A symptom rather than a cause?

[The Barbarian]

Remember Obama's "red line" on the use of chemical weapon's in Syria?

Yep. Russia initally backed Syria, but then...


Obama said that he'd either turn over the demanded chemical weapons or there would be military action.
Syria: If Bashar al-Assad hands over chemical weapons we will not attack, says John Kerry
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has said that strikes on Syria could be avoided, if President Bashar al-Assad hands over his stockpile of chemical weapons.


Russia folded,and...

International weapons inspectors announced Monday that Syria has handed over the last of its declared chemical weapons stockpile for removal and destruction, even as U.S. officials voiced concern about the Damascus government’s alleged use of other toxic substances.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/

They rebuilt stockpiles after Trump became president. Think he'll have enough credibility to get them to give them up again? Not likely, is it?

If you make a threat, and don't carry through, you lose credibility.

Yep.

And that Iran deal- are you aware of the details?

Yep.

It doesn't mean Iran ends their nuclear program.

It means that they filled in the research reactor with concrete, and shut down the program.

It means that Iran takes a break from their program for a few years.

If we don't have a leader like Obama to put another coalition together, they probably will. If they go back to their old ways, we can do the same thing to them again. If we have a president strong enough to pull it off. Doesn't look very good right now, does it?

Very effective- ask any North Korean.

Kim's pretty happy. He got his objective of stopping U.S./South Korean military cooperation, and all he did was say it was an objective to make the peninsula nuke-free. But no commitment to actually do anything. He won handily.

 

[ok doser]

Kim's pretty happy. He got his objective of stopping U.S./South Korean military cooperation, and all he did was say it was an objective to make the peninsula nuke-free. But no commitment to actually do anything. He won handily.

so there's no longer any US military personnel on the southern edge of the DMZ?

 

[Eeset]

so there's no longer any US military personnel on the southern edge of the DMZ?

Doesn't it strike you as stupid that we still play that game?

 

[The Barbarian]

Yeah... before the rise of American fascism. I made a thread here once, long since purged, asking about American exceptionalism. That was before MAGA/America First/America Alone. Little did we know...

This happened before. There was a considerable amount of admiration for Mussolini on the American right, before Pearl Harbor.

“When fascism comes to. America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying the cross.”
Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

Charles Lindberg and Huey Long each advocated a form of fascism disguised as "Americanism."

This time, he won. But American constitutionalism isn't as fragile as it was in Germany or Italy. Too many libertarians and "cranks" who hate government just for being government.

They serve a useful purpose.

So do the states, which have their own place in the federal system. We won't go down as easy.

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
Kim's pretty happy. He got his objective of stopping U.S./South Korean military cooperation, and all he did was say it was an objective to make the peninsula nuke-free. But no commitment to actually do anything. He won handily.

so there's no longer any US military personnel on the southern edge of the DMZ?

That, in Kim's plans, is for later. He got the first step, stopping us from having joint exercises with South Korea, and he got it while conceding nothing at all.

He's surely looking forward to the next meeting. He just did to Trump what Trump used to do to his investors. Now that he's got Trump on the defensive, he'll push harder for even greater concessions.

 

[ok doser]

He got the first step, stopping us from having joint exercises with South Korea....

so our guys are still at the dmz, but we're just pretending the south Koreans don't exist?

 

[ok doser]

Doesn't it strike you as stupid that we still play that game?

it gives us a reason to have an incredibly expensive military presence in that region


and pays my son's salary! :banana:

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian, regarding how Kim hosed Trump:
That, in Kim's plans, is for later. He got the first step, stopping us from having joint exercises with South Korea, and he got it while conceding nothing at all.

He's surely looking forward to the next meeting. He just did to Trump what Trump used to do to his investors. Now that he's got Trump on the defensive, he'll push harder for even greater concessions.

so our guys are still at the dmz, but we're just pretending the south Koreans don't exist?

We're just not coordinating training with them any more. Which was Kim's first objective.

 

[Eeset]

It is time to bring the troops home and ignore the ravings of the fat boy.

 

[ok doser]

We're just not coordinating training with them any more.

how is that different from what I said?

 

[ok doser]

It is time to bring the troops home and ignore the ravings of the fat boy.

let the south Koreans and the Chinese handle him



:think: only problem with that is that Japan will feel the need to re-militarize


that din't work out so well last time

 

[Eeset]

let the south Koreans and the Chinese handle him



:think: only problem with that is that Japan will feel the need to re-militarize


that din't work out so well last time

that was bi - before icbm;s

 

[Idolater]

It is time to bring the troops home and ignore the ravings of the fat boy.

President Trump's taking care of that another way. He wants other NATO countries to pay fairer shares of NATO's expenses, given that we're the ones doing so much of the work.

I'd like to see us annex North Korea myself, make it the 51st state, or maybe a few new states, to give them more senators and electoral votes. We should trade with them like it's going out of style, and there's nothing like borderless commerce, like in the States.

 

[Idolater]

that was bi - before icbm;s

I can't believe that there wasn't more outrage about North Korea, when they were testing missiles. Didn't they fly at least one actually over Japan? Can you imagine what it'd be like here, if ISIS invaded and took over Cuba, and then launched missiles over the continental US and landed them in the Pacific Ocean? We'd glass them. Maybe not glass them, but we'd invade them for sure.

 

[Kit the Coyote]

so our guys are still at the dmz, but we're just pretending the south Koreans don't exist?

My understanding from talking to servicemen who have been stationed in Korea, we haven't had US troops on the DMZ for quite awhile. Once the South Koreans achieved enough military parity with the North our troops were moved further south. Our presence there is really just to assure the South Koreans that we will step in if they are attacked but the South has enough strength now that they are the ones manning the front lines.

 

[rexlunae]

There's blame that can be spread around, and I agree that Trump is the product of where the country, and especially the Right, was heading, rather than just a cause (he saw smouldering ember and poured gasoline on it), but I first noticed the country bolting toward fascism when we failed to punish anyone for the torture authorized by the very top of the George W. Bush administration. We seem to have acquired a taste for real cruelty. Much of this isn't new, but it had been quieted for several decades. Now we have the outright attacks on the press, violent rhetoric being spread, people calling for a new civil war, attacks on the courts.

 

[Idolater]

...I first noticed the country bolting toward fascism when we failed to punish anyone for the torture authorized by the very top of the George W. Bush administration.

Was that something other than water-boarding? That's all the authorized torture I know about.

 

[rexlunae]

Was that something other than water-boarding? That's all the authorized torture I know about.

Waterboarding didn't hardly scratch the surface. Check out the documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraid. It was kinda the classic blame it all on the low level grunts, don't ask how they learned all these really specific tactics. After 9/11, we embraced torture and indefinite detention. We lost who we were. There's now a thirst for cruelty infecting much of the country, and I think it's only a matter of time before some folks start using it to solve domestic problems. I'd argue that separating families are another ratcheting up of that cruelty. This is the kind of stuff Boko Haram does.

Not that cruelty was foreign to America in the past, far from it. But for a few decades, we seemed to have left some of it behind.

 

[chair]

...

If we don't have a leader like Obama to put another coalition together, they probably will. If they go back to their old ways, we can do the same thing to them again. If we have a president strong enough to pull it off. Doesn't look very good right now, does it?...

The technical term for this is "kicking the can down the road."

 

[Idolater]

Waterboarding didn't hardly scratch the surface. Check out the documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraid. It was kinda the classic blame it all on the low level grunts, don't ask how they learned all these really specific tactics. After 9/11, we embraced torture and indefinite detention. We lost who we were. There's now a thirst for cruelty infecting much of the country, and I think it's only a matter of time before some folks start using it to solve domestic problems. I'd argue that separating families are another ratcheting up of that cruelty. This is the kind of stuff Boko Haram does.

Not that cruelty was foreign to America in the past, far from it. But for a few decades, we seemed to have left some of it behind.

Thanks. I didn't know about more severe torture that was authorized.

Regarding losing who we are, and cruelty---this is all in the wake 9/11, which, while it's going farther and farther back in the rearview mirror thankfully, it did still happen, and some of what President Trump's been proposing and doing, is still in response to 9/11 + the Islamicist murderings/'terrorism' going on in almost all other countries, including Western democracies.

But this losing who we are; this is one of the big reasons I support the Second Amendment, because the right to keep and bear arms is part of who we are, as contrasted with people in other Western democracies who deny that this is an inalienable right.

fwiw