dagblog - Comments for "America Can’t Be Trusted Anymore"

While Walt has focused on the

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 01:59:52 +0000

In reply to The Foreign Policy piece is

While Walt has focused on the "our overthrow in Libya betrayed Putin" sad face, there's oddly no mention of the Arab Spring and how we should evolve our policy - including previous commitments - to radical changes on the ground. Liberals are claiming we should have just left Qaddafi to mop up his mess, Assad/Putin to mop up their mess, as hundreds of thousands of protesters take to the streets. Apparently Bush/Kissinger's realpolitik in the Tiananmen repression was a-ok, and maybe Bush Sr. shouldn't have encouraged those Berlin Wall protesters. Or maybe we should abandon all influence to Russia as the legacy power and clear global visionary for these regions.

Sure, I'll accept that Putin has reasons not to trust us, and us him, so we play a longstanding battle of wits and some action with an adversary and only occasionally ally. I wasn't happy with us sending a signal interpreted as the Arab Spring needs to be backed by guns, even though oft noted that Gandhi succeeded against Lord Mountbatten, not Stalin.

Here's a very good Wapo article deconstructing the situation in Libya and Hillary's respinse/approach. A lot to chew on, including room for disagreement. But politics and war are inherently messy, like those millions of Syrian refugees used as proxy pawns of our Cold War 2.0 struggle.

I wasn't a big fan of leaving

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 01:11:00 +0000

In reply to The Foreign Policy piece is

I wasn't a big fan of leaving the ABM treaty, but the North Korea reference is strange - the Norks were already planning on cheating the deal from the get-go, but our fault for not implementing hard enough, no mention of how Bush torpedoed a number of Clinton's liberal initiatives, and then suddenly the Norks learn from Libya 20 years later. Why doesn't Walt much mention the great betrayal of the international community in going to war in Iraq? Because Walt doesn't want to attack the right per se (they abandoned Nixon, of course, so he's a safe liberal whipping boy) - it's a thumb-on-the-scale way of getting back to Libyan overthrow bad (which I wasnt thrilled with, and I've expressed my view of the rising Qaddaffi-enflamed crisis) and a yearning of those peaceful detente times. He's even backhandedly excusing Trump - Trump is just another in this line of Bill/Hillary/Obama types that make promises they won't keep, ignoring again say Obama's trusting belief in Putin's Syrian chemical deal over Hillary's doubts (I was suckered as well - for a moment I felt some fanboi admiration of how Putin played our fears into a positive outcome - until I discovered oops, the stack of chem ingredients was a ruse, they held on after all). Excuse me, but I think this occurred *before* Qaddafi's overthrow, but could be wrong.

Walt also ignores our painstakingly building the allied coalition to defeat ISIS over a brutal 1 year period, only to watch the success end in Putin helping Assad and Erdogan attack the Kurds and other Syrian units aling with resuming massive attacks against civilians. (Remember the outrage against the US/NATO flattening that building with civilians, after which the US changed its coordination policy? The incident that may have been set up by Syrians waving civilians into a building to then gwt it targeted, somewhat like the famous Chines Embassy incident in Belgrade (the Serbs were using it for intelligence, but acted like we just misfired in blatant disregard for int'l norms).

I'm not a sucker, Lulu - you somehow come to these articles like a babe to the woods, but I can draw the obvious rehash of the same sstale grudges and spin.

It's been a while since I

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 00:57:29 +0000

In reply to The Foreign Policy piece is

It's been a while since I heard anyone on the left defend the gold standard, and I thought us leaving it, messy as itvwas, was a major dilineation of moving to a more modern global economy. You msy want to scan "Nixon shock" to see if you agree.

The Foreign Policy piece is

A Guy Called LULU — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 22:09:13 +0000

In reply to In 1940, the Russians split

The Foreign Policy piece is about a specific country that is not Russia. It is about specific actions by that country involving a number of other countries, most of them not being Russia. It lays out an obvious result which a half idiot could understand and one which adversely affects our country’s standing in foreign relations with many countries, not just Russia. In your knee-jerk chickenshit reaction you aint touched any of that yet. Brag about your education when you learn to read your first language. Meanwhile, fuck your school, fuck your background, fuck your expertise, and fuck you.

In 1940, the Russians split

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 16:57:52 +0000

In reply to "Well, fuck your author, Lulu

In 1940, the Russians split Poland down the middle with Germany in a major act of treachery, and then took much of the intelligentsia and officer corps out to the Katyn forest and killed them. In 1945 the Russians held up on the outskirts of Warsaw and waited for a few weeks while Germans slaughtered the inhabitants. In 1980 the Russians put down Solidarnost (solidarity) and put Poland back under martial law. As for Czechoslovaks, after the allies held up in Pilzen (Patton), the Russians murdered their leader in 1947, pulled a coup, held a fake election, and used a powerplay to use a 33% plurality to put the Communists in powere and then disband the other parties and impose martial law. When things began to thaw 20 years later, the Russians sent in armies from the neighboring countries to impose martial law again, resulting in 21 more years of repression. These are just 2 of the countries that Walt thinks we should resist offering a way to help defend themselves, while Ukraine should be a hopeless buffer to appease Russian sensitivities in perpetuity. (Donbas and Crimea notwithstanding - they're already stolen back, with a bridge being built for Russians to enjoy their vacations there)

But hey, Walt went to Harvard, so I should take his brainfarts more seriously than my analysis and experience (where'd I go to school? What's my background and expertise?)

Testy testy, are we - yes, he

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 11:38:03 +0000

In reply to "Well, fuck your author, Lulu

Testy testy, are we - yes, he's your author - you proposed what he was writing was worthwhile. It really worries me when America can't be trusted to help Russia keep East Europe downtrodden. The only concern from the author seems to be that "the United States didn’t care about preserving good relations with Moscow and was not going to take Russian sensitivities into account", but there's lots of evidence that Russia and North Korea and Syria don't care much about US sensititivies, and worse, don't care much about defenseless civilians. And your author Walt has no problem telling Obama to back off retaliating for use of chemical weapons because "dead is dead". That's expressionism at its finest.

Anyway, his lack of concern about basically imprisoned captive workers in East Europe and elsewhere in the Soviet Union as the wall came down, only that America must keep its promises *TO RUSSIA* is simply galling. Trust is a 2-way street, and if it's criminals dividing up the spoils of war or crime, it's no longer a valuable commodity.

I agree.

A Guy Called LULU — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 10:50:18 +0000

In reply to good one.

I agree.

"Well, fuck your author, Lulu

A Guy Called LULU — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 10:49:00 +0000

In reply to Country that held East Europ

"Well, fuck your author, Lulu" ... PP, he is not my author, . Stephen M. Walt, whom you suggest should get fucked, [maybe he should] is the Robert and Renée Belfer, professor of international relations at Harvard University who writes regularly and intelligently for Foreign Policy Magazine. His thesis sentence is the title and he develops and supports it with concrete examples of why it is correct. You, PP, are an asshole. Fuck you.

good one.

artappraiser — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 04:50:36 +0000

In reply to Recalling the simpler days...

good one.

Recalling the simpler days...

oldenGoldenDecoy — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 04:36:24 +0000

In reply to "Americans can't trust their

Recalling the simpler days...

We're going on 4+ years since this.

A One Day Quick Blogroll About "Who Ya Gonna Believe"?
By A Guy Called LULU on Thu, 01/16/2014 - 12:47pm
It is my observation that in any online discussion of politics, a discussion which is usually more narrowly about a particular facet of politics such as international diplomacy, an important factor in that discussion is always that of the credibility of the sources of information that one person or another chooses in order to form and then defend their position. It comes down to , "Who ya gonna believe"? I am aware of how 'confirmation bias' affects that judgment. I don't claim to be immune.

3 comments

~OGD~