It's still very fucked up that the US signed a treaty with Iran saying "we'll lift sanctions if you do X", Iran did X... and the first thing the US did after the next administration change was to say "Fuck the treaty we signed, we're putting sanctions back".
What's the message being sent to Iran? "It doesn't matter if you try to play nice, we're going to destroy your economy unless you submit as a vassal state to the US"?
Also, I don't see how the US has any sort of moral legitimacy to unilaterally decide which country is a "good actor" and which country is a "bad actor", even against the wishes of its allies (including western democraties). In a fair process the US would only be one of several countries deciding together, and would only act with common backing.
If your answer is "moral legitimacy doesn't matter, because the US has the power to enforce its decisions", sure, that's true. Enjoy it while it lasts.
But don't act surprised when other countries start banding against US hegemony.
Yeah it is fucked up. What is the word of the US worth if it's going to flip flop every time the party in power switches. That's going to have ramifications.
> Also, I don't see how the US has any sort of moral legitimacy to unilaterally decide which country is a "good actor" and which country is a "bad actor", even against the wishes of its allies (including western democraties). In a fair process the US would only be one of several countries deciding together, and would only act with common backing.
Every country can decide for themselves who are good and bad countries, and they're free to take whatever action they feel is appropriate, including war. That's how nations work. Now some actions have consequences, and some nations have more or less power and influence. The US does have some moral authority in that it sometimes stands up for what's right rather than what's in their best interests. For example, bans on buying conflict minerals.
The UN is supposed to function like you're saying, but in reality it's quite dysfunctional. Because of the veto system the default action is no action so it's hard to agree on anything.
> But don't act surprised when other countries start banding against US hegemony.
They can and they will, but such is the nature of things. Nations rise and fall.
Yes, it makes sense for them to ban buying conflict minerals since they want to hold a monopoly over that ability themselves. Bolivia is one of the top suppliers of lithium to the US and has suffered dictatorships, election interference, and ongoing far-right paramilitaries financed and trained by the US and it's allies.
The US has NEVER done something to "stand up for what's right", every action they do is calculated to help themselves. If they are condemning or condoning anything, it is for their own self interest. This is how they can simultaneously call out the ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs by the CCP while simultaneously not being able to even condemn the killing of Palestinian children on record when being asked repeatedly by journalists. That's because China is a rival but Israel is an Ally.
They'e only recently publicly recognised the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire because relationships between the US and Turkey have grown increasingly strained. If they had any moral authority, they wouldn't coddle their friend's war crimes and hold them to the same standards as their enemies.
With something like the foreign policy history of the United States - that's a very rich area that doesn't permit a simple black and white position like yours. I want to downvote your comment twice. We could use less of that kind of thinking in the world.
No, it's not that we don't lack naunce, it's just that we don't flinch away from ugly reality by labelling it as a "very rich area" just because it concerns an empire we are a part of as opposed to the enemy.
For all of your indignation on the fact that I refuse to play apologetics for your favourite hegemony, you have not made one real counterargument for why my view of the US and their role in the wider world is incorrect.
I'm very proud frankly to hold the "extreme, no nuances opinion" that imperialism is bad and for that matter ethnic cleansing and the intentional bombing of civilians. You apparently disagree, seeing as in an earlier comment you dismissed such charges against Israel and Saudi Arabia as if they are wild accusations as opposed to a matter of public record for the wider international community and the UN.
I'll let everybody else decide which of the two modes of thinking we could do less of in the world.
But I think conversion with you is a waste of time, so let's drop it.
About your Israel rant, I've said elsewhere, Israel was fully within its rights to fight back against Hamas. If drug cartels in Mexico started firing rockets into Texas, there would be a full scale invasion. There are two sides to this conflict and of the two Israel tries hard to avoid civilian casualties while Hamas tries hard to cause them. It's obvious to me which side has the moral high ground.
Imagine if the US were taking more and more territory from Mexico while illegally evicting and assaulting Mexicans to make room for US settlers. Let's say that they then made it impossible for Mexicans to leave or enter a narrow strip of land and denied them medical treatment and severely restricted food and water access. That and prior to the attack of the cartels, let's say 6 years ago, the US launched strikes against the Mexicans where a later report by the UN found that 80% of the dead were civilians.
Imagine then if that drug cartel itself was originally placed into power by the US to avoid the formation of rival organisations that the Mexicans could choose between.
Provoked or not, one side is trying to kill civilians and the other side is trying not to. The good guys seem pretty obvious to me. I worry about your moral compass, because you seem to be on the other side of that. Do you condone or support the terrorist attacks of Hamas?
They have lied repeatedly before about how their attacks did not hit non combatants only for later UN reports revealing that the majority of deaths were civilian. They even bombed offices for Al Ghazeera and AP News recently in Palestine, likely in retaliation for testy interviews and coverage. Am I supposed to believe that those were holding Hamas as well?
And you never said anything about Hamas's motivations in the first place. You just treated Israel's actions as being justified as a given so don't give me this bs about how you're somehow being fair in your coverage when you're transparently biased towards Israel.
And as for your question, while I do not condone any attacks on civilians or civilian infrastructure (which already makes my moral compass better than the IDF's), I absolutely support resistance by the Palestinians against their violent and illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing efforts by Israel. You don't get to cry about your right to self defence when you're the ones who they're trying to defend their homes against.
No, actually I'm looking at their actions. Evacuating buildings first, checking them via drones, then firing warning shots, then bringing them down. Levelling a twelve story building with 0 casualties is a degree of care rarely seen in warfare.
Civilian casualties, of course, do happen and are not avoidable in war. That's the nature of it.
> so don't give me this bs about how you're somehow being fair in your coverage when you're transparently biased towards Israel
I'm being more fair than you are in your bias against Israel.
However, outside of a building containing high profile media companies, many Israeli strikes are far from being as careful. You can waffle on and on about how heroically and nicely they fire air to ground missiles in cities from a safe distance but in the end the raw numbers don't lie. Compare how many Palestinian's have died since this conflict started compared to the Israeli's and it's plain that this isn't a "war", it's a massacre.
The actual attitude towards Palestinians by many Israelis including officials is positively blood thirsty and genocidal. I've seen enough interviews on the streets of Tel Aviv to be deeply concerned. The population have grown increasingly radicalised and right wing by decades of IDF propaganda and there seems to be little recognition of their common humanity with the Palestinians. They will not be satisfied until the entire Palestinian population are either purged or driven from Israel.
There is no possible way to reconcile the requirements of a egalitarian democratic society with a Jewish ethnostate. This is the reason why they push for a "Two State" solution even though it's a farce and Palestinian territory has been eroded away more and more with Settlements that are illegal by international law. They do not want to the Palestinians incorporated into their society because they want to maintain a Jewish majority. There is no way that desire can be achieved without ethnic cleansing in the long term and we are seeing more and more brazen actions towards that goal.
The solution is both obvious and incredibly hard: Get rid of the two states and make it a single democratic state with full civic and political rights given to all inhabitants. The hardline Zionists of course will never stand for it though so it's never happening without a radical revolution in Israeli society.
I am personally sick and tired of arguing with somebody who thinks I should treat an aspiring ethnostate with anything more than contempt so this will be my last post to you. Feel free to have the last word.
I will urge (probably uselessly) that maybe instead of listening to IDF and US propaganda, you look at news in countries that don't have financial and political interests tied up in multi-billion dollar arms deals and territorial acquisitions. I don't listen to RT for details on Ukraine after all. Good night!
It has been mostly a waste of time talking with you, as I predicted from your first comment, but it wasn't without entertainment value.
Your ideas about a one state solution are kind of interesting. Honestly, I'm not sure the Palestinians would even want that if it were on the table.
My prediction is similar to yours. The Palestinians will refuse to compromise (capitulate?) Sufficiently for the Israelis. They'll keep losing power and territory and leverage and the deal on offer will keep getting worse. Until they've all moved on or been assimilated.
Their best hope is make a bad deal now, because it's not going to get better for them. It's not fair, but it is the reality.
More like the equivalent of the school bully threatening to beat up any kid who plays with the kid he doesn't like.
Click here for more information: https://www.novelvista.com/sre-foundation-training-certifica...
They're not an American client state, bit they're no worse than America, China, or Saudi Arabia
You can argue that they're a threat to american interests and an embarrassment to the American intelligence agencies, but that's not exactly the same as being a bad actor.
China and Saudi Arabia are pretty dirty, but I don't see the US in that camp lately.
What about the fact that the US has been sponsoring military and paramilitary organisations in central and Southern America for decades to fight against attempts at unionisation or socialisation efforts to help ensure their control over the rare earth metals and oil there? There are death squads that have mowed down entire villages after being informed of talk about unionisation as well as driving away indigenous tribes who happen to live in areas that are inconvenient to the interest of US multinational companies.
Are you also somehow forgetting the war in Afghanistan and Iraq that was perpetuated for decades after the given reason for invasion were dealt with for the transparent motivation to plunder the resources there? More than 200,000 civilians dead (and that's on the optimistic side of projections) as a direct result of actions from the US army.
All of these examples I gave are crimes that the US are currently engaging in and even with that restriction, this is far from a complete list. If I expanded it out to what they have been up to in the last 5 decades, then it would be a lot longer still.
If you don't see the US as dirty, then I don't know what standards you are operating under.
Crimes against humanity? How am I supposed to take you seriously. I'm no fan of Saudi Arabia, but they're a necessary evil. But Israel? I don't know what standards you're operating under...
Which country are you talking about? The Western foreign policy elite and Gulf Arab states funded a massive influx of Islamic militants into Syria to try change that country's regime:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/foreign-fighters-flow-t...
The largest insurgent faction, and the one receiving the bulk of this material support, was effectively led by al-Qaeda's Syrian franchise, the al Nusra Front.
Unfortunately, every state has the blood of innocent people on their hands.
Yes, but that doesn't mean they are equal either. Some are worse than others.
That's nonsense, but I welcome you to make a case for it with facts.
> especially if you don't just arbitrarily decide that state mandated actions are exempt from consideration as terrorism
If it quacks like a duck, yes. State mandated actions are not exempt. But don't go equating drone strikes on military targets - actual terrorists - as terrorism. That's military action, not terrorism.
> Iran and other "bad actors" are not even remotely on the same level.
Don't even get me started on Russia and North Korea. If you think the US is a worse actor internationally, your moral compass is very poorly calibrated.
Ok then, how about the fact that the US has been funding Al-Qaeda affiliated organisations to promote act as opposition to both Iran and Saudi Arabia's ideological and political enemies.
What about what went down and continues to go down in Southern and Central America where entire villages are being murdered in cold blood to discourage workers from organising for their own best interests and against the interests of the US? There are dozens of military and paramilitary organisations in Columbia and Bolivia that use arms and training provided by the US and allies (Israel in particular) to brutally put down worker uprisings and efforts at unionisation. Some of this training from the IDF in particular involves intentional maiming of members to drive up fear through the population against the idea of going against the regional power. Violence for the sake of spreading terror among the populace is terrorism by definition and the IDF have been both inflicting this on the Palestinians and training other groups to do the same on their own people.
This training and arms that Israel provides to these far right groups are directly subsidised through the billions in dollars that the US transfers to Israel yearly. This is no charity. The US has direct economic and political interests in keeping Central and Southern America under a tight thumb for both the rare earth metals there and the oil. They use the IDF to perpetuate fascist regimes abroad instead of direct support because of how bad the PR got during the 80's and 90's.
What about the plundering and destabilisation of Afghanistan and Iraq and how it has radicalised the region and formed dozens of terrorist groups that are now conveniently targeting surrounding nations which have not the best relationships with US empire. The leaks exposed by Julian Assange conclusively show that the US intentionally struck civilian targets including medics so don't bs to me that the Drone strikes (which btw were also being used illegally across Pakistani borders and murdering civilians) was strictly above board.
I invite you to make the case for how Russia and especially North Korea are somehow worse than the US in terms of state sponsored terrorism or even more traditional crime such as drug trafficking (Colombia remains one of the largest cocaine producers in the world with almost half of all cocaine controlled by the paramilitaries there) but I think you fail hard.
if you count Israel among US’s friends, you can also count Israel spending decades covertly supporting violent Islamist groups in Palestine as a counterweight to the relatively secular PLO, which is how we ended up with Hamas.
https://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/venezuela-sanctions-...
That's the two wrongs make a right logical fallacy. That the US did shit to Iran does not excuse the shit Iran is currently up to.
The book, "Twilight War," has a lot of material background on the matter.
Sanctions seem like the least harmful way to deal with bad actors at the nation state level like Iran, North Korea, and Russia. This is the equivalent of not playing with the kid who can't play fair or follow the rules. Replace playing with trading.
You might say Iran is not a bad actor, but that's not a winnable position to take.
Would you prefer military intervention over sanctions? What else can you do in these kinds of situations?