Topic: USA and allies prepare an attack on Syria

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Again, it's not that I don't think we should help...
...it's that I think the USA should help themselves first.

I'm sick of my tax dollars going to fund wars I don't believe in, and supporting entire areas with people who have time and again not been able to reconcile their problems.

I also believe this is truly about the OIL under those countries, and I'll tell you why:
Similar strife happens routinely in South America.

Ecuador (my country) is constantly having issues with Colombia.  Venezuela has its own heads up its ass to the point in which Toilet Paper is a 'luxury item'.  Nations like Uruguay and Paraguay don't even cause a blip in the radar when they have issues.  The USA does not even bat an eyelash when these nations are in trouble.

But the moment there's a problem in Syria or Palestine of Israel or Lybia, the USA is all "We must protect those people! Send in troops and Aid!"

It's fucked up.  Clearly there's another agenda in play.

I stay, stop aiding, stop helping, and let the chips fall where they will.  USA needs to fix its own nonsense issues before it tries to be 'great benefactor' to everyone else.  How egotistical it is that the USA still thinks it's some kind of Iron Golem with Paladin Armor on.  Under that, we have the problems people have mentioned:

-Corporations own the government because of lobbies and special interest groups.  So long as those exist, government will never budge in a way that doesn't better corporations' best interests.
-The USA's legislative branch is a revolving door where the congressmen become lobbyists for the very companies that were paying their kickbacks and slush funds when they were in office.
-The backbone of society: Infrastructure and Education, take a back seat to the Prison System and the Xenophobic firearms culture.
-Gerrymandering (to manipulate the boundaries of an electoral constituency so as to favor one party or class) has become so rampant in order to maximize vote importance in key areas... effectively 'gaming' the Electoral College.
-As mentioned before, Health Care is problematic (again, because healthcare is done mostly via corporations).
-The people who are well-off, even barely, think that the people who are not well-off are lazy, entitled, parasitic creatures, instead of noticing that the economy has had good honest hard-working people laid off and out of work... again, because it's easier for a corporation to pay a China factory employee cents/hour instead of paying a person in the USA dollars/hour, even with overseas shipping costs.
...there are more problems but I'm drained.

[Ratty]

hundreds of thousands of refugees

Yesterday you said it was dozens of thousands, now it's hundreds of thousands? But that's just it, you said it yourself

Between 600,000 to a million Iraqi men women and children are now "liberated" in that they are dead, forever. No bringing them back. And no bringing back the billions (I think it may literally be trillions now) of dollars spent on the war. But oh, we can't afford healthcare or housing for our own citizens who's tax dollars have been paying for these wars. Paying for it theoretically anyway, since the country has gone from having a record surplus of money in the year 2000 to being in record debt.

As I, Theou and Jorge have all pointed out the US has no moral leg to stand on when it comes to human rights outrage, if you don't believe us just ask Star Trek's George Takei who was in a Japanese internment camp along with thousands of other American citizens. Or some of the thousands of peaceful protestors we've hit with tear gas and beatings. Whenever we go into a country to try and "help" them we only cause suffering and death for the people there, unless you consider Vietnam and Iraq (which were both started on the bases of false information) to be rousing success. Or the Korean war which never technically ended. But oh, the Korean war wasn't a war, at least not according to the US, it was a "Police Action". So I guess we can't be blamed for how shitty life is in half of Korea.

Let's not even mention the government sanctioned and aided genocide of Native Americans or how much we helped the Philippines.

[Mooning Freddy]

All of those points you're making are good. Still, there's this concept called R2P on the table which should be above national interests. At the very least, should be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect

The responsibility to protect (R2P or RtoP) is a United Nations initiative established in 2005. It consists of an emerging intended norm, or set of principles, based on the claim that sovereignty is not a right, but a responsibility. R2P focuses on preventing and halting four crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing, which it places under the generic umbrella term of mass atrocity crimes. The R2P has three "pillars":
 1.   A state has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.
 2.  The international community has a responsibility to assist the state to fulfill its primary responsibility.
 3.  If the state manifestly fails to protect its citizens from the four above mass atrocities and peaceful measures have failed, the international community has the responsibility to intervene through coercive measures such as economic sanctions. Military intervention is considered the last resort.

Unfortunately, while the UN has said several times R2P is a fundamental of international law, making the security council follow it is friggin' impossible. I blame Russia and China, you can say USA is part of it as well.

But that's not my point. USA is beside the point here. You see Ratty, my point is that citizens who care at least a little bit about universal human rights must be out on the streets yelling: "By any means, intervene! By any means, intervene!" The genocide in Rwanda is on the consciousness of the world's democracies, and it wasn't a century ago, it was in the middle of the 90's. A million people were slaughtered on the streets using friggin' machetes, and the Western democracies did absolutely NOTHING to stop it.  People often talk about the Jewish Holocaust and how it should never happen again. Well, it has happened again, and more than once. And people don't care. Why? Because it happens in third world countries and the first world considers it a lost cause anyway. 
That is not a change of views, that is a loss of morality. You say intervention makes things worse? Say it to the Tootsies slaughtered in Rwanda or the Albanian and Bosnians who would have been slaughtered by the Serbs if NATO wouldn't have intervened.

[Ratty]

I say intervention makes things worse, if only because most of the time when it happens it's only really for profit or to prevent the spread of ideologies which are considered threatening. Like Jorge said the US doesn't get all in a huff when this sort of thing happens in South America, unless you count Iran-Contra, where President Reagan sold weapons to Iran to fund a secret army (the Contras) to overthrow a democratically elected government in Central America because it was Socialist. (For the record, despite all the citizens who were raped and murdered by the Contras the Sandinistas only left the government when they were eventually democratically voted out by people who were tired of being terrorized by the Contras.) Or when the CIA staged a counter-revolution to protect American company's banana production.

Fact is the US can't afford to get mixed up in another war, and if they say they have to for the R2P or any other humanitarian reason, and the place they have to "just happens" to be one of strategic importance in oh, say, an Oil rich region, you should be very suspicious. As Theou pointed out, if all we were going to do was destroy his chemical weapons plants, we could have just done it by now. And I doubt there would have been all this bluster.

[TheouAegis]

Oh yeah I forgot about the indians...
But they get casinos, tax-free lives, and cheap booze, so we've made amends with them.


No one has a responsibility to protect. If that was the case, why, as has been pointed out, is the US the primary force in any and all police action? Because the rest of the UN knows the US will do it. But really, why the fuck should anyone give a shit about the rest of the UN? For all the crap we've been spouting about how morally corrupt the US is, the rest of the UN has done some pretty seriously fucked up shit throughout history. Let's overlook Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia for now, since everyone knows how fucked up they were. The French, British, Spanish and Portugese were four of the biggest douchebag countries in the history of the world. They're responsible for more crimes against humanity than almost any other nation. Oh sure, to be fair they had different governments in those days, but they wouldn't even be on a world map if not for their crimes. 95% of Americans (North and South) probably wouldn't even know those countries existed if not for their atrocities. Without Spanish and Portugese systematic genocide, there would be no Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, or Mexico. There would be no Hong Kong, opium trade, or modern India without British asshats.

Korea shouldn't even be on the world map at all, period. That area should have been a Chinese, Japanese or Russian expansion centuries ago when the Silla, Paekche and Koguryo nations were invaded (gotta give the Koreans some respect for fending off four major world powers all these centuries). That's not anti-Korean sentiment -- I love Korean girls -- but a simple fact of world history; North and South Korea should not even exist, they're products of the War. The US was at fault for the Korean War 100% all because they didn't want Russia or China to have any reign over Eurasia's dingle. Let them continue their in-fighting, it's in their blood and part of their national heritage.


The US is not the UN, nor is Britain the UN, nor is Russian the UN, nor is China the UN, nor is France the UN, etc., etc. The governments of the nations of the world wrote up a bunch of various pacts and treaties so their leaders could pretend they were making nice and would play fair. The UN is a load of crap. Even the League of Nations was a load of crap. Many of the various pacts and treaties and laws and rules set forth by either of those major global unions have been violated by the same nations that signed them. The UN is nothing more than a gentleman's club. No member nation of the UN or League of Nations ever cared about human rights or world peace; the UN and LoN were strictly alliances built up around peace treaties. It's easier to keep an eye on your enemies if you live with them.

It's not a lack of morals in the world populace or a lack of love or respect for other people; it's just the natural order. Why give a shit about people in other countries that we will likely never meet or see who are killing each other when people have been killing each other by the thousands for millenia upon millenia?  It's a fact of human nature. It's the history of our world. Let the rest of the world deal with their own problems, each nation is responsible for itself.

And all those little kids starving or getting shot up in Africa? Blame their parents for fucking like rabbits and just making more kids to starve or get shot or sold as slaves or whatever. The world sucks; it's not the US's problem or Japan's problem or China's problem or Britain's problem or Russia's problem or Germany's problem or France's problem or Canada's problem (bet you were wondering if I'd ever bring up Canada). If you want to prevent kids from starving to death in Africa, sterilize African males. Why don't the major governments care about Africa? Because neither Russia, China, nor Iran give a rat's ass about anything south of Egypt. Except for a few diamonds, there's nothing there for them. And as long as Russia doesn't care about Africa, the US won't care about Africa. If you want to make a change in Africa and get the US government's attention, convince Putin to invade Africa.

(For the record, I think a lot of males need to be sterilized or girls need to be, whatever the word is. Evn China's one-child policy wasn't that effective. Breeding is encouraged only because it is required to support the previous generation. If you want people to pay for you when you get older, have two kids. If they want people to pay for them when they get older, they need to have two kids each as well. No nation can support that, so every major nation's populace needs to be sterilized and brought back down to manageable levels. If you can't sterilize a population, let it kill itself instead.)

[Flame]

Everyone pretty much summed it up nicely.

I'll re-iterate though:

These people are NOT our friends. They do NOT like us, and never will. They are quick to cry that we won't help them, but I'd like to see any of those nations in the middle east help the US if the situations were reversed. (economically as well as situation)

The middle east has been killing itself for YEARS. And they probably will continue to do so. A good example is the Israel/Palestine conflict which never ends. Israel keeps encroaching on Palestinian Land, and God forbid Palestine defends itself and lobs a bomb over, Israel retaliates with about 5. And the cycle goes on and on.

We need not involve ourselves when we cannot help our OWN people, and the countries we "help" do not want help, and are incorrigible. The islamic middle east is in the Dark Ages. That needs to blow over naturally. trying to get involved and 'fix" things, only makes it worse.

A whole city going bankrupt? How does that compare to families losing their homes because of a war that won't end until the despot falls?

Have you ever even SEEN Detroit? Detroit was once possibly the most industrially rich city in the country. The heart of US auto creation. It's literally called Detroit: The Motor City.

Detroit is a literal ghost town. tons of homes abandoned, and mayors who just can't seem to do anything about anything. try to imagine how it is possible for a city to go bankrupt.

Also how does it compare? simple. It's right in our fucking back yard. Why should those people losing their homes to a despot be any more important than people losing their homes IN OUR OWN COUNTRY? Why do they get special treatment over our own citizens? Why should we CARE if they lose their homes? It's not our country. That's THEIR problem. If we can't solve the same shit in our own country, how do you expect us to solve it in another?

 

You talk about Iraq being in a chaotic state since the fall of Saddam, well that is no excuse to roll your eyes and say there's nothing to be done.

we CAUSED said chaotic state. That's why I roll my eyes. We opened pandora's box, and there's nothing we can do to stop it now. We never should have been there to start. the BEST we can do, is leave, and let it heal on it's own, and stop getting involved in these conflicts. We literally can NOT afford it.

[Mooning Freddy]

Oh, lord. Maybe Allan Bloom was right. Maybe our generation DOES NOT care anymore.

You want my summary? There was a generation once. It was called The Greatest Generation. The greatest generation wanted to create a better world, and was ready to give its life for that goal. The greatest generation believed in freedom, in equality, in universal law.

Now you come out and tell me about how the world is corrupt. You don't try to find a way to fix the corruption. You talk to me about the past, instead of talking about the future.
You talk about human nature, you don't care about fixing it. You talk about wars as being inherently bad. You don't mention JUST wars, wars that were fought for freedom, for equality. You disregard the great dreams of mankind, of unity, of peace, of justice.
You disregard the PROGRESS that mankind has overcome, you disregard that the world today IS better now than it was centuries ago, that individualism and personal freedom are new concepts which didn't exist in the past, you forget the dream of people coming to a phase when they understand each other instead of trying to take advantage of each other.

None of that would ever happen if people sit and bitch and do nothing. Remember the saying? "All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing"?

Now, I am not blaming America. You have every right to take care of your families more than foreigners in a faraway land. But I am not talking about Syria here when I remind you of a motto that was popular during WW2- "The world cannot exist half slave and half free". This is not just about Syria, it's about Mexico, and Russia, and China, and every other country where violence and corruption reign supreme. You are the ones who are responsible with fixing it. Not USA; I mean, each and every one of you, as individuals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mind

[Ratty]

Oh, lord. Maybe Allan Bloom was right. Maybe our generation DOES NOT care anymore.

You want my summary? There was a generation once. It was called The Greatest Generation.

I'm not sure which generation you're talking about, but in America what's usually called "The Greatest Generation" is the one that put a hundred thousand people in internment camps for the crime of being of Japanese descent. Then proceeded to support racial segregation, nuclear prolifieration and proxy wars with the USSR for decades. Oh and they also fought WW2, thus arbitrarily winning them the "greatest generation" moniker.

The greatest generation wanted to create a better world, and was ready to give its life for that goal. The greatest generation believed in freedom, in equality, in universal law.

That would be the baby boomers during the free love movement, they eventually sold out.

Now you come out and tell me about how the world is corrupt. You don't try to find a way to fix the corruption. You talk to me about the past, instead of talking about the future.

Look at Vietnam, Iraq, hell even Afghanistan. How would going to war here help the Syrian or US people's future?
 

You talk about human nature, you don't care about fixing it.

Again, how would going to war with Syria fix anything?

You talk about wars as being inherently bad. You don't mention JUST wars, wars that were fought for freedom, for equality. You disregard the great dreams of mankind, of unity, of peace, of justice.

"This country (America) was founded by Slave Owners who wanted to be free." - George Carlin
Show me a "just war" and I'll show you a lot of innocent civilians who have died for something that was no concern of theirs, and a lot of people getting rich in the background.
 

You disregard the PROGRESS that mankind has overcome, you disregard that the world today IS better now than it was centuries ago, that individualism and personal freedom are new concepts which didn't exist in the past, you forget the dream of people coming to a phase when they understand each other instead of trying to take advantage of each other.

Going to war with Syria won't advance that dream. You want to help the people in Syria? Try to arrange peace talks, try to give medical supplies to the innocent civilians and soldiers on both sides. Don't drop more bombs on them.

None of that would ever happen if people sit and bitch and do nothing. Remember the saying? "All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing"?

Nothing, or something that kills thousands of innocents for the benefit of a few.

Now, I am not blaming America. You have every right to take care of your families more than foreigners in a faraway land. But I am not talking about Syria here when I remind you of a motto that was popular during WW2- "The world cannot exist half slave and half free". This is not just about Syria, it's about Mexico, and Russia, and China, and every other country where violence and corruption reign supreme. You are the ones who are responsible with fixing it. Not USA; I mean, each and every one of you, as individuals.

I'm all for helping people, but you don't do that with invasions based on ulterior motives. And you can't do it while you're falling apart at the seams yourself.

[Mooning Freddy]

At a certain point this discussion has shifted from a discussion of the necessity of intervention in Syria to a discussion where I'm explaining the importance of humanitarian intervention, as a necessity to defend international law and human lives, and all the rest of you defending the realistic view of international politics (a view which claims that states only intervene to defend their interests, such as money, status or security, opposed to the constructivistic view which claims that states would sometimes intervene to promote or defend values such as freedom or international law).
Blame my naiveté with believing that promoting universal values is important in international relations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_%28international_relations%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_%28international_relations%29 

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I'm not made of stone.
I personally care...

...but I also care about the problems the USA has on its own.  Take care of your own issues before you go try and work out others' issues, is what I say.
We're just unfit to help right now, financially... despite what the USA leaders would like other nations to believe.

[Belmontoya]

There is A LOT I could say about this, but I can simply say that I trust our current president to make the right call.

[TheouAegis]

The "Greatest Generation" persevered through the Great Depression and continued to focus on improving THEIR OWN COUNTRY while the world around them was at war. The Greatest Generation never had any desire to help the rest of the world. The US never officially entered the war UNTIL JAPAN BOMBED PEARL HARBOR, which was a Navy base located on AMERICAN IMPERIALIZED SOIL (meaning the US got it by the same means Japan was trying to get islands in the Pacific Ocean). Even when Germany attacked US merchant vessels, the US simply admonished Germany, basically saying, "Hey, leave us alone or we'll stick our noses into this situation," even though the US was already supplying weapons anyway. The Greatest Generation wanted NOTHING to do with the war until a bunch of weird monkeys thought they could get away with attacking the US. Hitler was a crazy white guy. Hirohito was a DOG that needed to be put down for attacking humans. Admiral Yamamoto knew in a Western war you had to play by certain rules and when his plans got bungled he knew the US would retaliate harder against Japan than against any other country. Whether or not he actually called the US a sleeping giant doesn't change the fact that people viewed the US as a sleeping giant TWO YEARS INTO THE WAR. It took two years for the US to buck up and join the allies. It took two years for the US to stop being neutral. While much of Europe and northern Africa were under Axis control the US was citizens were happily earning pennies to feed their filthy disenfranchised families. Then Congress got the bright idea to join the war -- not to help the Allied powers, but to ship off many of the destitute and unemployed as well as boost industry. Male citizens didn't go into the military because they wanted to spread democracy and American ideals across the globe; they did it because they were starving or because THE WERE CONSCRIPTED. Conscription wasn't reinstated in order for the US to help the Allied powers fight the Axis powers -- it took two years to sign it into law -- but because some Americans feared if the Axis won the war in Europe, it could threaten American interests. There was nothing great about it, older citizens felt kids didn't know how to defend their country and wanted mandatory martial training of youth in case the need to defend the country would arise in the wake of an Axis victory.

A lot of money is spent flowering history. It's only in recent years thanks to a relaxed attitude that US history is getting deflowered.


Our president thinks every American making more than $15,000 a year needs to pay for his/her own medical insurance in addition to the medical insurance of any dependents, regardless of whether or not said person can actually afford any sort of insurance. If after car payments you only have $100 a month for food, our president thinks you don't need that food because health insurance is more important. Or maybe he thinks you don't need that car and thus don't need to have a means to get to work to earn enough money to buy food and medical insurance. Ultimately I might buck up and get insurance even though I can barely afford it -- I don't have a car or even a license -- but Obamacare is bad for the economy and won't change a thing. They said it's because people can't afford trips to the ER and so the feds are losing lots of taxes because the hospitals write off their losses, but since you don't even have to pay the uninsured citizen penalty tax if it applies to you, the new law will have absolutely no effect at all. Our president is a conniving shit-faced bastard -- and I don't mean his face is the color of shit.

[beingthehero]

www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world/middleeast/syria.html?hp&_r=0&

Well any action now is entirely dependent on Congress, and it seems they will hardly be any more encouraged to vote for force than what Parliament was.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I'm for Obamacare, even if I am not sure I can afford it... but that's another topic.
Can we keep it on Syria, etc.?

I know it's somewhat-related but we should stick to the subject (I'm guilty of a bit of derailing as well, just trying to bring the thread back).

[TheouAegis]

Of course Obama is going to congress for support. He's supposed to, it's the law. Just because other presidents have broken the law in the past doesn't mean it should be a shock that Obama doesn't this time. Could just be a well-played tactic; I won't trust him yet. Then again, in a few more years, I won't have to trust him.