What's the title going to be? "I Duh'd it My Way"?

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by Apollo

Didn't the Greeks do something similar? It was something like... every leader had to "stand trial" at the end of their reign of power and be judged by some kind of committee of citizens? Or something like that...?

The two aren't really related at all I guess, and I might be wrong about the whole Greek reference, but this is the first time I've noticed the comparison.

Quite right about at least some Greeks. IIRC it was part of the constitution of Syracuse that at the end of their term, every public official was subjected to a full (financial) audit and was required to account for all the decisions they had made. A large jury could then vote for various rewards or punishments, as they saw fit.

Damn good idea, I reckon.

The only problem with the books is, as already pointed out, they get to tell their side of the story, with no criticism, contradiction, or awkward questions.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Redux

GHW Bush (who when he was CIA director also had Noriega on his payroll) took down Noriega.

And not a Democrat, either. Democrats simply can't spread democracy any more, nor make fascism extinct, nor really anything worthwhile in foreign policy. Wholly worthless to men of freedom.

I know you didnt mention Nicaragua, but Reagan's Iran/Contra scheme to promote democracy in Nicaragua broke the law....a number of officials in the Reagan administration were convicted of crimes in the pursuit of Reagan's illegal support of a more [democratic] movement in Nicaragua.

I took the liberty of removing the quotes around democratic because the sociopolitical order in Nicaragua since the Contras won has been democratic, in substantive contrast with the Sandinistas' reign of Marxism alloyed with managerial incompetence. Even the revived Daniel Ortega can't raise a pimple of what had once been -- speaking of how much more democratic Nicaragua is today. A pseudodemocratic regime would have kept him imprisoned for life.

The laws you so approvingly cite were carefully designed to shield and perpetuate a Marxist dictatorship that couldn't keep the lights on even with no one particularly trying to put them out. Monetary policy was typical Marxist economic illiteracy, and the response to the increasing problem was the Marxist-bozo nostrum of organizing scarcity, not creating wealth. No, when the last Marxist dies a good deal of foolish miserymaking will have departed this world. Never back a grand theory of humanity in your political philosophy, and don't expect politics to ever be competent to cure humanity. Politics cannot be a curative agent, the chemotherapy of warfare aside. It's better understood as a metabolic process of the body politic, local or global.

You don't shield and protect a dictatorship if you're really a democrat. This seems mere horse sense. Sen. Kerry's record of doing exactly that is one reason I, a man of freedom, would not vote for him.

I dont even want to begin to discuss the lies, deceptions and potential illegal activities in regard to our invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Durn right you don't. On moral and Judaic grounds I'd cut your kishkas into the chopped tripas they stuff tacos with around here.

The "lies and deceptions" were those of the Ba'athist Iraqi government -- and they fooled how many assorted national intelligence services again? I count five, including that of Jordan. Right next door. Culturally similar. They'd have a feel for operating in their region.

For a practicing, identified Jew to disapprove of the demolition of a fascist-philosophy dictatorship that practiced genocide... well, that is wholly as beyond belief as it is beyond the pale. If you're not conscious of your sin here, you are kidding yourself, or are completely, unbelievably morally numb. For someone who gets it when it comes to Israel, your inability to understand that it's the very same battle that Israel fights that we fight in Iraq is -- not rational. What makes you so blind? Is it because you're a Democrat? Is Ann Coulter right about you guys all along?

Yuck, redux. I'm glad I don't think like you. I might not be able to push for human liberty.

We should absolutely be promoting freedom and human rights around the world....by supporting internal democratic movements and by working with allies (and even adversaries when appropriate) to isolate and pressure oppressive regimes, not by force of invasion and occupation....and NEVER by breaking our own laws or violating international treaty obligations to do so.

How many respected ancient rabbis have written that obeying a bad law is a bad thing itself? I think it's more than one... laws, after all, were a vehicle for destroying Jews in the Shoah, as is very well known. "Legal" has not always coincided with "right" or with "righteous." On our shores, try the Alien & Sedition Acts of the very late eighteenth century, or the Supreme Court Dred Scott decision of the middle nineteenth. Quite according to the law, a federal law upholding chattel slavery -- but right?

Leaving nondemocracies in existence, their oppressions to perform -- is that a righteous thing? Liberty and democracy for all human populations -- there's righteousness, and you should burn for it with a white heat. Have you ever noticed that totalitarianism and autocracy are always about crushing somebody? Visiting force upon them to their ruin? Democracies don't act like that, do they?

Zealotry that abuses or debases our democratic process in order to promote democracy elsewhere is immoral, unethical, anti-democratic and just plain wrong.

True. Problem with that argument is our democratic process was not abused nor debased by the action of prosecuting a war against those who are not democratic by any measure. This is not striking down a strawman -- this is a swing at a ghost.

If anything, that prosecution elevates the democratic ideal. If you want a good world, the nondemocrats have to surrender their power and become democrats. Since we cannot expect this to occur of itself out of the goodness of the human heart -- some humans being less good than others -- I say this surrender need not be voluntary, so important is it that democracy be the rule.

None of your rights have been impaired by the Bush Administration's prosecution of the GWOT or indeed in any other arena: your rights are almost exactly what they were in Clinton's time -- the difference is at present that you have a little more. During Bush, your gun rights grew. That "assault weapon" ban, that some hoplophobic maniacs are trying to bring back, went away, and there's the gun carrying in National Parks, the better to keep them from being hunting preserves for crazies willing to defy any ban to have just square miles of undefended helpless targets, so long as they can keep ahead of the cops. Bans in the parks are said to be an antipoaching measure -- can't say as a poaching problem had caught my attention; still, I could be wrong. Your rights under the 2nd Amendment grew under Bush. Is a change in that area with Obama a change you can believe in?

In the end, if history is a measure, the Reagan/Bush way generally comes back to bite us in the ass.

What history do you mean? History actually shows the opposite. Are there even effectual teeth in this assbiting you speak of and seem to dread so? While that doesn't mean antiglobalizationists (we're settled firmly in the globalization camp, from an economic force about as relentless as gravitation) can't kick up some trouble for us, that is not because Reagan/Bush did a thing (and didn't FDR (D, four terms) do a thing or two like that and in a big way?), but because empowered cranks like bin Laden do some other thing. You can say, "That was in response to X we did..." and I reply, "The other actor has a choice. He can act, he can take no action, he can choose bad or he can choose good." By which I mean it's free will and its occasional mistaken choices that muddle politics, and history.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

And not a Democrat, either. Democrats simply can't spread democracy any more, nor make fascism extinct, nor really anything worthwhile in foreign policy. Wholly worthless to men of freedom.

Tell that to the peoples of Bosnia after the end of ethnic cleasning and the establishment of democratic reforms during the Clinton presidency.

And I guess the only peace negotiated in the last 50 years between Israel and its former enemies Egypt and Jordan was a foreign policy failure of the Carter administration?

Thanks for the rest of your lecture on how I can be a better, more moral practicing Jew.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

You're welcome -- and you needed it, I think. Call it tough-love.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

You're welcome -- and you needed it, I think. Call it tough-love.

Reagan'si illegal Iran/Contra arms for hostages, or GWH Bush's funding Saddam through BCCS or both of them expanding the School of America's programs to train South American right wing paramilitary thugs or GW Bush's cherrypicking intel, withholding other intel from Congress, authorizing torture and extraordinary rendition, etc .....all part of that tough love or a feeble attempt to pretty up the ugly face of neo-con bullshit?

Promoting democracy abroad by violating the very principles of the rule of law or the moral values at the core of our democracy is still a load of crap by any other name.

My favorite is still your ludicrous notion that Jews in America who support reasonable gun control are somehow condemning themselves to another genocide.

Tell it again, daddy....that part makes me laugh the most!

[Urbane Guerrilla]

So, "Republican" automatically equals "villain" for you, it seems. Not a reasonable line of thought in my opinion.

You insist, crazily and fascist-sympathizingly, on discounting doing good in the world by advancing democracy and crippling tyranny, by justifying your opinions as based on law. You're ignoring, of course, the fact that laws can be very bad things and helpful mainly to evil ends. You can't acknowledge the evils of tyrant-protecting legislation, or else your entire mental construct comes down with a resounding crash.

You'd be so much better a man if it did, though. And you'd be a truly liberating kind of Jew, too. Freeing from oppression -- that's a mitzvah, is it not? Hasn't the Pentateuch something to say about it? Is not liberty a birthright? Are there not people, born having that birthright, living chained because they had the misfortune to be born where tyranny's writ runs?

My favorite is still your ludicrous notion that Jews in America who support reasonable gun control are somehow condemning themselves to another genocide.

You can hardly do anything except support the next genocide that way, as your coreligionists at the JPFO can tell you -- and convincingly. They showed me that "reasonable" and "gun control" are not words that belong together. The end effects are always so very unreasonable, regardless of when they arrive.

No. If you're going to profess the progun, you really should be progun.

The people who die in genocides are the ones who don't think they see one coming. Genocides are always ambushes. They begin in concealment and are sustained by telling lies.

Better, I think, to cultivate prophylaxes against these crimes of state. You accomplish a genocide against populations without the means to resist. No other way is very practicable. You tend to deplete your pool of Einsatzkommandos if you try exterminating an armed population. Then what?

Never reject an idea just because I accept it as truthful or accurate. You'll usually fall right on your face, frequently into a mudpuddle. This is not a good outcome. A man of your intelligence ought not to insist on being this silly.

The caliber of people who most bitterly oppose the neocons frankly does not impress me: it's a parade of the usual totalitarian-coddling suspects, blame-America-firsters, grubby Communists and their room-temp-IQ fellow travelers, Janeane Garofalo (whom that wise old snapping-turtle Charles Krauthammer summed up the other day with, "She's beneath contempt."), ad nauseam. It's always the slavemongers against the active liberators. You know where I stand, and I think you should stand there too. That's not a call for cloning my opinions -- for I think I believe in liberty for you more than you really do.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yeah, you tell 'em Rush.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

So, "Republican" automatically equals "villain" for you, it seems. Not a reasonable line of thought in my opinion.

Iran/Contra - selling weapons to Iran in exchange for hostages then funding and arming the Contras in Nicaragua with the proceeds - illegal
Iraqgate/BCCI - funding and arming Saddam through shadow bank transfers - illegal
School of the Americas - propping up right wing "democracies" in South America by training para-military thugs to oppress (kill) dissenters
Torture of detainees at Gitmo and black prisons.- violations of Geneva Conventions and UN Convention against Torture

You didnt address any of the above.

I am a believer in the rule of law.

Even beyond that, the first two (Iran/Contra, Iraqgate) came back to bite us in the ass, one with a propaganda advantage we gave them on a silver platter and the other with our own weapons...Chavez came to power in Venezuela with his anti-American campaign, including rallying against the killing of trade unionists and indigenous leaders by para-military trained at the School of Americas....and our Iraq invasion/occupation and torture policies, by many reports, inlcuding NIEs to Bush, have been a "cause celebre" for terrorist recruitment.

added:

Then consider Clinton's response to the Bosnian civil war/ethnic cleansing v Bush's Iraq folly...both nation's governed by thugs who oppressed (killed) civilians but neither of which presented a direct or immediate threat to the US.

Bosnia - a true NATO partnership, total of less than 10 US deaths, and less than 100 civilian deaths after NATO intervention, resolved by forceful diplomacy involving all parties, even the bad guys that neocons would probably not have allowed at the table (dayton accords)

Iraq - few willing partners (most were bribed with US aid) 4,000+ US deaths, an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, a new constitution that relies heavily on sharia law and a nation still facing significant instability, a stronger Iran in the region as a result,....

Granted, there are signficant differences of circumstances, but which approach was more successful?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Yeah, you tell 'em Rush.

Bruce, Bruce, Bruce... do you REALLY think you've made a telling argument to the thoughtful people with this juvenile jeer? Please try to offer an idea I can respect.

Originally Posted by Redux

I am a believer in the rule of law.

So you say, and repeatedly. Perhaps you even believe it. But the laws you believe in were laws carefully crafted to protect and preserve the Marxist tyranny of Sandinista Nicaragua. To be worth obeying, a law must be in the service of the good -- not to aid a tyrant, even an incompetent one. I've told you this at least twice now. You are remarkably resistant to understanding what is good and then going to do it. Well, that isn't me.

Nothing bit us in the ass in helping the Contras into power and the Sandinistas out. Sure, some of the usual antidemocratic pigs made the usual noises, but that's not a wound to us -- on the contrary, it's a sign we're wounding them. Fascisto-communist dickheads can compose speeches too.

Nicaragua has been a prospering, democratic state since the Sandinistas collapsed. With the Sandinistas running things, there wasn't a lot of prosperity to be found. Democracy advances, tyranny falls, collectivism dies, and that's the way I want it. I'm a libertarian. I care not a whit how many slavemongers die in the liberation. It seems to me when they're dead, they can't mount an organized opposition to a better way of life than they ever made.

Chavez will fall -- both because he will drive the Nicaraguan economy into the ground and because of his anti-American stance. He's anti-prosperity -- and we aren't. This is shown by his bottomless appetite for all the power for him, none for anyone else, and this is always a recipe for economic depression. This fall of the man on horseback isn't much of a wound to us, either.

You're quite losing this argument through not being enough of a disciple of liberty, you know.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Nothing bit us in the ass in helping the Contras into power and the Sandinistas out. Sure, some of the usual antidemocratic pigs made the usual noises, but that's not a wound to us -- on the contrary, it's a sign we're wounding them. Fascisto-communist dickheads can compose speeches too.

Nicaragua has been a prospering, democratic state since the Sandinistas collapsed. With the Sandinistas running things, there wasn't a lot of prosperity to be found. Democracy advances, tyranny falls, collectivism dies, and that's the way I want it. I'm a libertarian. I care not a whit how many slavemongers die in the liberation. It seems to me when they're dead, they can't mount an organized opposition to a better way of life than they ever made.

Chavez will fall -- both because he will drive the Nicaraguan economy into the ground and because of his anti-American stance. He's anti-prosperity -- and we aren't. This is shown by his bottomless appetite for all the power for him, none for anyone else, and this is always a recipe for economic depression. This fall of the man on horseback isn't much of a wound to us, either.

You're quite losing this argument through not being enough of a disciple of liberty, you know.

The Sandinistas, the guys that Reagan broke the law to oust, returned to power in Nicaragua in 2007 and are "running things." Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) is president.....the FSLN holds the most seats in the National Assembly. And while they have initiated democratic reforms, particulalry regarding an independent judiciary, the model is Venezuela under Chavez, not the US.

From a US State Department report:

Since taking office again in January 2007, President Daniel Ortega has maintained the legal and regulatory underpinnings of the market-based economic model of his predecessors, but has rejected what he terms the "neo-liberal economic model," and along with it capitalism and the United States, which he refers to as the imperial power. Instead, he has allied himself with the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), whose other members include Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, and Venezuela. In 2008, Ortega declared that socialism was the only path for Nicaragua if the country wanted to alleviate poverty.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/1850.htm

So you still justify Reagan's illegal Iran/Contra scheme? Tell that to the 11 Reagan administration officials convicted of crimes for their roles in the illegal foreign policy action.

How about GHW Bush's arming of Saddam to counter Reagan's arming of Iran...what a fuck up...arming both of our "enemies" in the region? What did that accomplish?

Why is the Bush/Iraq model of invade and occupy a better foreign policy approach than the Clinton/Bosnia model of tough diplomacy backed by a strong alliance of NATO forces?

No response to the fact that the US intel community, in NIE's for Bush, concluded that the invasion/occupation of Iraq and related torture of detainees from Afghanistan at Gitmo and black sites has resulted in a "cause celebre" for terrorist recruitment?

Where are the successes of your neocon policies?

[Undertoad]

UG, Chavez runs Venezuela

You've been schooled here by Redux and it's embarrassing.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Bruce, Bruce, Bruce... do you REALLY think you've made a telling argument to the thoughtful people with this juvenile jeer? Please try to offer an idea I can respect.

I can't give you an idea you can respect until you pull your head out of your ass and see what's really going on in the world. Imperialism is not the way to go.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Redux is partisan, and spiritedly. He feels obliged to defend his Jackass Party from those mean ole Republicans any time somebody takes a shot at his team. It's not that we're anti-Democrat so much as we're anti-stupid and anti-feckless, and the Dems do so much of both. We're not exactly sympathetic to inflation either, having lived through quite a cycle of it and seen the rot.

So where is your defense of your failed neo-con policies, big boy?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Redux

The Sandinistas, the guys that Reagan broke the law to oust, returned to power in Nicaragua in 2007 and are "running things." Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) is president.....the FSLN holds the most seats in the National Assembly. And while they have initiated democratic reforms, particulalry regarding an independent judiciary, the model is Venezuela under Chavez, not the US.

From a US State Department report:


So you still justify Reagan's illegal Iran/Contra scheme? Tell that to the 11 Reagan administration officials convicted of crimes for their roles in the illegal foreign policy action.

How about GHW Bush's arming of Saddam to counter Reagan's arming of Iran...what a fuck up...arming both of our "enemies" in the region? What did that accomplish?

Why is the Bush/Iraq model of invade and occupy a better foreign policy approach than the Clinton/Bosnia model of tough diplomacy backed by a strong alliance of NATO forces?

No response to the fact that the US intel community, in NIE's for Bush, concluded that the invasion/occupation of Iraq and related torture of detainees from Afghanistan at Gitmo and black sites has resulted in a "cause celebre" for terrorist recruitment?

Where are the successes of your neocon policies?

In places you haven't, or refused to, look, it would seem. Purblind is no way to go about anything. Heck, Wikipedia tells us how much of a lesson Ortega learned in his time out of power:

Ortega's policies became more moderate during his time in opposition, and he gradually reduced much of his former Marxist rhetoric in favor of an agenda of more moderate democratic socialism. His Roman Catholic faith has become more intense in recent years as well, leading Ortega to embrace a variety of socially conservative policies; in 2006 the FSLN endorsed a strict law banning all abortions in Nicaragua.

Did you notice any of that? Not that I'm at all keen on abortion bans, but I kept that in the quote as an example. (I reckon absolute control of whether we reproduce or not is better stewardship of the planet than any insistence by law on doing it otherwise.)

And we haven't had a lick of trouble out of Nicaragua, nor has Nicaragua had the kind of troubles that got us interested in the Contras in the first place. That's even with Ortega back in. He's acting like his ideas have changed in a more favorable direction, and that is surely what we want. That's no failure by any measure. It's an example of a bad-hat reforming.

Face it, Chavez's Venezuela is a pretend-democracy. The form may be there, but the function is not. Following such a model will not end well.

I never cease to justify the crushing of tyrants. Was not the Sandinista regime one of tyranny, impoverishment, and incompetence? The crushing of tyrants simply can't be wrong, and the liberation from oppression can't be wrong either. Always, I justify justify breaking bad laws (and laws shielding tyrants are never good laws, and you have (or you should) sufficient awareness to understand this too) to good ends. I've told you two or three times now that legislation was designed to keep Marxist monstrosities in office, their miseries the better to inflict. When will it sink in with you that it is bad to prevent liberation from oppression? I am not going to be impressed by your indignation because your priorities are both out of whack and strictly for partisan convenience. I will have nothing to do with either, being the good, thoughtful fellow I am.

The same goes for lunging into Iraq. It's expensive, yes, but what are their chances of going back to an avowedly capital-F Fascist government? I think they are small indeed. That's not a failure.

Afghanistan's a murkier case, because nobody there's willing to put up with being centrally governed anyway, given all their druthers. It's never really been a unified nation, however convenient it may be to call it by just one name. A lot of steep valleys, a lot of tribes, and the tribal level is where the loyalty pretty much entirely lies, and nothing seems to be generating an urge towards broader national consciousness or towards central governance either. A federated or a looser confederated model seems the natural one.

Let's see: before we invaded, Saddam ruled Iraq, funded terrorists and provided benefits for Israel-attackers' families, wasn't exactly unfriendly to al-Quaeda as is evidenced by who was picking up the medical bills for al-Zarqawi's munched leg.

Now Saddam is dead, and his policies and alliances with him. Failure? I don't think so. Rulers who acted like Saddam have cleaned up their act, viz. Gaddafi. Was that a failure? I think that's an accomplishment. Funny how you can't.

Integration into the Functioning Global Economic Core continues. Our foreign policy troubles come from that part of the world that isn't integrated into globalization, which may conveniently be called the Non-Integrated Gap. We're fighting in the Gap right now. From time to time, we'll still be fighting here or there in the Gap region(s).

Why do you give half a fuck about "cause celèbre for terrorist recruitment" anyway? Could you tell if a terrorist was more annoyed with you just for being an American this year than a couple years ago? Haven't you noticed how difficult it is for the terrs to do anything anymore? Sure, they fight back. Just as sure, we shoot them -- and they've been stuck in the tribal territories of Pakistan, unable to reach out and touch us unless we're right there in their back yards, which is quite the contrast from the case at Sept. 11, 2001. Nasty people are going to hold nasty views of us, and because they're nasty, yeah, they're going to shoot at us too. Then we just smack their heads off their shoulders and the world gets a little better for having fewer bad actors in it. I have no problem with this, and will likely never understand why you think you should -- when you could just be happy more fascists died. Think how many Jews would have been saved if more fascists had died sooner. Think how many Jews would be saved now if all the Islamofascists were dead.

Which still leaves the great bulk of Islam around to practice their religion better, without these disgraces polluting it.

So no: spare no sympathy for the outraged feelings of bad actors, nor try to make nice to them. Their outrage is self-generated and it is unfair to us. They respond much better to the force of a 147-grain jacketed rifle slug through the cranium than to the force of a good example.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I can't give you an idea you can respect until you pull your head out of your ass and see what's really going on in the world. Imperialism is not the way to go.

Bruce, if you think the United States is imperialist, you've not understood very much of US history at all. We have a conspicuously anti-imperialist habit, we've had it all our nation's life, and about our only departure from it was the Philippines and this was a) quite light, and b) temporary; it seemed more our following fashion than trying for empire. We noticed early on just plain open trading worked a lot better than the mercantilist economic theory that led to empire-building, by conquest or by lesser violence. It can be said of our early nation that the thirteen colonies were the first modern anti-Imperialist league. Though empire was the foreign-policy fashion then and through the nineteenth century, viz., Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Russia, Germany, the Ottoman Empire, China, and later, Japan -- an empire pretty much defined a first-class power. We knocked Spain completely out of the empire business -- nobody else did. That one was ours. We finished them off after a lengthy imperial decline.

If you think I'm some kind of imperialist, all I can say is you're not paying any attention at all. That's not something I can respect either.

You've been pretty thoroughly misled by Communist rhetoric about "imperialism," whereby they dissed it while unabashedly practicing it. So, in the end, what is there for me to respect, again? Let's just put it this way: I'll look for respectable ideas from you. Now might be a good time for you to have them. I know you're not stupid, but the idea of "US Imperialism" should be buried by now, and not taken seriously by you. With you throwing ideas like that one around, are you quite certain you know what's going on in the world?