Whethe ror not you believe Bush is motivated by a genuine desire to foster democracy; whether or not you believe establishing a military presence in a former slaughterhouse that sits between Iran and Afghanistan and abuts much of the rest of the Arab middle east, you have to be predisposed to believing the US is acting out of imperial motivations to skip over the possible explanation that "to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region’s oil" is not so much an imperial goal as a defensive one. If China became the …
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Mitch
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everyman, it seems to me that recognizing gray is exactly what the Bush administration has done in the case of Pakistan and it is that grayness that the author is criticizing. Seeing the gray means you recognize that some countries that don't meet your every criterion for good guy still are better allies, with regard to certain high-priority issues, that other countries. It doesn't mean you ignore meaningful differences in the strategies, histories, and personalities involved in different countries. Syria is not just not an "outspoken U..S. supporter..."; it was the colonial conqueror of Lebanon for a couple of decades, the …
Posted to Why Pakistan Gets A Nuclear Pass
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Actually, Heath, she thinks she makes a point, she just doesn'tr convincingly establish it, except for those who already agree with her. And there is a meaningful distinction between defensive and imperial motivations, even for the people of the middle east, although they are not obvious in the short-term. Imperial ambitions are pretty much never-ending, either geographically or temporally; defensive ones tend to be limited by the needs of the time and are usually redefined by changing conditions, such as the ability of the people of the country itself to govern and defend themselves. And if you would stop being so …
Posted to Why Pakistan Gets A Nuclear Pass
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No, Heath, you never did call me simple-minded. And I wasn't concerned about your attitude toward me as your general tone in disparaging the comments of your e-post-ilary opponents: " but perhaps you’ve led a sheltered life"; "thanks for stating the obvious"; "don’t you get it"; "But why am I even bothering.... Time to come back to reality my friend"; "Did you not get the memo about that?....Do you not read the newspaper?"--these did not strike me as the comments of someone who believes he has anything to learn from those whose opinions and perspective differ from his own, who has …
Posted to Why Pakistan Gets A Nuclear Pass
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Heath: Regarding China, fine: you don't think there is a problem, you don't see them not selling us oil, you want to hoist me on the petard of the free market, even as (I bet) you don't really believe the market is truly free. And I don't either: the oil market is certainly not free, either globally or domestically; nor are the natural gas, or wheat, or many other markets. China's potential ability to do the US economic harm is enhanced by any increase in its economic, political, or military power and influence, each of which supports the others. This doesn't …
Posted to Why Pakistan Gets A Nuclear Pass
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Heath, I appreciate your apology. The fundamental problem with blogs like this is that, given the tenor and temper of the times, it is much too easy to slip into the sort of political argument that, as Orwell puts it, seeks only to score debating points, rather than ascertain the truth. I've fallen into the same trap. I could certainly be completely wrong about China, as both of our positions are rather in the nature of faith-based speculation. My point in raising it was to make the point that viewing the US actions in Iraq as inescapably imperialistic is also faith-based, …
Posted to Why Pakistan Gets A Nuclear Pass
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Heath, I am afraid Iraq is now a lose-lose situation and whether we stay or go, people will die. I am somewhat persuaded that keeping the military in the middle east will keep terrorism away from North America, that the best defense is a good offense. I frankly don't think it is possible to defend this particular homeland without an agressive presence overseas: we have two many ports, two much border, two many vulnerable facilities, and are too open to effectively prevent jihadists who are not being kept busy in their "homeland" from successfully blowing up a chemical plant of sneaking …
Posted to Why Pakistan Gets A Nuclear Pass
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Come on, Sonu75, the US deserves criticism for many things, but you only weaken the case when your facts are so far off the mark. Japan was not already defeated; in fact, it took a second bomb to get them to come to the table. "Already defeated" is a conclusion of hindsight, not an inescapable fact of the moment. The 700,000 Iraqi civilian deaths statistics is simply not believable: the sampling method that arrived at that statistic was seriously flawed and the number represents something like 750-800 civilian deaths a day, day in and day out, since American forces entered the …
Posted to Why Pakistan Gets A Nuclear Pass
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The only "racism" revealed by the author's "mental experiment" is his own. An experiment that honestly attempted to parallel the situtation on the ground would be more something like this: Suppose that Hezbollah has spent six years building bunkers and placing rocket launchers under villages in northern Israel, the villagers of which went along with this militarization. And suppose said villagers elected members of Hezbollah to the Knesset. THEN suppose the civilians in these villagers were used as shields while the rocket platforms in their midst were used to launch attacks on Israeli civilians. Would the IDF launch attacks on those …
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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"Jews have a hard time admitting they have been acting immorally and unjustly"? Unlike who, for example? Arabs? Muslims? American leftists? The French? Plumbers? Armenian housewives? The tendency to assign traits common to human beings everywhere to a particular group currently out of favor with the Politically Correct is one way the Politically Correct rationalize their prejudices.
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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Dennis Drew, No matter how hard the US pushes Israel toward a two-state solution, what could possibly make you think the Palestinians or their regional allies will leave Israel in peace? Both Hamas and the PLO still call for the elimination of Israel, not a two-state solution. Which of the players have made any even little motion in that direction? Only Israel, whose motivations you pretend you can discern, based on your general distrust, and therefore do not ascribe to moving to two states, but nonetheless, what have the Palestinians done that suggests they will be satisfied with that? Have they …
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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"The PLO and Hamas calling for the elimination of Israel is like the Apaches calling for the elimination of the American nation. Nice deal if there is anyway they can get it. "--You miss the point: it doesn't matter whether the Palestinians completely succeed. The point is that as long as the elmination of Israel is their goal, they will kill Israelis--civilians, women and children--and no government or society is going to stand by and allow that ongoing threat to the lives of its citizens, even if the society as a totality is not threatened. It is easy at a remove …
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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Maybe when the discussion stoops to direct and indirect name calling ("ethnic cleanser"; "scummy") it is time to calm down. And maybe glib smugness ("Apologists for Israel have an issue with the truth": yes, and apologists for those who think deliberately bombing weddings and confirmation ceremonies is a legitiamate political tactic have an issue with reality - so there!) is not likely to change anyone's mind. Nobody has a lock on the truth here. Both sides of this argument have for decades chosen to ignore some inconvenient truths: that both sides have engaged in terrorism, and long before the settlements came …
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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Denis (sorry I misspelled your name previously), I'll give you the lock on the truth about density; I assume that's true. But "Israel's need [for] the occupied Arab lands is much less critical than was...Israel's original need to exist in the first place" is an opinion, possible true, but without a lock. Israel's military need for a buffer, which would justify keeping control of that land, if not the settlements, is arguable either way. Its truth can't be locked, I would posit. And I didn't know that about the Geneva convention and wonder if that provision has ever been enforced. …
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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Denis, If we are going to change the nature of the argument from who is the bigger evil into Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a question of whether Israel is justified in keeping a large armed forces, let me ask you, since you have the data and I don't, how Iran's armed forces compare to Israel's. Iran is going to emerge from the current period as the dominant military, diplomatic, and possibly cultural force in the mideast and they seem less than friendly toward Israel and have cooperated with Syria in supporting Hezbollah. I have some doubt that Israel feels confident, as you …
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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Aha, Spinoza750 is back: the return of The League of the Self-Righteous. I am more inclined to believe that sloppy thinking, gullibility, self-righteousness, and bad grammar are the enemies of mankind. But then, I am akin to an ethnic cleanser, so what do i know.
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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Imran, I never claimed I lacked sloppy think, gullibility, or self-righteousness (my grammar is pretty good, though), so you are going to have to stop projecting your own lack of self-awareness onto others. And it is frankly offensive (and a sign of sloppy thinking) to draw a parallel between the Holocaust and the Palestinian/Israeli war. Your seeming assumption that the Palestinians are and always have been a peaceful, pastoral, passive, and helpless people, besides condescending to them, simply ignores history. You and I differ in that the analogy I would draw is not of the armed thief and his unarmed victor, …
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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Imran, One does that by emigrating in small numbers over a period of decades, buying up land at fair market value from those who owned it (generally, not Palestinians at the time, for the Turks had colonized the land) to work as farms. That is not ethnic cleansing, as much as you favor the term; that is the natural ebb and flow of culture and history. And the notion that two things can be "ideologically the same crime" is the sort of academic and ahistorical claptrap that keeps the left the the domain of poseurs and bloviators. "Ideological crimes" are what …
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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No. Pay attention, Denis.
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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Look, Denis, try to stay on track. I wasn't arguing that the Israelis are currently buying up parcels of land in the West Bank; I was discussing the history of Jewish settlement in Palestine in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There is no reason to assume that I was attempting to justify one with the other or that one is in anyway related to the other. The histories, cultures, and circumstances of the peoples involved were very different
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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Ah, Spinoza750, a man of logic and reason calling for people who disagree with him to be shot, and, who, fortunately for all those who agree with him, knows without a scintilla of doubt what the truth is, in all circumstances, regardless of his knowledge of the facts and regardless of the ultimate truth that "facts" all too often are merely opinion and often depend on one's perspective. But keep up the good fight, 750. Keep spewing that vitriol that you mistake for knowlege of the truth, keep telling yourself that because you are so angry, you must be right. The …
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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If you were any more of a jackass, you would be unable to work a keyboard. Eichmann?? Get over yourself, Spinoza. If you have nothing more than extremism, ignorance, intolerance, and simple-minded insults to contribute to the discussion, find something else to do with your time, and stop wasting others'. Eichmannn...really. A new low in stupidity.
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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Wow, Spinoza, you can tell I'm immoral based on these posts. You should be billing yourself as the Great Kreskin750. So, let me get this right: you use the word "fascist" in that knee-jerk leftist way to mean "things I don't like"; your notion of progress hies back to a 17th-18th century dead-white male European philosphy whose legacy includes the French Terror and the Soviet Union; you think, I gather, that reactionaries are only on the right; you think being Jewish makes it impossible for you to be antisemitic; you have yet to admit to any possibility that your interpretation of …
Posted to Lets be Realists, Let?s Demand the Impossible!
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