I haven't done much research into this yet but I always wondered, how does SpaceX raise decent capital to stay afloat year by year?

$1bn in seed, $1bn from Google and Fidelity, $4bn in US government contracts. It helps that they are much less wasteful and incompetent than the government-sanctioned Boeing/Lockheed monopoly.

e.g. a ULA (Boeing/Lockheed monopoly) executive didn't realize he was being recorded, and admitted that basically everything they do is graft and that incumbents literally can't compete against SpaceX or Blue Origin.

https://qz.com/641738/this-rocket-executive-pissed-off-everyone-in-space-and-lost-his-job-the-next-day/

Time to move the Doomsday Clock another ε to midnight, now that the president's stolid attitude toward the written word


has precipitated a public (kudos to the Russian state photographer!) display of treasonous intel bungling that even manages to ape



a scene from a movie about actual Doomsday?

Sorry, don't know how to play this video :(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3Rrvh3FwE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump:_The_Art_of_the_Deal#Synopsis

Classic Step 7. Pretty soon comes the fighting back!

If an unstoppable force meets an immovable object...

Will a man who freely admits to not reading books manage to make it through one that he had ghostwritten just to stroke his ego?

Either way,

I'm glad we can move forward. I'm not taking this personally either, but for sake of politeness moving forward, I'll do my best to be more civil.



I think the points I'm making are misunderstood, and there's a chance I'm going to contradict myself, so I may bite a bullet or two. I need to make a distinction between facts and values. Facts are facts, for instance, we can say, "drivers with a higher BAC cause more accidents"-that is a fact. Saying "drunk people ought not drive"-that is a value. Facts and values have interplay, and it's not clear how big the distinction is, but I believe most people would agree there is a distinction.

I'll illustrate how this works in politics by analogy. Let's say I'm looking for parking in a busy city. All of the lots and safe streets are full. When I'm thinking about whether I should park in an unsafe area, my thought isn't about the morality of breaking into cars. My thought is about whether it's a likely occurance. It's a fact-laden thought, not a morality-laden thought. Of course, it is still wrong for a person to break into another person's car.

So, when you say:



I'm saying understanding America's response to Russian interference is just like considering whether someone will break into my car. It's not a moral calculus to understand what someone does. People break into cars because they're poor, or maybe because they just don't have respect for other's property. But these aren't (or aren't entirely) morality-laden claims, they are claims about causality.

Similarly, you're absolutely right that I make moral criticisms of America. I do, quite a bit, because I think America's actions in the world are often very immoral. That is a value claim. I also have a fact-claim, which is to say, I believe often times, American foreign policy causes more harm to American citizens than it helps them.

Of course, this claim also has values in it. Determining what counts as "harm" or "help" is not truly fact-based. But, if we can come to an agreement on what counts as harm or help, then we can discuss the facts, and whether the facts in conjunction with those values leads to the conclusion I stated my belief of. I also believe that any reasonable interpretation of what harms and helps American citizens will lead to that conclusion as well.



I believe you may be confused as to how morality and factuality interplay. When you say:



I'm not sure entirely what you're implying by "realist". Political realism is pretty broad, but my understanding is that it's the position that, in politics, everybody is always seeking to maximize their power, and to not have power is bad, therefore we ought to pursue having the most power. This is a strong moral claim: it makes claims about what we ought to be doing politically in no uncertain terms. It just sounds deceptively unmoralistic, because it's name gives the pretense of factuality. But it's not. Second, it makes claims about power that I find dubious. Specifically, many formulations of political realism portray political power as a zero sum game: the belief would be that, if I don't assert power, then someone else will. It's not obvious at all to me that this is how the real world works; it may suffice in many instances as a workable model, but it's far from "the objective truth" of politics. For instance, the PATRIOT act expanded the capabilities and power of the NSA. I do not think this power was "taken away" from say Russia in order to achieve, in my view it was the creation of new power that wouldn't have existed otherwise. Similarly, I don't think it's obvious that, if the United States had never, say, invaded Iraq, that some other power would have exerted itself in the same area.

If this is not your interpretation, I'd like you to break it down. It's not at all obvious what "realism" means, and it appears to be more moralistic than you're impressing on me..



On this, you're correct. Republicans did take Obama to mean more than he said, and keep harping on a point that was never intended.



I agree, it wasn't a hardline position. Obama said something that came across much stronger than he intended. I also believe you personally read it much stronger than Obama intended.

I'm curious, though, what actions do you think Obama might have taken to reduce suffering?



Scroll down further:





The article discusses plainly how Obama tried to minimize what he said.



? I'm not sure if we're reading the same thing. It does clearly talk about how Obama backed off from the statement.



That's an irrational blame. Russia has had military presence in Syria since long before the Arab Spring. Obama would have known this, and would have factored it into any decisions he made in Syria. In this situation, Russia never "regained" a foothold in the Middle East, because they've always had that one in Syria. But to respond to what you quoted, this:



From what I've found, this is the opinion of someone at the Hudson institute. Judging from their Wikipedia, they're a center-right thinktank that's largely supportive of American military intervention. They don't come across as particularly unbiased in this. Though, I find their quote still confusing, unless if they're insinuating that Putin is grabbing power that he didn't have before in Syria? And by Pax Putinica, are they suggesting that Putin is at a peak of controlling land and influence? I'm really just not getting what they are saying, Putin's lost a bunch of control of the Middle East. For instance: Putin and Gaddafi were close. Putin was upset when Gaddafi was taken down[/i]. Hillary Clinton indirectly [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y]claimed responsibility for doing it.

So, I just don't get what the Hudson institute is saying, if they're even attempting to say anything factual. If I can tempt a guess, and this is surely unheard of in American politics (sarcasm): they're just talking bull**** in a way that tries to justify hostile military action. Putin's been losing influence over the Middle East at American hands, he's not gaining it, and at worst he's violently keeping influence over the Syrian country that he had influence over before anyway.

So, yes, military hawks will be angry at a president who doesn't make military action.



.





If you read again what I said:



I was citing that source for the facts they were stating, not for the values. Clearly I disagree with that value. Is that dishonest? Maybe I should have stated a caveat. But it's not "completely" dishonest, because I was never using that source to derive anything but the fact of what causes terrorism.



Again, you're right. The report derives a different conclusion about the moral correctness of U.S. action. In other news, burglars largely condemn house alarms as immoral. We don't allow people to judge themselves in court for the same reason we don't trust this report's analysis of America's actions.



Yes, we all agree that US foreign policy has desirable and undesirable consequences, intended or unintended consequences. But the calculus must be more nuanced. First, it's a question of whether the desirable outweights the undesirable, or vice versa. I'm saying that for most, not all, but most actions, the bad outweights the good. As for the intentionality, it's more complicated than saying an action is intentional or unintentional, and therefore simply deriving the morality. If I drive drunk, or speed recklessly, and as a result kill someone, despite my actions being unintended, they were still wrong. If an action has easily perceivable, bad consequences, then it doesn't matter what is intended, it's immoral to commit to that action. It's fairly easy to see that military intervention has many unintended consequences, which are mainly felt by civilians. Thus military intervention must be done carefully, only in moral circumstances, and with clear objectives. Many of America's wars fail to meet these criteria, and some, e.g. Vietnam, fail all three.



It isn't a moralistic concern whether people will seek retribution. It's a factual one. If one attempts to cross-correlate terrorism with western actions in the Middle East, it's apparent that one precedes the other, and if you actually read what the terrorists say, they're saying they do it because of America. I mean, literally, just go and read what Osama Bin Laden was saying before 9/11:



Unless you think he's just lying, what he's saying is pretty clear. And it's not even (entirely) inaccurate. His analysis of the factuality, what causes what, is not completely wrong. He may have chosen an immoral way to take that fact, but it's not hard to predict that, when the United States does pretty much these things, you get people who are really, really angry.

You ask, then, how my quote is different than the 9/11 Commission, which reads:



You suggested they were compatible views. Yes, my quote and this quote agree on the basic facts of what causes terrorism: plundering riches, dictating to rulers, humiliating people, terrorizing people, and using their lands to spearhead wars against people they feel close to (obviously there's an antisemitic strain in what Osama said, so ignore that, what he's saying about U.S. military intervention is the thing to consider).

But the difference I have with that quote is the moral one. Since we actually are doing the things Osama Bin Laden acuses us of, and since it has come back to us and caused lots of damage, not just in terms of 9/11, but the legal changes (PATRIOT act) and two expensive wars, we should not be doing those things. And these are only the consequences Americans suffer. The consequences they suffer are worse.

Unless if you can come up with a good reason why the United States should have done the things Osama Bin Laden acuses us of doing, good things that are good enough to such a degree that they substantially outweigh the bad, then I don't see how your moral calculus can lead you to believe our actions are right, or justified.



By "single greatest", if we mean, we look at each political entity causing instability, and select the one that causes the most, then yes, American intervention IS the greatest cause of instability in the Middle East. If you think this is not the case, then I'd like you to explain how situations like Iran can be primarily made responsible to another country.

More broadly though, the western nations are responsible for destablizing the Middle East. And I include Russia in that list, they were historically Christian and culturally closest to Europe, and communism is a Western invention, so as far as I'm concerned they're western.



Napoleon hardly ever declared war first, yet we would hardly say he was not aggressive. You have to also consider the political order which existed before any violence happened. You seem to neglect this.



Saying aggression causes reverse aggression is not a moral analysis. It's one of the more unmoral claims I've made regarding U.S. foreign policy.

The thing is, you actually can trace many bad things back directly to actions the United States has done. Sure, we can make factual errors in doing this, but I think if you take the time and analyze it with a discerning, fair mind, you'll see that it is the case.



So, yes, the thing you quoted from me was not explicitly accurate. It was hyperbole. Clearly it's not the case that every last instability in the Middle East was the cause of the United States. I do not believe that. I do believe, though, that if you look at the instability in the Middle East, you'll find that in most cases, the United States played a prominent role in causing it.

For instance, the stuff regarding Afghanistan that I discussed earlier. Surely the Soviet intervention was the big tipping point in it's downfall. But, as the Brzezinski quote shows, the United States attempted to provoke the Soviets into the war, in order to cause the Soviet downfall. Osama Bin Laden knew this, and that's part of what he's talking about in that quote.



I know of no seriously analyst who would claim that leaving Iraq would immediately stop terrorism, so, I believe you're arguing against a strawman here. IIRC the United States stopped supporting the Mujahideen in the late 80's. That would give a 10-15 year delay between the actions that would have directly affected Osama Bin Laden and 9/11. In other words, there's often a delay for these sorts of things.

But, staying mired and continuting to cause suffering, will only draw things out.



I'm using 9/11 as a centerpiece for discussion. I'm not saying that 9/11 is the single bad result of terrorism. Many people suffer as a result of destablizing a country, not just the destabilizer. That's the "unintended consequence" of intervention that's easy to predict, just like deadly car accidents are an "unintended consequence" of drunk driving. The drunk driver doesn't just have to wreck their own car for their action to be immoral.



In a sense here, you're right. Clearly people have agency and make choices.

However, this isn't born out of a condescending, ignorant reading of another's culture. I've gotten this impression from reading Dabiq. From reading Osama Bin Laden's statements. From reading al-Qaeda's publications. They literally say these things. It's not insulting to take someone at their word for face value. It's rather insulting to ignore what they're literally saying, all the time, directly, because some right-wing foreign policy journal thinks Muslims have full agency in their own suffering.



Yes. This is entirely accurate.



Religion is often used as a tool of political control, and with the case of ISIS I think this is so. But you must also recognize that, in some sense Marx was right: the material conditions of a society affect the thoughts people have. History is not driven by thoughts, it's driven by food supplies, water, who people work for and in what conditions. It's not as if ISIS was a thought that was going to plummet onto Earth in 2013 regardless of anything, the philosophies of ISIS are born out of the conditions resulting from the Iraq war.

That's not to say that there isn't an ideological fight to have, there is. Conservative Islam is one of the last belief systems that is wholly resistant to western, free-market liberal capitalism. Except western, free-market liberal capitalism is, in many ways, a take-no-prisoners ideology. Liberalism is a religion that demands quite a bit from people's lives and culture. And if the Middle East is ever going to settle and liberalize, not likely to happen any time soon, then Islam is going to have to go through an ideological reworking, or western liberalism is going to have to adapt to Islam. So on some level I do agree that the ideas of the west and Islam are in tension, but I still very much don't agree that they're the primary cause of the conflict.



I agree that Muslims see western liberalism as a hostile force. In fact, if you want to know how they feel, just track Pew Research polls throughout time. Consider this one from 2005. Their conclusion:



That says something not far off from what Osama Bin Laden said. They do not like what the U.S. does in their countries and to their people, and they don't like how it acts like a bully out to get what it can take. However, even then terrorism wasn't popular among the population, and polls today shows that the vast majority of Muslims despise ISIS.

You'll find this is a continuous, easily-observed pattern. Muslims agree with the complaints of terrorists, but (generally) disagree with the violence.

How, then, do the differences between al-Qaeda and ISIS matter? I feel you are reading too much into the religious doctrine.



Sounds about right.



It wasn't just the shift to the free market, it was how it was shifted. I'm not an expert here but if I remember correctly, big capital (mines, oil) and banks were made private first. Instead of allowing smaller businesses to have more freedoms, while keeping banks and mines public, to ease the transition, they just divied up the large assets and went forward. As such, you basically had a couple big gangster-like people take control of key industries and make massive profit, and conditions were really poor for average people.

China did a different strategy which worked great for them. But, they didn't have Western powers overseeing the process. I'm really at my limit of knowledge here, though, so there's a possibility I'm wrong. But basically my impression was that, the way westerners wanted to open Russian markets to the world was done in a poor way that was bad for Russia, but good for some oligarchs and western investors. Or, maybe it didn't end up being good for western investors, but that was the intention behind the transition.



That's precisely the point. Russia was in a bad state; there was an opportunity to build an ally and a closer relationship. Instead of helping Russia rebuild and stabilize, my impression is that the western countries basically wanted a puppet leader Yeltsin who would do what westerners wanted, and the ability to exploit Russian resources. I believe that maybe, if we had worked with Russia instead of taking advantage of the situation, then Putin's stance wouldn't be so hostile.



Again, I do agree. Russia has always seen itself as an imperial power, and that historical context works to shape Putin's Russia. I only wonder to what degree you can interpret his actions by this.



To conclude, I think two things: one, that my view isn't as moralistic as you seem to think, and two, that your view is more moral than you seem to think. I do admit that I tend to be strong in moralizing, which might be a fault, but it's how I often want to speak about events. But I disagree that it's how I try to understand them. I hope my post has helped clarify more exactly how I believe the world works.

As for your comment about my views being completely skewed and one-sided, I fail to see how this is true.

Not long enough; read closely

tl;dr it's not a moral view to say American foreign policy hurts Americans more than it helps, and moreover it's a factually true statement.

Okay then, the real question then is why do facts hate America?

I'm not entirely sure. Partly because I think propaganda efforts against Americans are very widespread and effective. But it's not hard to find out true statements.

A good way to find out why American foreign policy is the way it is, is to go back and look at what past presidents were saying and reading. Stuff like this is informative to read:







From another document:



There are plenty of interesting things to read from the 1950's planning documents, especially if you can get past the rhetorical speak and see what they really mean, which is: "these Arabian people don't like us because they see us as just wanting to exploit their resources. Good relationships are important for us to be able to exploit their resources. Force may be necessary if we want to continue exploiting their resources." With some flourishes about how stumped they are that these people don't see the obvious threat of communism and how much better it is to be controlled by the United States.

I am mildly interested in understanding this debate between Reid and Eversor, but I think I am going to have to settle for the highlights in the after game show, since I only have time to read so many novels.

BUT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv7fA1gBKPo

My entire response to Reid can be summarized like this: driving analogies suck.

Just kidding. I'll get back to you, Reid, but I'm going to break my response into multiple posts. The barrier of entry into discussion is too high if we have to write these long posts in order to engage.

Whoa, I totally forgot about that album, save the two three classic hits. But I was actually into this song back when I did listen to it. It's got a disarmingly saccharine but odd quality to it that sort of melts you into another dimension.

So true, although I think most of the songs on that album are pretty strong. Paul Simon is the baby boomers' gift to humanity.

Just, in general, there's quite a bit of drift in your responses. That is, instead of backing and defending your positions, you're really just altering your positions. That's fine, I'm not going to go back and make a big thing about how you've changed your positions, because that'd be really tedious for both of us and the payoff is limited. But I'm still going to note it and move on, and note when it is actually relevant. (I'm doing it too.)

First, the part of this debate that is the most tedious and the least relevant to the key differences between us in this debate: the Obama red line.

About it, you say this:



It is true that the Washington Post article does use the word “minimize” to refer to some of Obama’s remarks about the red line after his initial improvised statement in 2012. But it specifies specially that “he tried to minimize it as “not a surprise.”

That clarification is not altogether insignificant, because your contention is that he "backed off" from the redline statement:



And I, of course, disagree: I’m saying he didn’t back off from it — at least in a sense. We do disagree here about how to interpret the remarks of his that you cite. But in my opinion, there’s little indication from that text that he’s backing away from the red line itself. That is, he’s not backing off from the policy implied by the red line, which is the position that, if Assad uses chemical weapons, the US should use military force to deter their proliferation and use. His point in saying that it’s not “his red line” but “the world’s red line” is that to call the use of chemical weapons a red line wasn’t some arbitrary decision that he made. Rather, it’s an international norm shared by the overwhelming majority of countries in the international community. And, the point in doing that, isn’t to deny the need for action, but, to argue that it is not the responsibility of the US alone to act unilaterally, but for the world to mobilize together, alongside the US, to stop the use of chemical weapons. So, after the section of the speech you cite, he said:



https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/04/30/news-conference-president

If you check out this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6ePJXR216c) from September 2013 (it occurred after the speech you cited), it’s clear holding the Republican-majority to its own “red line” (that is, to its previously stated, legally-binding commitments to take action to deter chemical weapons), and not merely to Obama’s, was a tactic he used in an effort to convince congress to vote to intervene.

No doubt, the passage I cite does express some degree of hesitance, so I’ll agree that he backed off from the red line in another sense. That is, I think it’s pretty clear he really didn’t want to enforce his red line. But that’s precisely why so many people see it as his single greatest foreign policy blunder: because he didn’t stand by his word (and, of course, that he didn't stand by his word and that it was an issue was my initial contention). According to many, that failure was very consequential. Many liberals and conservatives agree (again, including some in the Obama administration) that it damaged the credibility of the US’ deterrent in Syria, and made it more difficult for the US to manage the situation, create stability and reduce the bloodshed. (And, also, that it had implications in US-Russian relations, but we don't need to re-litigate that. Let's move on.)

Ok, now your other point about Russia and Syria:



This amounts mostly to one big ad hominem attack. You’re pretty explicit about it; the argument goes something like: this guy’s a conservative, and conservatives lie to justify war atrocities, therefore, this guy’s lying too. But let’s leave that aside -- not hugely important.

In response to the first question you pose in the first paragraph here, my answer is basically “yes”. Remember, your initial claim was that by enforcing the red line in 2013, the US would risk going “toe to toe” with a nuclear power, namely, Russia. My point is just that that’s wrong. Although Russia has been a longstanding ally of Syria and has military assets there, Russia’s presence in the country was much more limited, and it wasn’t actually backing the Assad regime using military force, before 2015. The result was that Russia’s nuclear deterrent played a much, much smaller role in limiting the scope of what the US could do in 2013 than it did later on.

Although it’s self-affirming to see you doubling down on your “Putin’s apparent aggression is really defense” tack, the point about Putin losing influence in the Middle East is also pretty off point. For example, before Russia entered the war, Israel enjoyed air supremacy over pretty much the entire region. That changed over night, when Russia started fighting. And it’s really limited Israel’s capacity to reduce Iran’s support for Hezbollah, which is quite problematic. Although it doesn’t admit it publicly in Israeli media, the IDF is really worried about Hezbollah’s growing military capacity, and it knows that the Israeli casualties in Israel’s next war with Hezbollah will be high. (It’s a real problem for Israel, and if you want to talk about scenarios that could feasibly spark World War III, however unlikely it is — the possibility that Russia could use airpower to stop Israel from preventing Iran from smuggling weapons into Lebanon through Syria could blow up into a huge issue, if the US gets involved. See this.) So Russia’s entrance into the war and its alignment with Iran has been consequential and has shifted the balance of power in the region significantly. And Russia has continued to expand its influence there, by going into Afghanistan, for example.

Going back to page 18 for a minute... I had downloaded this talk to my phone, and on a whim watched the first half of it last night while I drifted off to sleep.

This is probably normal, but I got some really bad vibes from the speaker. I am guessing that a lot of grey hat types have similar attitudes about the morality of the stunts they pull.

Amusingly, looking back at page 18 for a minute, I notice that the ongoing Russia-U.S. debate in this thread goes at least as far back as that page.

I do take that to mean, the U.S. will not act unilaterally in response to a chemical attack. Rather, they will work internationally with the UN in the case of a chemical attack. Which is a softer position than he originally took, which would imply he was not advocating for a hardline position. Though I do get your point.



Okay, I do agree with you about the consequences of his position. I think, though, that, while many people do claim it undermines "U.S. credibility", I think that's a vastly overreaching, silly statement to make about how the U.S. is perceived. Everyone, Russia, the Middle East, the world, are terrified of what the United States is capable of militarily. As to whether it emboldened Russia, I think not, because Russia's current big-picture strategy is a defensive one.



U.S. actions perpetually aggravate Russia, it's not just Syria. Consider Libya again. Gaddafi was a Russian ally. If you run military operations that kill the leaders of countries who are allied to Russia, you're risking this conflict. It's pretty clear from history that the United States is not afraid of escalating conflicts with nuclear powers, and that should terrify us.

If anything, Libya showed the world that Russia is a weak country that can't do much to protect its dictator allies, whereas the U.S. can. Part of Putin's goal isn't just to protect Syria, it's to comfort his other allies that Putin will actually do something to defend them.



I agree that this specific action was an aggressive one, but not every aggressive action is part of an aggressive strategy. If you haven't, I'd encourage you to read the cold war anti-communist planning documents that I posted just a bit ago, they help explain quite a bit. The United States seeks unilateral control over the Middle East. The U.S. has, for over 50 years, basically had the same strategy: they will do what they can to maintain peaceful Muslim allies, but will use military force when required to maintain control. Their biggest boogieman threat is the Soviets, whom they basically admit appeal to these people more because the Soviets were less interested in simply robbing them of all of their resources.

In the case of Libya, they were taking down a bad guy. Everybody can agree that he ought to have been taken down. The problem isn't that in itself. When you put the blinders on, and look only at Libya, it looks like a perfectly defensible action. Which is how I take you to be looking at Syria, and much of the Middle East generally: yes, with blinders on, without context of history and without fair comparison, it's easy to criticize Putin for his military aggression in Syria. But it's far from Russia acting aggressive out of a vacuum. How is that? Read Stewart Patrick from the Council on Foreign Relations:



What's he really saying here? He's saying the application of human rights laws are done selectively, based on national interest. What else was going on during the time of Libya's overthrow? The same council notes that there were similar crises going on in Yemen and Côte d'Ivoire, but those were ignored. Maybe, because in those cases, western powers preferred the current power structures?

When it comes to Syria, don't forget that we're still supplying arms to the Saudis in their brutal war against Yemen, which has been committing war crimes. Sure, there isn't chemical weapons, but be honest: how informed are you about this war? Did you even know that there are other, brutal, U.S.-backed regimes in the Middle East?

So yes, what you seem to be repeating about the Middle East is: the United States should be allowed to unilaterally support dictators, commit war crimes, and even assist dictators in gassing civilians. But if Russia takes mildly aggressive military action to defend their long ally, then they're a ****ing piece of ****, self-interested ******** power-grabbing ******* country.

Again, I'm not saying this makes Russian action morally right or desirable, but come on, are you seriously saying what Russians do is overall worse for the Middle East?



Israel is a sensitive subject and I don't want to comment too heavily, but it's fairly clear that Israel is the centerpiece of U.S. military aggression in the region. Has the actions of Russia been consequential, then? Yes, they've put a jam in U.S. unilateralism. Is that bad for Israel? Probably yes. Is it understandable and morally equivalent to the U.S.'s actions? Also yes.

And this particularly is how U.S. media can be propagandistic. As long as the aggression in the Middle East is done by Putin, they will harp on it, and make it into an enormous story about "Pax Putinica" and wax endlessly about how terrible Russia is, but Saudi war crimes that are thoroughly backed by U.S. arms shipments hardly get covered at all. It's much easier to yell and scream when your enemy commits an atrocity than when your close ally does.

I forgot to mention: it's pretty clear that the motive for the United States and NATO focusing on Gaddafi, which foreign policy experts admit the policies by which they took down Gaddafi are applied selectively and with regard to national interest, was a power grab by western powers who want to weaken Russia's influence over the Middle East (or Africa if you're going to be picky). So, are we justified in doing that? Is Putin justified in being upset about that? Is Putin's actions in defending Syria worse than that?

Don't forget, that this aggressive action by the U.S. and NATO led eventually to the proliferation of ISIS and powerful warlords in Libya, because of unintended consequences/blowback/whatever you call it. Drunk driving!

The point I'm really getting at here is, if you actually care about human rights, then you must act to defend human rights in all situations, regardless of the actor, even when it's not favorable to you. If you only ever start caring about human rights when it's the enemy doing it, then you're just using it, cynically so, as a vehicle to grab power.

Does anybody actually do this?

No. No nation seems to. That doesn't make it right.

What I'd prefer then is for the United States to drop the pretense. Just admit they want to own the Middle East. At the very least they would no longer be hypocrites.

Even then I think the United States is irrationally belligerent, and often gains very little (see again: Libya) and this often comes back to harm us. You don't even have to give a **** about other people to hate these policies, even self-interest leads to it.

Fair point.

At the very least it would be a good idea for people to study history before naively accepting narratives dished out by the war department about some new costly and tragic misadventure overseas. This is pretty hard to do so long as people are gripped by fear and have neither the attention span nor the inclination to respect, let alone hear out a balancing viewpoint, amid a sea of pro-intervention propaganda.

Like, before 9/11, the Taliban offered multiple times to give up Osama Bin Laden, the only thing was, they wanted to do it as an official extradition, where the U.S. would provide evidence and he would be held to a fair trial. The U.S. flatly rejected all offers. They demanded the Taliban just hand him over, no questions asked.

This is irrational belligerence. There was no good reason to refuse this offer, and many obviously now consider it a huge blunder. But that's U.S. unilateralism, that's how we treat everything. We expect these countries to capitulate to demands on our whim. And it's strongly contributed to a bad era in American history.

I don't know very much about Russian-Libyan relations. But this was useful:



https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2016/09/01/russia-and-libya-a-brief-history-of-an-on-again-off-again-friendship/

Do you think that is because power structures select for personality types that are prone to doing stupid **** and insisting that they have a magical mandate to do that ****?

Edit: (Referencing Reid's last post) Because based on my experience in the US military and even dealing with local level politicians, these are the personalities who are incentivized to succeed in these realms, and indeed, the world at large. And it's pretty awful and will certainly be our downfall as an industrialized civilization.

also, I can't not: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDS81Ibazdk&t=0m17s

I was actually contemplating writing something along these lines, but I wasn't sure if Reid wanted to shift the discussion from a broad moral one to a narrow institutional one. Both discussions are worth having within their own scope, but they may not overlap too much.

Taking another example of a federal agency, almost everybody I've heard who has had to interact with the immigration service has only had atrocious things to say about the conduct of the people who work there. I imagine that toxic cultures get institutionalize so long as sloppy rationales for things that seem to work but for bad reasons are buoyed by the size of the organization.

You just asked the most complicated question that has ever been asked on this forum.

Looks like we're safe for now.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/us/white-house-staff.html

When this is all over and Trump is out of office, Republicans will have to ask themselves why they were either too dumb to recognize his incompetence, or much worse, that they were okay with it.

nope

It's... surprisingly liberating to contemplate that some people will never be reached.

I think I am done with contemplating the minds and morals of the madmen running this country.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"Yes, doctor, I think we'd better go ahead and amputate."

Next up: the search for {property with well water} ∩ {areas with a reliable ISP} ∩ {lands governed by a democracy with a public health option}

Speaking out my ass and not trying to sound profound

I think power structures (naturally?) favor those who not only have that sort of personality type but people who specially appropriate it in a way, deliberately or accidentally, to nullify pressures that would otherwise keep that sort of behavior in check. I mean, if everyone wants power and everyone does stupid ****, it doesn't work. But in a room full of Jeb Bush's in a primary, Trump stands out and people gravitate towards him.

Kinda like how nature abhors a vacuum, power structures seem to reward risky, reckless personalities that are retooled to expand the greatest in some manner; this seems to be how a "clairvoyant" gets born.