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@Nemiroff
That's true, and of course, I don't support terrorism and deplore organizations like Fatah for funding it.
But I don't think it'd be correct to say that 20 years ago Israel was the good guys. Even so far back as the foundation of Israel, you had Israelis building mini-ethnostates by kicking non-Jews from their homes. Take the 1948 Partition Plan. Israel had a vastly disproportionate share of land compared to its population, and yet accepted the deal graciously. Even respected Israeli leaders like Ben-Gurion were talking about "abolishing partition and spreading to the whole of Palestine." Look at all the war crimes Israel committed in the Independence war and how few people were punished for them. Look at how quickly Israel jumped into war against the Arabs in 1967 and look at how they lied about Egyptians planning to attack first even when the military generals knew that Egypt wasn't ready for a fight. Seems like they committed war crimes there too. Look at Israel's questionable '82 Lebanon invasion, and how they potentially killed people themselves but also allowed the Phalangists to murder people in the streets. Look at what Israel did in Operation Protective Edge in 2014.
All of these situations are complicated but in most of these situations it's fairly obvious that Israel has not been a benevolent country for quite a while.
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@Greyparrot
@bmdrocks21
Forget what I said before didn't read legislation carefully
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So, you'd rather vote for a Joe Biden who says he will beat Joe Biden? For a Joe Biden who declares his pleasure of children sitting in his lap and rubbing his hairy legs in a pool? For a Joe Biden whose hands on shoulders of girls and women to support his erect stature while sniffing their hair? A Joe Biden who declares on tape that "the son of a bitch was fired" after threat of withholding $1B from Ukraine? A Joe Biden who faces his stage left, and walks off stage, during a basement chat? A Joe Biden who confuses his wife with his sister? A Joe Biden who, left without a tele-prompt, can't string two words together?
yes.
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Why would this only affect white ppl lmao
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guys please respect the flag soldiers died for dominance in the middle east I mean our freedom and its not like black people have been discriminated against/killed under that flag so please respect it guys God bless america
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My ideal voting policy would be no voting. I advocate for Absolute Hereditary Monarchy (think Saudi Arabia)
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@bmdrocks21
And I have no clue why Evangelicals love them so much. Jewish people in the US have a lower approval rating of Evangelical Christians(34) than they do of Muslims(35). While White Evangelicals have an approval rating of 69 for Jews. https://www.pewforum.org/2014/07/16/how-americans-feel-about-religious-groups/
To be fair this isn't really relevant to Evangelical support for Israel. I think they mostly support Israel b/c they're afraid of Muslims lmao.
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@bmdrocks21
They like Trump because he shills for them over every possible issue. What do they do for Americans/Trump in return (actually curious)?
Seems like they share intel, tech, counter-terrorism stuff.
More importantly, Israel acts as a strategic ally for the U.S. in their big Middle Eastern proxy war, which I'm not really a big fan of either.
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@Nemiroff
Current activities in the territories, sterilizing black people, demolishing Palestinian buildings in East Jerusalem, acting as a big homie to Trump, spreading online propaganda, suffocating Gaza... New shit comes out all the time. I'm an Israeli, but it's really hard to be patriotic about a regime like this.
As for the conflict, I don't stand with the Palestinian governance (state-sponsored terrorism and all) but I certainly stand with the Palestinian people that get murdered all the time. And really the conflict is complicated and both sides have done things that you'd have to take leaps and bounds to defend.
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@Nemiroff
Ah, cool. Been a while since I posted that one and since then I don't really support Israel anymore lmao
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@HistoryBuff
Source on the terrorism stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Martyrs_Fund
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@HistoryBuff
It's hard to say. All potential solutions to the conflict have issues. We're aware that Palestine universally sponsors terrorism against Israel right? Why do they need a state?
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Why not?
This is stupid as fuck but I think it would be interesting if the president had the potential to become a dictator as real presidents do. There should also be DART political parties advocating for a certain way to reform the site. Extremist groups would be good too ill see myself out
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@bmdrocks21
This has been on my mind recently so I thought I'd let you know why I didn't end up replying in the end: I came to understand that the argument we having likely wasn't going to get anywhere because it rested on shaky ground; I think we have fundamentally different values and this argument ultimately boiled down to these irreconcilable differences.
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@Vader
This is the failure of the UN. They aren't doing any better. We only go into conflict when the US is in risk of losing their lives. It is selfish, but frankily the US doesn't want to go to war when American lives are at risk
"The U.N. exists therefore human rights violations should be over"
What are you talking about? What at-risk American lives caused us to invade Iraq?
Not subscribing to read this article dude. And you still haven't addressed this: http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2015/09/24/enough-with-the-pessimism-about-peacekeeping/.
Saddam Hussein was evil and was not going down unless a foreign intervention occured
That sucks. U.S. still shouldn't get involved. Why do you think Iraq would've abandoned Ba'athism forever and strictly abided human rights if the U.S. killed Saddam Hussein? You don't think that would just make them angrier at the U.S. and their democracy? We both realize how many human rights were violated and how many died in the Iraq war, right? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_post-invasion_Iraq#Human_rights_abuses_by_insurgents)
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@Vader
I never said that we should be this global hegemon. I said in some cases in the world we need to act upon the people that are there. We haven't gone and invaded North Korea for its abuse of their population. We haven't gone into China and help the tortured Muslims. We only go into these when we can and have the resources to do so. And if the UN can not get their shit together for helping the world, so we need other countries to do so. While I agree it is a waste, there is no other option since countries in the UN like Russia and China don't contribute funds or people to help these places, and instead focus on building this global hegemon to take out the US
Myanmar is practicing ethnic cleansing. Saudi Arabia is literally wiping out Yemen's citizens and murdering Shi'a activists. Turkey is attacking and jailing people who oppose their government. Venezuela uses force on protestors. The human rights situation in all of Africa is terrible. These are all nations which we are much stronger than militarily. Why not invade them? (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/amnesty-ten-global-hotspots-for-major-human-rights-violations-in-2017.html, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/02/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-venezuelas-human-rights-crisis/)
This flaw cost millions of people their lives, the 4th most deadly, behind the Nazi German Regimes, Cambodian, and Soviets. The UN failure led to 20% of the Rwandan population dying
But like I said, U.N. peacekeeping is generally successful. U.S. peacekeeping is hardly better. Peacekeeping isn't exactly easy you know.
Again, Saddam Hussein was an evil person who needed to be stopped along with his harmful regime. Once he was taken out, the war should have been over. Instead we stood there and did absolutely nothing but destroy. The justification at first was OK, but after SH was killed, it was not needed for the extra war
Like I said above it's not the U.S.'s job.
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@Vader
You still haven't explained to me why the U.S. has to mediate every nation with bad governance. The world CAN'T BE PERFECT, and we kill tons of people by trying to mediate these conflicts in the first place. Also, like we see in South America, we often install pro-American dictatorships rather than genuine democracies (which is a smart power move because an imposed democracy will always be seen as a foreign import and will never have popular support). If the U.N. has to get it's shit together, than it's the U.N.'s job to do so, not the U.S's.
Also you've shown one example of a U.N. peacekeeping failure; peacekeeping has flaws of course, but it is shown to have generally positive effects (http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2015/09/24/enough-with-the-pessimism-about-peacekeeping/).
Don't buy your stuff on the U.N. and Iraq, I'd like to see a source please? I'm not unwilling to believe it.
I just want to re-iterate; the Iraq War was complete bullshit. The invasion of Iraq had all different sorts of dumbass neo-conservative justifications; the government had an agenda. They were already planning to invade Iraq before the WMD thing (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/the-right-and-wrong-questions-about-the-iraq-war/393497/),and the WMD thing and the terrorist associations things were both bullshit per the U.N. evidence. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_Iraq_War). 100% power move.
We could debate this if you want.
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@Vader
For someone who opposes war, you aren't understanding that the U.N., and not the U.S., is obligated to resolve human rights issues and international violations. If we made it a priority to go to war with every country that was under a "terrible regime" we would be in endless war. Entering a war for a terrible reason and killing tens of thousands is state-sponsored terrorism.
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@bmdrocks21
That's a fantastic quote.
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@Vader
The invasion of Iraq literally was justified on false pretenses and killed tons of Iraqis and Americans. If that's not state sponsored terrorism idk what is.
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@Greyparrot
I thought Dr.Franklin was referring to missing the US military base in Iran i.e. no casualties
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@Dr.Franklin
Disagreeing with President's actions = sympathizing with terrorism
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@ILikePie5
I don't think you read anything I said and just re-iterated your previous statement.
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@Greyparrot
@Dr.Franklin
Lol that plane was an accident what is your point.
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@Greyparrot
Risks aren't something you can make general judgements about like this. It is specific to the risk at hand.
In this case, we risked war by acting and did not gain enough for that risk to be worth it. We're very lucky this didn't escalate.
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@Dr.Franklin
AND THEY MISSED LOL IRAN SUCKS
Youre aware this was intentional right
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@Greyparrot
Wouldn't say I'm overstating the risks when a war was/is possible.
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@Greyparrot
Right... I don't understand what your point is. Are you denying that risk and the potential negative outcome of that risk are important when making decisions?
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@ILikePie5
Difference here is that we have the straight flush hand while they have an Ace High. They know they can’t win if they continue to bet so they’re forced to cut their losses.
But it's not so simple. Iran has an obligation both to avoid an all out war with the U.S. and to look good and unafraid for it's citizens. This puts them in a near impossible situation in which they must retaliate to look good but not retaliate too hard where they would trigger a war. Iran intentionally tried not to kill any Americans when it bombed the base but they got lucky in that respect; imagine if they had tried something different than what they did or they accidentally killed some Americans in the process; things would've escalated further.
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@Greyparrot
That's absurd. Do you know what a cost-benefit analysis is?
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@Vader
Would you still punch that kid if you risked the lives of 10s of thousands of people when you punched him?Kid punches you decently in the face 6x times and you don't do anything. 1x it was a bit too hard. Then you give him a nice punch hard in the face that gives him a bruise. You may get in trouble or start a brawl that could lead to you getting in trouble, or you wont. Trump swang hard and Iran backed down by missing American troops and not targetting them.
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@Swagnarok
You make some good points.
It's concerning how close we got to war. Sure, we may not be going to war, but like you said, the killing was a gambit. Whether or whether not it was successful, we destroyed what was essentially a living Iranian hero and braced ourselves for a potentially severe retaliation, and got lucky that it didn't happen. Any other nationalistic nation could've acted differently.
Whether the gambit works or whether it doesn't is irrelevant - it still doesn't make it a good decision. Me betting all my money in poker with a wife and kids might give me double my money and a better life for them, but it would still be a terrible decision to bet that money.
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@Greyparrot
I don't know what you're talking about tbh.
I said this responding to you:
Trump is literally the reason we are escalating towards war right now. Orangemanbad is a strawman of what is really an incredibly dangerous mistake made by our president.
and then you said this responding to me:
We wouldn't even be in this situation if Obama didn't make such a joke of redlining. Countries think we are toothless and can do whatever they want to us, including killing civilian contractors and attacking our embassies.
It is completely obvious that you are trying to shift the blame for a terrible decision by Trump onto Obama. I called you on that for whataboutism. This isn't complicated.
But I wasn't accusing Obama of anything you are describing. I am explaining how a policy of establishing red lines but not following through with them contributed to the circumstances where a civilian contractor was killed and an Embassy was attacked.
Okay. Doesn't absolve Trump of his responsibility for these recent events.
If Trump were to follow the same exact policy, we would expect more of the same.
You're falsely presenting two extremes as the only options. It's not like you either set pointless red lines or you kill Soleimani. Like I sourced above, Trump literally picked Soleimani's killing because it was the most severe possible option, implying that there were different options out there. Off the top of my head, you could arm the embassy, organize a diplomatic meeting with Iran, etc.
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@Greyparrot
You haven't sourced your definition, you are making a semantical argument, and it is frankly wrong. This is the definition of whataboutism. All it functionally is changing the subject of a debate with a counteraccusation. We were talking about whether Trump's killing of Soleimani was justified. You brought up Obama's failed red line policy to explain why Iran is acting the way it is in the first place, but THIS DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE KILLING. This only explains the context. I can see no other reason for you to bring up Obama (which was completely irrelevant) than sheer whataboutism.
That kind of insane partisan censorship is what is killing rational discourse today. These discussions should not be made taboo just because it makes one feel bad to think about it.
I am not censoring you, nor am I making your discussions taboo because I feel bad thinking about it. Enough of this silly right wing freeze peach paranoia.
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@Greyparrot
Yes it is whataboutism. Your statement has nothing to do with the justification of Trump's actions. You spoke on Obama to change the focus.
Lol what is it with the right and their obsession with the left "appearing virtuous", "virtue signaling", etc lol.
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@Greyparrot
When did I talk about Obama? Total whataboutism. And it's hardly inevitable; we could've sent troops to defend the embassy, attempted a diplomatic meeting, etc. Trump literally only chose the killing because it was the most severe option presented to him.
Why are we assuming our embassy is safe because their military general is dead? Don't you think that'll motivate more violence in that area just as much as it may deter it?
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@Greyparrot
Trump is literally the reason we are escalating towards war right now. Orangemanbad is a strawman of what is really an incredibly dangerous mistake made by our president.
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@Vader
It's still war, and people will still senselessly parish because our government made a terrible choice.
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@Imabench
Given that Trump hopped straight in to the assassination of a major Iranian general sanctions are the best we can hope for.
People don't understand that this isn't some chess game and this isn't a fucking sport. We have American and Iranian lives in our hands.
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This is not a game. Jesus Christ.
We're on the verge of war because Trump literally took the most aggressive choice possible to protect the embassy.
So much for non-interventionism.
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It's possible. Teams almost never play at the caliber that they did in the regular season as they do in the playoffs, whether that be a good thing or a bad thing.
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