Roundup
(1) Reports are that Biden has yet to call Netanyahu to congratulate him on his victory. Not a surprise; the Biden group is probably very very sad that Bibi won.
(2) An anti-racist professor uses racial slurs to describe Herschel Walker. Another non-surprise: “Walker is ‘incompetent, subliterate and coonish,’ Professor Sundiata Cha-Jua, a history and African-American studies professor, wrote in The News-Gazette in his regular column on October 23.” Sundiata Cha-Jua is a man, by the way.
(3) If you want to know my take on why the Cheneys hate Trump so much, I explain it here, with links.
(4) Here we go again:
House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn: "This country is on track to repeat what happened in Germany in the 1930s [if Republicans win]." pic.twitter.com/lbkdPXVCMQ
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 4, 2022
(5) Another example of the lack of accountability for New York City’s habitual criminals.
“Biden has yet to call Netanyahu to congratulate him on his victory”
Compare to how Bibi shouldered everyone aside in a mad dash to be the first to congratulate Biden on beating Trump in ’20.
Even the President of Mexico was more seemly and let the dust settle first.
Godwin’s Law strikes again. On the bright side, if they’re reduced to shrieking the old “Republican’s are Nazi’s” argument, it implies that they’re just flat out of arguments that are sticking with voters.
It is sad but true that many (if not most) professors in “Africana” or “Afro-American” studies are very far from being scholars; one might describe them charitably as partisan activists, uncharitably as race-baiting charlatans and race-hustling grifters. Should the very competent Lee Zeldin manage a victory in blue NY next week, it is nearly certain that he will be firing the ghastly Alvin Bragg, a necessary first step in restoring Gotham to what it was under Giuliani and Bloomberg.
The hysteria of the Democrats when they lose or fear losing is funny but probably inspiring to nuts like Hodgkinson or Rand Paul’s neighbor, or the guy that attacked Lee Zeldin, or the guy outside Kavanaugh’s house.
When was the last political assassination attempt on a Democrat?
The LA Times hit piece on Netanyahu.
Op-Ed: Netanyahu’s return to power with a coalition of racists is appalling. But Israel’s problem runs deeper
Keep the receipts. If the GOP racks up wins as expected, in 2024 they need to highlight the lies and the outrageous predictions being made by Democrats right now.
Make them own their lies. Rub their noses in it.
Slanders and smears should never be free. They come at a cost. Impose that cost on the guilty. Make people accountable. Failing to do so damages all of us.
So much Fun going on right now, just don’t know what to say. Well, maybe I will have two jiggers of very fine Single Malt Scotch to watch the world disintegrate.
JimNorCal:
Netanyahu did not do that. It’s a falsehood.
Trump was mad at Netanyahu for calling Biden at all, but Bibi was actually one of the last heads of state to congratulate Biden. See this: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/10/1062944477/trump-slams-israels-net
Always check things out before you post them.
When was the last political assassination attempt on a Democrat?
Gabby Giffords, by someone lost in schizophrenia. ‘Ere that, George Moscone and Harvey Milk, by an erratic and infuriated political opponent. That’s about the last time one of us H8ers knocked someone off; he committed suicide in 1985.
I’m using quotation marks, or “so-called anti-racist,” for professors of that kind, because they’re as racist as they come.
I think lopez obrador was last, because he recognizes stolen elections,
https://history.illinois.edu/directory/profile/schajua
nothing much of note,
now to be perfectly clear, the social democrats had long fallen out of favor and heinrich bruenings catholic center party, were the domino before schleicher and paper,
oops
https://tinyurl.com/y45bb4ef
I think Biden is mainly trying to lay the groundwork for 2024 rather than next Tuesday. I suspect Democrats know this election is a lost cause, but it’s not going to make a huge difference so long as Biden is in office. An R-controlled congress can block some of Biden’s initiatives, but can’t undo the damage from the last two years. But the 2024 election is a big deal, and the Democrats want to characterize any efforts by Republicans to make the election honest by calling them anti-democratic.
well they see 2010, and mcconnell helped sabotage the agenda, same with 2014, of course, he blocked trumps agenda with great force,
of course to reverse much of this, would take real structural reform, to force out the top officials in the administration,
1) Between US strictures on Israel’s permitted response to being attacked and Israel’s leftists, Netanyahu’s hands have always been tied.
2) “I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.” Margaret Thatcher
3) I can understand the Bush and Cheney’s intense dislike for Trump and perhaps some of it is justified. But that doesn’t give them a pass on opposing the many areas in which Trump is in the right. They have set personal animosity above public duty. As a public figure and former federal elected official that reveals a grave moral failure and proof of unfitness for the position they held.
4) The goal is to delegitimize the midterms. Over the next two years, they will incessantly blame the results of their failed policies upon the Republicans.
5) “NYC Homeless Man Charged With Raping and Robbing Female Jogger Had 25 Prior Arrests”
Those who enabled that animal’s actions should be charged with accessory to rape and imprisoned with no possibility of parole or pardon. There can be no true justice without proportionate consequence for wrongdoing.
RE: Pelosi incident–
So the UKs Daily Mail is reporting that, this morning NBC was reporting that Pelosi opened the door in his underwear and moved back into the house–toward the perp–while giving police no indication that anything was wrong.
Then, according to the linked article, they withdrew this story this afternoon, because the did not believe the source who gave them this information was reliable.*
* See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11390497/Paul-Pelosi-answered-door-cops-did-NOT-say-distress-new-police-account-claims.html
‘Sundiata’ is an interesting name to choose. I’m assuming he’s named after the king of Mali.
was reporting that Pelosi opened the door in his underwear
Awakened at 2:30 am, you’re not going to find yours truly in a business suit.
In re Clyburn, it’s always the same dilemma. You can taste the crazy, but you cannot tell if it’s an act, indicative of ignorance, or indicative of senility.
The guy who thought Guam might flip over called the Wiemar the greatest democracy at the time. (So much for America)
Is that what resulted in Hitler?
President Hindenburg had to use Article 48 to pass almost every law.
Then he appointed Hitler.
neo: I was there reading the news same as everyone. You’re wrong on this.
This seems to support Neo:
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-donald-trumps-claim-benjamin-netanyahu-was-first-congratulate-joe-biden-1658125
Who to believe, James of Northern California, or neo?
FromEd’s Newsweek link
“The earliest known (Netanyahu) communication, the 5am tweet, was published almost 12 hours after a host of other world leaders sent their congratulations. Those include Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who tweeted at Joe Biden and his VP Kamala Harris at 5.02pm Eastern Time. Others followed suit, including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson at 5.29pm and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, at 6.02pm.
Clyburn, a black non-scholar, would be wise to try to understand that A-As in the US are in fact comparable in their minor population to German Jews. But the Jews did their best to get along with their fellow Germans, and our A-As do not do that. Their criminal behavior and their lower average IQs are a demonstration of that.
Catering to them as a “disadvantaged minority” must stop, and stop now. We cannot raise their average intelligence, no matter how much money we throw at the public schools. I am sick of it all.
What galls and enrages me most about the Cheneys and Bushes in how they have responded to Trump and us is how hypocritical and self-defeating their actions are, even from a personal or egotistical level. I am old enough to remember 9/11, though I confess the exact memories are foggy now. However, I certainly remember the long height of the “War on Terror” with fighting centering on Afghanistan and Iraq but going elsewhere. I remember dealing with the BusHitler crowd (and since I grew up in California there were a LOT of them). I remember some of the most hideous and inaccurate lies. Indeed, in many ways those lies have become the “legend”s that have been “printed” and I still see them coming time and time again. Indeed, I’ve seen some people repeat them here. That Saddam Hussein was not an ally of Al Qaeda. That Saddam Hussein had no WMD. Or – if it was impossible for them to ignore the blindingly obvious evidence to the contrary- he somehow “didn’t know” he had thousands upon thousands of chemical and biological weapons dating back decades. All while they said the most hideous things about the Bushes and Cheneys, comparing them to Hitler, saying they lied “for oil” or petty vendettas, that it was our fault Al Qaeda existed, and so on.
It was a Sisyphean struggle to knock down the nonsense, and made all the worse by a few things. Firstly were some of the most grotesquely politicized and dishonest “after action reports” imaginable, such as the Senate Select Committee report on Iraq War Intelligence, which was so slanted to minimize or deny Saddam’s culpability it was not even funny, and where the perennial “no direct connection” half-truth came from (what they pointedly do NOT mention is the cellular nature of terrorist organizations and how Saddam pointedly supported a great many organizations – such as Abu Sayyaf- that were at a minimum vassals of Al Qaeda if not outright cutouts for it, and that Saddam knew this when he decided to support them, but because Saddam did not “directly” interact with the Al Qaeda Mothership _MAYBE- but instead with vassal groups or known sock puppets of said Al Qaeda Mothership, there was no “direct” connection in spite of how these organizations usually had a far more direct tie to AQ than freaking Vichy France had to Nazi Germany). But second was how ineffectual Bush and co were on pushing back. A modicum of pushing back, pointedly bringing up the WMD found (even if much less than advertised), forcing the Left to acknowledge it, forcing the Left to acknowledge the crimes of Saddam, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda on us and “their” people would have made everything a lot easier for people like me.
But no, there was minimal push back to the MSM and the nutjobs. Which is why they have come to dominate the historiography so thoroughly and popular memory. And yet here we see them now going after Donald Trump for playing politics and saying many nasty things about them (some of which I might add were the very same things the Left peddled)?!?
It enrages me. These people could not be bothered to effectively defend their legacy and actions, leaving their loyalists like myself to do so. But apparently Orange Man is so bad that they are prepared to join forces with the people who smeared them as Hitler in order to help them smear someone else as Hitler. And by extension paint people like me – who supported both Bush and Cheney on one hand and Trump on the other- as dupes for Orange Hitler.
Cruz was a better, bigger man than these people. Cruz justifiably had plenty of reasons to dislike or even hate Trump and could have happily become a Vichy Republican like Cheney and McMullin and even Rubio. But he recognized doing so would be handing power to even worse people and betraying his principles. So he mended fences. And this is apparently beyond the Cheneys and Bushes?
I do not regret my support for the Bushes and Cheneys during the war, at least for the most part, and a residual part of me still feels some fondness or even loyalty for them. But I have zero intention of supporting them again. Certainly not without one hell of a Mea Culpa. They didn’t just attack Trump by their actions, or even the Party. They betrayed millions of people like me. And that is low.
And for whatever my other differences with @Geoffrey Britain, he said it as well as anyone.
Here here.
Turtler:
Well said.
The ex-congress critter from WY should only be remembered for her betrayal.
“Cruz was a better, bigger man than these people.”
I’m not a huge fan of Cruz but at least he’s a friggin’ grownup who doesn’t wallow in his feelings.
Mike
“That Saddam Hussein was not an ally of Al Qaeda. That Saddam Hussein had no WMD.”
Saddam was not an ally of Al Qaeda. Saddam had no WMD. Dude, these things are not really in dispute anymore.
Mike
@MBunge
You were exactly the person I was thinking of when I wrote this, but I decided to avoid a direct confrontation. Well, apparently that’s off the table, so prepare for a well-deserved ass kicking.
Part 1
Yes, he absolutely was. By any sane metric, he was a sponsor of Al Qaeda specifically, and even moreso to the wider Al Qaeda network. This was something sussed out by those of us who bothered reading the fine print of things like the Senate Select Committee’s extremely selective reporting, and particularly captured Baathist Iraqi Documents.
Perhaps the best and most comprehensive overview of this is the Institute for Defense Analysis’s ” Iraqi Perspectives Project
Saddam and Terrorism:
Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents (Redacted)”
Which is a beast to read through at half a dozen volumes of very long documents, but is incredibly useful because it thoroughly destroys any concept at all that Saddam Hussein was not an ally of Al Qaeda, with the only question being the depths of said alliance (which was much less than advertised by Cheney, being opportunistic and fraught with distrust but still quite productive and far more so than-say- that between Al Qaeda and Iran) and the motives for it (probably Enemy-of-my-Enemy convenience).
Here are some snippets.
https://irp.fas.org/eprint/iraqi/
But there is plenty more even within that.
And even more there.
https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/philippines/saddam-gave-abu-sayyaf-money-to-buy-weapons-1.229610
Awakened at 2:30 am, you’re not going to find yours truly in a business suit.
Awakened at 2:30am, I am not going to open the door to anyone I don’t know very well, and even if I can identify the person, I’d at least throw on a bathrobe.
@MBunge
Part 2
NAKEDLY untrue, and this is something that even the New York Slimes and others had to concede (after a bunch of very brave people -including my friends- had to spend precious months and years risking their lives to dig them up and then destroy them).
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html
Though of course those of us in the know who had been getting reports from more trusted sources than the Slimes and people like Mr. Lott knew this and had known this for a long time.
https://nypost.com/2010/10/25/us-did-find-iraq-wmd/
https://www.netadvisor.org/2016/09/19/yes-iraq-did-have-wmds-proof/
Oh Dear God, to see the spinning and and disingenuous nonsense that came out immediately after that in which people tried every possible means by which to claim thousands of artillery shells with WMD payloads in the head were not, in fact, WMD in order to perpetuate the narrative you are pushing now that Saddam had no WMD in 2003. Culminating in a laughable “Deboonking” government report claiming that Saddam Hussein – the Terror of Tikrit, Stalin with a Tan, a possessive Micromanager – did not remember or know he had these WMD.
Let me skewer this nonsense bit by bit.
Firstly was the excuse that they were Old and degraded, which is largely true. But old and degraded WMD are still WMD until and unless they degrade to the point where they are no longer dangerous on a massive scale, which almost none of these itemized weapons HAD. Had you or I served in the US Army, the Ukrainian Military, or some other body stumbled upon these, decided to jury rig them, and fired them at our enemy or some other civilian, we would absolutely be in the hock for illegal use of WMD and for abundantly good reasons.
Ergo they still count as WMD in the eyes of the law.
Secondly was the excuse that Saddam Hussein did not know that these WMD were still in existence. Now there are two parts to this, first addressing how plausible or in character this claim is, and then addressing whether it would have mattered in the absolute slightest even if it were true.
A: No, it is NOT plausible that Saddam Hussein was blissfully unaware of hundreds of thousands of WMD hidden away, and CERTAINLY not back when the 1991 Ceasefire was signed since almost all of those found showed distinct elements of being hidden away, demonstrating Mens Rea. In addition, it’s worth talking a bit about the nature of WMD programs – especially for weapons like this on the national scale- and Saddam Hussein’s personality.
It’s important to realize that WMDs are hard to make, especially on the scale Saddam’s Iraq is known to have done so. While you can make Chlorine Gas in your sink if you are so inclined, making them on an industrial scale suitable for military use is another matter, and requires intense resources and usually micromanaging. That along with the legal cockade they pose and the amount of power they have means that use of them – especially in the aftermath of WWII – is usually tightly centralized by the Government. Each and every use of poison gas by the Japanese in the Pacific War during a time of “military anarchy” had to be personally approved by the God-Emperor himself, as an extreme example. This is also why those of us looking at the Syrian War pointed to this as a strong evidence that the Assad Regime was behind most of the gas attacks (especially those delivered from the air) because his regime had greater stocks and expertise than the rebels could be expected to have, and by this point in the war utterly dominated the air war and had supremacy in strategic artillery. Similar cases apply for Saddam.
In addition, it’s worth remembering who and what Saddam Hussein was. A fanatical, totalitarian bureaucrat and micromanager. He rose to power in the Iraqi Baath Party by both being a “good soldier” acting as a courier and even doing time, and being a bureaucrat who gradually eased out or rubbed out his competition until he was ready to usurp power. This also applied to his personal life, where after his daughters Rana and Hala and their husbands escaped to Jordan, Saddam pulled a multi-year-long gamble of pleading forgiveness and reconciliation to lure them back before murdering his son in laws and imprisoning the daughters.
This is not a man who is likely to forget much of Anything, especially not something that is viewed as so central to major powers as WMD, and particularly not when for him it was a personal policy.
Especially since this manifested in his confirmed deployments of WMD, which he micromanaged extensively, sometimes to the point of demanding approval for individual launches in the height of Al-Anfal and the Iran-Iraq War. Which isn’t that surprising since he recognized the threat it could pose if some of it were captured or used against him, as well as his general micromanaging of his officer corps.
Which is why I responded to the “evidence” and argumentation that he somehow had “forgotten” this stuff between whenever he decided to hide it and 2003 with bitter laughter.
Because that is what it is. Laughable.
But B: Having established all of this, what if we assume that Saddam Hussein somehow really DID forget all this, in an act of monumentally uncharacteristic short-sightedness. Because Uhuh, yeah, Sure. That makes total sense.
Well, legally it’s irrelevant for most of the purposes we’re talking about. Firstly because the Gulf war Ceasefire and the Congressional Authorization based off of it demanded the destruction of all WMD and Saddam’s full cooperation in such, and the existing WMD is proof positive he did no such thing. The only question is a hypothetical about whether or not he had since changed his policies to full cooperation at the time of the invasion, but that is ultimately a matter of politics and practicality rather than legal principle.
Secondly because Saddam’s guilt on this matter is compounded by the intentional secrecy and dishonesty he veiled his WMD programs in, especially after 1991.Full disclosure in 2002 or 2003 wouldn’t have removed his previous crimes, but it would have at least indicated attempts to remedy them, but he still violated that part of the agreement. Which had the side effect of allowing wild guessing from the so called Intelligence Community to run riot.
And thirdly because while WMD was put front and center for the reasons for the war (unwisely in my opinion) and the stockpiles were much older and less impressive than we had been led to believe, he was both guilty of such violations and guilty of others, such as sponsoring terrorists like Al Qaeda.
Which is why I have absolutely no patience for people who peddle this bullshit, and I will have no patience with you. I regard this nonsense as being on par with Holocaust Denial, and while I admit I am biased (since I am friends with many who served -including dealing with this- as well as more than a few Kurdish refugees, some of whom volunteered to go back to dig up this stuff) I think it is very safe to conclude it is still false, ill-spirited, and disingenuous, indicating either utter lack of care in research or dishonesty.
Uhuh, yeah, Sure. That makes total sense.
Correct Dude, they really aren’t.
Your claims are provably false, and have been provably false for at least a decade and a half.
Unfortunately, while it would be incredibly obvious to establish what a Mustard Gas filled Artillery Shell is as a legal and moral subject (especially if it was used in combat, or God Forbid, as Terrorism) and only slightly more difficult to establish that Abu Sayyaf was a vassal group of Al Qaeda and one that was lavishly and knowingly supported by Saddam, the ability to prove these things has become a lot less important than “The Narrative.” Originating largely with the anti-War Left and peddled by people like you trying to literally tell me that a Mustard Gas Artillery Shell is not a Mustard Gas Artillery Shell if it is a certain age, or that Saddam becomes absolved from being considered an ally (even if an opportunistic one) of Al Qaeda if such support is filtered through enough front groups, proxies, or vassals.
It’s annoying. It was annoying to disprove in the first decade of this century, and it’s annoying now.
Now either do more research, or kindly shut up on the issue until you can point to Abu Sayyaf’s place in the org chart of the greater Al Qaeda ecosystem.
@om
Thank you kindly.
@Ed Bonderenka
Well said indeed. The best I can really say about Weimar is that it had great promise and was much better than what came before or after it. But it had deep pathological problems, starting with a culture that was on the whole more collectivist and statist than most (even such luminaries as the French and Italians). This was made worse by a pervasive refusal to own up and take responsibility for WWI and the atrocities committed by the Imperial Government (both against other nations and its own people), leading to the kind of “Oh What a Lovely War” Historiography and Whataboutism fests that still plague WWI Historiography to this day, happily funded by the Republican Governments. They either did not realize how this would empower the very same authoritarians and totalitarians who would demonize the Republic’s founders as “September” or “October Criminals.” and use it to justify overthrowing it, or they did not care.
Moreover, the Republic was remarkably authoritarian in many ways, with the need for a strong President in order to keep some semblance of order. Which in turn led to people like Bruning ruling by decree much as the Kaisers and Bismarck had and much as Hitler would, hollowing out representative institutions.
The other thing people tend not to realize is that after about 1931 – with the “Prussian Coup” – the Republic was essentially dead, a zombie in the hands of absolute monarchists who began facing attacks from both the National Socialists and the Communists. They hoped to ride out the crisis, but in the end failed and decided to make a compromise with Hitler.
We know how that ended up.
The Weimar Republic is a good lesson, for both good and bad. But if we’re honest, mostly the bad.
Turtler:
Yes it was expected that Bunge would pop up with his usual. Revisionism and alternative truths aren’t limited to the left. Bush Hitler and Darth Chenney are his “OMB.”
@om
To be honest I don’t have as much of a problem with “Revisionism” (which is a vital part of scholarship and debate given a bad name by liars) or even “Alternate Truths” (which are often more truthful than “Official Truths”). But this kind of abject nonsense that Mustard Gas warheads are not WMD because they are an arbitrary amount of time old (without actually having gone through chemical dissipation) or that we are supposed to pretend Saddam did not cooperate with Al Qaeda because this was filtered through front groups is annoying as hell and pretty evidently false.
It also ties back to my rage against Bush. People like Lott and co should’ve been fired or ostracized for bastardizing their analysis in such a transparently dishonest, politicized fashion. And yet they’re the ones who wrote the “Narrative” we still deal with, and that will cause problems for us down the line.
@Turtler
And it gets better. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was fully justified under the terms of the 1991 ceasefire agreement between the UN and the Iraqi government.
In fact Iraq’s refusal to allow inspectors free and complete access to their facilities for almost a decade meant that it was way overdue by the treaty terms the UN and others signed.
Whether WMDs or associated manufacturing facilities were found and in what quantities was never important in the grand scheme of international politics (both were, though not the massive facilities pumping them out 24/7 that had been reported to the CIA by the French and British, upon which flawed reports then-president Bush made his decision to invade in 2003), what mattered was that Iraq had violated treaty obligations which mandated military operations to enforce inspectors access if needed.
Treaty obligations that had for years been neglected by the Clinton administration and all other countries involved.
Now, I’m no fan of going to war and the middle east is now worse of because of the way things were bungled there since 1991 (and especially since 2003), but the invasion was fully justified under standing treaties at the time (whether those treaties were fair and just for Iraq is another matter).
Personally, I don’t think the US’s “nation building” campaigns have a very good track record and mostly end up leaving nations in ruins. But that’s only in part because of bad actions by the US (mostly having to do with completely ignoring the culture and social structures of the countries they go into in order to “spread democracy by the sword”). Many cultures and societies simply can’t function along the lines of a US (or European) style democracy.
@JTW
Well said. Really, the more you look into it, the less and less ground Saddam’s apologists have to stand on. Especially when you read the ceasefire agreement and other terms as they were meant to be read, very harshly. Saddam had a positive duty to – among other things- stop supporting terrorism, disarm all WMDs, destroy all WMDs (or help others do so), cooperate with the UN and other bodies for that, and stop massacring his people.
He manifestly and consciously failed to do all of those things. The only real grounds for dispute are discussing the degree to which he violated such terms, as well as when and where. And if MBunge wants to die on the hill that Mustard Gas Artillery is not a WMD or that we’re supposed to pretend Saddam Hussein did not aid Al Qaeda because he “Weally, Weally” aided Abu Sayyaf and other vassal groups of Al Qaeda, I will stomp Bunge into the dust for it.
Agreed. I also think it’s worth touching on rationale. Ultimately the timing wasn’t a coincidence: the decision to invade Iraq was made because of Saddam’s real and alleged support of Al Qaeda and the Taliban (which we now know actually intensified after 9/11). WMD took center stage for political and diplomatic reasons (and which I think was a mistake) and would be more than enough to have legally justified war on its own, but the main motive was terrorism and Saddam’s support thereof. Which again, we have abundant evidence of if you actually go a couple slices or so deeper than things like the Senate Select Committee’s mealy mouthed lawyer speak.
Fair enough. As for whether the treaties were fair and just for Iraq, I honestly think so. Saddam can blame almost nobody but himself for how things turned out, especially since he’d blown his rare spot as a client of both the US and USSR. Ideally I figure he should’ve been removed in 1991 and replaced with something else (or maybe a balkanization) but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Agreed, especially the most visible and high budget ones, at least after about the 1950s.
I’m more ambiguous about that, in large part because these nations already tended to be ruins, the issue was how they manifested. Granted US invasion might not have helped (though in some cases I think it did), but Afghanistan since the Communist Coup (and for most of its history) has been a fractured, tribal nightmare. Even Iraq under Saddam was heavily balkanized and polarized, basically being loosely united around a Sunni Arab hegemony/garrison state centered around the Tigris and Euphrates, with outposts in the major cities and various parts of the countryside, ruling like occupiers over Shiites, Kurds, and other “undesirables.”
This is a fair point, but I think in some ways it was caused by the US falling into the ugly middle ground of trying to pander to these cultures and social structures in destabilizing and counterproductive ways while at the same time overlooking or condescending to them. Letting Afghans write Sharia unto their Constitution was a cancerous tumor that just compounded, as was allowing things like rampant corruption and Bacha Bazi in the government. In many ways I do think we were too soft and pliant for fear of the evil Colonization and Imperialism accusations, and so we abetted a lot of evils.
Israei politics is complex for Amercans used to a 2 Party system, but the israelis from the Mid-East, North Africa, and Spain (Mizrahim, [Sp?]) didn’t take kindly to the European Azkinazim Socialism (Kibbutz crazy) beliefs. The Hassidim “Fundies” play along with Bibi’s Mizrahim as long as they can pretend that it is still the 19th, or 18th Century in the wilds of Eastern Europe. As a practical matter, the Hassidim and Islamists would get along except that the Muz will not leave the Hassidim alone as the modern Israelis do. Thus Bibi’s modernist faction came out on top (this time). No one with a productive job wants to dig turnips on a kibbutz. The Palestinians are like a Chicago gang with heavy weapons supplied by the Old men in Iran. Like Chicago, no one likes the defectives shooting up schools, markets, and buses.
Bibi is no Prince but he made deals with the Saudis and others. He is aware of Israels strengths and desires a productive future. Israel understands the Ukraine and can “play the game”. They have no choice.
The guy who thought Guam might flip over called the Wiemar the greatest democracy at the time. (So much for America)
I think you’ve confused Clyburn with Hank Johnson.
President Hindenburg had to use Article 48 to pass almost every law.
Then he appointed Hitler.
That article wasn’t invoked until 1930, and there wasn’t much choice at that point. Hindenburg by 1932 had no business holding the position he did. His senescence was crippling.
When I was in, fifty-plus years ago, we were to be issued a little pack of three syrettes of Atropine if going into nerve gas country.
Go look at your can of Raid out in the garage and see what the antidote is.
Point is, even if you don’t have a WMD facility, certain kinds of pesticides can be tweaked to be deadly. It takes a fair amount of engineering to load them into artillery shells. But the term IED comes from the Iraq war.
And, going back a couple of paragraphs, RAID itself requires an antidote. You know what a Molotov cocktail is? Picture one with RAID’s active ingredients and without the diluting compounds.
Having a few guys running an extra shift at the RAID factory–used as a metaphor for any dangerous agricultural chemical–does not make a WMD program which would fall under the WMD protocols and be illegal. Probably. But just one level of organization above that, including storage and some method of distribution, would.
I have no idea if Saddaam bought his RAID from other sources or made his own The point is…you don’t need a formal WMD program to have WMD.
#4 – Clyburn is a big time Jew hater from way back. So, is he saying this as a compliment?
Art Deco: I stand corrected on Clyburn/Johnson.
My point was that it was not the greatest democracy as Clyburn stated.
Of course, Dems see autocracy as democracy.
Vis-a-vis Netanyahu’s congratulations to Biden, I think we can take Trump’s exaggeration of “first” to a loose first and not a literal one.
I just had a rather nauseating experience reliving Nov 2020 in chasing down the info. Every media outlet (that came up quickly in a search) fulsomely gushed “World Breathes a Sigh of Relief!” “Welcome back, America!” etc. Truly grisly to read in light of our current situation.
But as comments above, and as the Times of Israel puts it in the headline, Bibi’s announcement was late in *hours*:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-hours-of-silence-netanyahu-and-rivlin-congratulate-biden-on-election-win/
Lopez Obrador waited until mid December. Xi Jinping of all people waited 10 days and Putin’s congratulations was also later, fwiw.
Considering how much capital Trump expended backing Netanyahu, I can see how Trump would have felt betrayed. I personally think Bibi could have been slightly more restrained in speaking of Biden, but I understand the tough position he’s in (and glad he won this election). I was disappointed at the time, though.
The events of November and December 2020 have been buried under the deluge of horrors afterwards, but I am sure Trump thought he would prevail given the stench surrounding how election night unfolded. If Trump had had the backing of the Republican establishment as a whole, I think it more than likely he’d be president today. I remember, that as strong as Tucker Carlson had been before election day, covering the Hunter laptop etc., I watched one night when he opined that there is cheating in every election, but not enough to change the outcome, and that it was no different in 2020. I knew all was lost, then.
Perhaps Republicans really did think Biden would be a return to regular order, and that they could field a less polarizing candidate in 2024, so mostly turning a blind eye was the prudent thing to do. I never for a moment (given the Covid reaction and the events of the summer of George Floyd) thought that any sort of regular order would return, not even for one second. (Still, events have moved even faster than my most pessimistic self could foresee).
Tucker Carlson seems to be at least tacitly admitting that he was wrong in 2020:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXUpT_Zjjig
I cannot “prove” that Trump won in 2020, but as Carlson points out, I shouldn’t have to. The fact that Democrats are trying to make “election denying” something criminal and disqualifying is only one of very many “tells.”
The outcome of Trump’s presidency was the flaming hell of today’s America, so I don’t necessarily want him back, unless he demonstrates that he’s got new tactics this time.
If only Tuesday night could be decisive. Dems have decreed that it will not.
Sorry to rant.
Personally, I don’t think the US’s “nation building” campaigns have a very good track record and mostly end up leaving nations in ruins.
1. Define ‘nation building’.
2. Which examples did you have in mind?
A lot of heat above on Iraq and Afghanistan. I supported Bush’s invasion until it became nation building. When Bremer took over, it was a lost cause. The same is true of Afghanistan. Tommy Franks showed good sense when he bowed out. Once “Big Army” came in nothing would work after that. More nation building.
Read Dakota Meyer’s book It explains a lot.
1. Define ‘nation building’.
2. Which examples did you have in mind?
Trying to turn a primitive tribal society into a modern one. Applies to both Iraq and Afghanistan. The Shah tried it in Iran and did no better.
IMO, “nation building” is oversold. We didn’t get run out of Astan because the locals wouldn’t pose for a Norman Rockwell calendar. It was because you never win a war when the enemy has a sanctuary. You just stay there and pay the annual fee.
IMO, “nation building” is an anodyne title for a combination of the usual aid plus trying to build an infrastructure to support a military presence. If we need a road from airfield A to Outpost B and the locals find it convenient, voila, it’s ‘”nation building”, not that nasty old military stuff.
Most of these places, including Kabul, have had, at least in the larger urban centers, western-oriented cultures and activities. I recall a montage of professional women in the Fifties there, Baghdad, Beirut (once the Paris of the Levant) and Kabul. Dresses, nylons, heels, complex hairdo, and except for the shortage of blondes and redheads, could have been cast in Mad Men.
Everybody’s had a chance at a parliamentary government. That Kabul couldn’t stand against the Taliban without us doesn’t mean they didn’t read the instruction manual.
Iraq’s government is fighting, well or not, but as an organized system.
Takes time and fighting to change Astan’s tribal culture.
Is it worth it to try? Where are our interests?
But if you can maintain the civilized centers, with time, and some cagey programs, you can make progress.
Iran is Persian, not Arabic. And things like the recent hijab issue show the distinction.
Trying to turn a primitive tribal society into a modern one. Applies to both Iraq and Afghanistan. The Shah tried it in Iran and did no better.
Afghanistan is dirt poor and it wouldn’t surprise me if lineage groups are tremendously important there. I don’t know that ‘tribalism’ is of much consequence in Iran. If I understand Stanley Kurtz, it tends to be in Arab countries because of the prevalence of cousin marriage, though I’ve seen complaints to the effect that Kurtz and others have exaggerated its significance vis a vis Egypt, among other places.
Now, consider the United States, Peru, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. And consider the World Bank data on them.
For all five countries, the life expectancy at birth is north of 70 years.
The country with the lowest literacy rate among them is Iraq, for whom it is 85% for the population over 15 and 93% for those between 15 and 24.
The country wherein the largest share of the labor force is deployed to agriculture is Peru, where it is 28% (it is around 18% in Iraq and Iran, 20% in Egypt). Egypt is the only country among them where the majority of the population lives in what the World Bank defines as the countryside.
Fuel and mineral exports account for less than 2% of the nominal GDP of the United States. In re Egypt, it’s < 4%; for Peru, about 10%; for Iran, about 20%; for Iraq, about 30%.
If you bracket out what's attributable to fuel and mineral exports, the ratio of per capita product at purchasing power parity to that of the United States is between 0.15 and 0.2 for Iran, Egypt, and Peru, about 0.1 for Iraq. To the extent you can compare real income flows over long time periods, the United States had per capita product in real terms about 10% of what it is today ca. 1895 and between 15% and 20% of what it is today during the 1920s.
These are lagging countries, but I would not call them primitive countries.
WRT NYC’s crime issue. What proportion of dem voters understand they voted for this with their eyes open and nobody fooling them?
Will they do it again? After all, they voted for deBlasio.