Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

ya gotta be flexible!

also incoherent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6ZTdg6AzBA

Did you ever see Warren Christopher play backgammon? Bloodthirsty.

Rubio, by contrast, is just thirsty

when we think a dictator is about to murder a ton of ppl

the US is entirely neutral about dictatorship as a form of guvmint in other lands.

are they our clients/ facilitators or not?

Qaddaffi kind of a funny example there - he was our enemy until he wasn't and then he was again

obviously some dictators are more useful to us than others

I think it depends on the administration. Obama was supportive of the Egyptian post-Mubarak elections and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. When Sisi conducted his coup I believe official US policy was to deny any aid or military support (though that was later rescinded, I would argue it's because Obama has an article of faith that pragmatic engagement is better than cold withdrawal).

Arguably his entire relationship to the Arab Spring has been one of support for revolutionary movements with the assumption that they would result in Democratic governance (though not in the case of Iran's Green Movement which is obviously its own complicated set of facts since we clearly do not support the regime there).

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/01/secretary-clinton-in-2009-i-really-consider-president-and-mrs-mubarak-to-be-friends-of-my-family.html

makes one long for the Dulles days when such gloop was unnecessary for PR

QUESTION: How do you view the presidency in Egypt, the future of the presidency in Egypt?

SECRETARY CLINTON: That’s for the people of Egypt to decide. That is a very important issue that really is up to Egyptians.

yeah i knew that was comin'

you really are the Donna Wasserman-Brazile of hairy pothead Phillies fans

Just want to say Mordy making a ton of sense here, Shakey as well. The contemporary US is not likely to get a Gandhi type president with squeaky-clean hands any time soon, no matter how much we might wish it were so. The world is messy and intervening has often been wrong, disastrous, or both; so has not intervening. If, to you, HRC is best described as a bloodthirsty warmonger with the blood of children dripping from her fangs, don't vote for her I guess.

uh oh knives out/baseball ref

If, to you, HRC is best described as a bloodthirsty warmonger with the blood of children dripping from her fangs, by her actual voting record don't vote for her I guess.

who is donna wasserman-brazile. is it an amalgamation of donna brazile and debbie wasserman schultz? i don't think i know enough about donna brazile to understand the burn sadly.

Donna Brazile in the outfield.

makes one long for the Dulles days when such gloop was unnecessary for PR

― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Friday, March 4, 2016 7:31 PM (8 minutes ago)

after the kissinger thing i made some sarcastic remark to my gf like "who's hillary going to be cheering for next, allen dulles?" and lo and behold literally two days later the clinton campaign was attacking bernie for criticizing the dulles-era cia

Next up: J.Edgar and Herbert Hoover.

remember, HRC did not just do photo ops and weekend hangouts with Kissinger -- she gushed over his 'realpolitik' in a book review. she is unacceptable.

this job is basically mafia chieftain, which is why ive never felt like voting for anyone who could win.

Sometimes HRC seems like an updated version of Scoop Jackson. That's not who she started out to be, but she's certainly drifted there over time.

i don't accept the argument that non-intervention in the face of genocide is the right move and i don't need to go back to ww2 to make it.

― Mordy, Friday, March 4, 2016 2:03 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess the most recent case of US non-intervention is maybe the Trail of Tears?

a contact high from all the yuks her partner has shared with both President Bushes

xp

hey there's your hook: Hillary Clinton: At Least She Isn't Andrew Jackson

started out as Not Tammy Wynette

Trail of Tears was interventirely at its purest.

*intervention

lol thought that was some genius Alfredian wordplay i had yet to decode

not intervening against Native American genocide.

Uh non-intervention the US perpetrated the Trail of Tears.

There's a difference between not intervening and directly carrying out. By this logic Iraq was the US not intervening in the Bush attack.

I think Syria is a pretty perfect recent example where the US could have intervened and chose not to.

lol really? u think we should have trained, armed and fought alongside ISIS?

ime Syria is one of those situations where there were no good options

imo

Also, if Adam Brunau really looks at the 20th century and can't find any examples of non-intervention, I guess that explains a lot?

I'm not saying intervention is the right choice. I'm just saying it was a possibility, but didn't happen.

Re: Syria.

The sad thing is that at this point, the POTUS can kill thousands upon thousands of foreign civilians with nary a peep from even the Democratic base. Same goes for indefinite detention and the like. In a way, we've all, collectively, created Trump. He must figure, "why not promote torture, after all, people seem quite willing to green light all sorts of international law delinquency. Let me just push the envelope a little further."

the POTUS can kill thousands upon thousands of foreign civilians with nary a peep from even the Democratic base

this is not really true. Obama has not killed "thousands upon thousands of foreign civilians" and the last time a POTUS did do that, Dem base turned out the largest anti-war protests in history

Another situation with no good choices: Libya,

Actually, I think most wars and bombings and interventions since the end of the cold war stemmed from situations with no good choices. Glaring example of the opposite: Iraq, of course. Looking back on it, it really boggles the mind how it happened, and why Clinton voted for it.

are we counting ppl the Saudis and others kill with the shit we sold 'em?

Uh non-intervention the US perpetrated the Trail of Tears.

― Sorry To Be The Bearer Of Bad Poos (Leee),

It was the policy of the American government to forcibly remove Indians or buy Indian land. I call this interventionist.

xxposts Under Obama, drones alone had killed 2,500 by mid-2015 iirc, and the percentage of civilians is estimated to be up to 90%. If I'm wrong about this, or my sources are, then believe me, as someone who campaigned for O, I'm glad to be corrected!

that is not "thousands upon thousands", don't succumb to Morbzmath

thousand upon thousand

technically that's just barely a thousand upon a thousand

lol dan

lol

I think the drone program is worse than Libya. Libya was a hard choice in a bad situation. Drones are taking easy but wrong choices over and over again.