matter). And yes, the presence among Bush’s advisers and in his cabinet of his father’s men - many of whom saw not deposing Saddam in the Gulf War as one of HW’s biggest mistakes - obviously affected the decision to invade. HW was almost assassinated by Iraq in 1993, so W’s personal motivation was even more salient. There are few things many a powerful man would not do in vengeance for the man who tried to kill his father and who his own father blamed in part for his electoral humiliation, and for unfinished business that said father considered one of his biggest mistakes.

Dismissing the personal motivations of countless senior Bush I and II officials regarding the outcome of the Gulf War, and the dynastic relationship of the president personally, is what is ahistorical.

"Personal motives" include "being pressured by your own cabinet and Media apparatus", of which there is monumental evidence, whereas you just mentioned the "daddy revenge" theory which has no historical evidence. Indeed, the decision to invade Iraq and depose Saddam was not based on WMDs, it was predetermined by the written agenda of Zionists deeply embedded in the American foreign policy apparatus and the WMDs just became the last part of the narrative to tie a bow on the casus belli. Of course that same policy apparatus insisted that failing to institute regime change in Iraq in the Gulf War was HW's biggest mistake.

I sometimes wonder if Saddam Hussein was aware there were no WMDs in Iraq

I think the most believable retrospective history includes the idea that Saddam knew that there were no longer WMDs in Iraq, but he went to great lengths to obscure this fact, to the point that a significant portion of the chain of command of the Iraqi military absolutely believed that they did have them, planned their defenses around the expectation that they would have them, and had to scramble to replan after being blindsided by the fact that they weren't about to show up in the next month's logistics delivery.

Seems to me Saddam was trying to posture to prevent attack — if he admitted no WMD his regime was vulnerable. At the same time, he had to try to walk a tight rope to prevent a second Iraq war.

Seems to me Saddam was trying to posture to prevent attack

I don't think this was the case. I believe it was North Korea style posturing, where it was all tied up in his ego of what he wanted to be able to do even if he was unable to.

It's only puzzling because you want to believe the US is a constitutional republic still so you don't understand when it acts like what it actually is.

How can they be so harsh to Trump when dubya has done far worse? It's very simple. Dubya is an agent of the ruling class and Trump is not. There's nothing else to it.

If DC likes you you can rob and kill as many people as you want and they'll sing your praises, until they don't like you anymore and you get blown up or shanked. That's Khadafi's story in a nutshell.

I tire of repeating the same old schtick but it only gets more true and self evident every day. The US constitution is just a an old piece of paper. And the idea that you rule your country thought the magic of representation is delusion.

There's a ruling class which you're not part of, and they posses the power to make the exception.

And no this doesn't make the US uniquely evil. Every country works like this. I can't even begin to fathom a counter example.

If anything what you should really complain about is not that the people in charge make exceptions, since that's the inevitable nature of things, but rather that they don't seem to be very good at running the show anymore.

There will always be a mask, but it's currently a very shitty one and that's not good because that's when people with better masks usually come along.

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