World Politics

[Vino attacks everyone]

I wish bombs only killed bad people. That way America would be perfect

 

[blackcat]

The Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War were almost standard border conflict fare compared to what we see nowadays in Gaza. Plus, they can't be separated from their Cold War context. Apples and oranges.

That said, "the Jews" won the one in the 60s pretty handily. No pleading. The Yom Kippur War was a bit different though.

but 67 was about the IDF and The Generals destroying the Airforce of TransJordan and Egypt and some Egypt battalion's that had a defensive posture in the Sinai. Hence, that is how we get the attempted sinking of USS Liberty. They destroyed the airforces of their enemies. This was never a defensive war. It was always a war of aggression. Tho, I do believe, that the populace of ISrael was indeed under the impression they were gonna be thrown into the sea. But the Generals and the gov't, and the American intelligence, were under no misconceptions, that the IDF held an upper-hand unsurpassable

 

[blackcat]

Prof. Chomsky, according to some the most cited living writer.



http://www.alternet.org/world/noam-chomsky-nightmare-gaza

The latest Israeli rampage was set off by the brutal murder of three Israeli boys from a settler community in the occupied West Bank. A month before, two Palestinian boys were shot dead in the West Bank city of Ramallah. That elicited little attention, which is understandable, since it is routine.

i think those murders were by settlers, but there were another two deaths by Palestian WB teens who were walking home close to a protest. I dont think the protest was violent nor rocks, and these were teens, and from my cursory reading, were not protesting and walking home. One was shot in the back and died, and the other died, but I am not sure he was shot in the back.

So before those three teens who were Israeli, three settler teens (blame their parents not them), tho one was a 19yo and an IDF conscript (still, in civilian garb, so should be considered a civilian),
... so prior to the three Israeli teens, in the preceding month, there were many teens and adolescent murdered by the IDF and settlers. Ofcourse, we never hear of this...

 

[Vino attacks everyone]

i think those murders were by settlers, but there were another two deaths by Palestian WB teens who were walking home close to a protest. I dont think the protest was violent nor rocks, and these were teens, and from my cursory reading, were not protesting and walking home. One was shot in the back and died, and the other died, but I am not sure he was shot in the back.

So before those three teens who were Israeli, three settler teens (blame their parents not them), tho one was a 19yo and an IDF conscript (still, in civilian garb, so should be considered a civilian),
... so prior to the three Israeli teens, in the preceding month, there were many teens and adolescent murdered by the IDF and settlers. Ofcourse, we never hear of this...

Depends where you live and what news you read I guess. I've read more about those killed palestinian teens than the jews

 

[hrotha]

but 67 was about the IDF and The Generals destroying the Airforce of TransJordan and Egypt and some Egypt battalion's that had a defensive posture in the Sinai. Hence, that is how we get the attempted sinking of USS Liberty. They destroyed the airforces of their enemies. This was never a defensive war. It was always a war of aggression. Tho, I do believe, that the populace of ISrael was indeed under the impression they were gonna be thrown into the sea. But the Generals and the gov't, and the American intelligence, were under no misconceptions, that the IDF held an upper-hand unsurpassable

It was a war that Israel started despite Israeli and American intelligence being sure Egypt wasn't going to attack, but as a preemptive strike it's pretty understandable given the political context and the escalating border frictions with Syria and Egypt.

That they held such an upper hand is debatable. Sure, technologically they were miles ahead of their Arab neighbours, but they were in a terrible strategic situation, with enemies along all their borders. Egypt's brilliant crossing of the Suez channel in 1973 proved that Israel could be beaten with good planning and execution. Had Israel not neutralized the enemy airforce at the start of the Six Day War, it's hard to say how things would have gone.

(Naturally, Israel itself was in no real danger. The Cold War rules were clear: Israel was off-limits, as was Damascus. A direct threat to that status quo would have meant direct intervention by the US or the USSR)

 

[blackcat]

It was a war that Israel started despite Israeli and American intelligence being sure Egypt wasn't going to attack, but as a preemptive strike it's pretty understandable given the political context and the escalating border frictions with Syria and Egypt.

That they held such an upper hand is debatable. Sure, technologically they were miles ahead of their Arab neighbours, but they were in a terrible strategic situation, with enemies along all their borders. Egypt's brilliant crossing of the Suez channel in 1973 proved that Israel could be beaten with good planning and execution. Had Israel not neutralized the enemy airforce at the start of the Six Day War, it's hard to say how things would have gone.

(Naturally, Israel itself was in no real danger. The Cold War rules were clear: Israel was off-limits, as was Damascus. A direct threat to that status quo would have meant direct intervention by the US or the USSR)

dont have much disagreement.

but menachim begin and the other Generals have gone on record how they manipulated a revisionist version of history. they knew the two divisions in the Sinai were not outnumbering them in the Sinai, no matter what the bellicose rhetoric of Sadat to his domestic cohort(populace). Israel have never been in existential threat. Unless they have defined it as natural resources. And water resources in the Letani in Lebanon and the aquifers in the WB, and putative natural gas field off Gaza. The existential natural resources would be zero sum with those contiguous/or occupied Arab States tho!

 

[blackcat]

Depends where you live and what news you read I guess. I've read more about those killed palestinian teens than the jews

not in Australia and America. We dont hear about it.

 

[Amsterhammer]

Let's hear from the usual suspects here - what should the international community 'do' about ISIS? Does any western (US) anti-ISIS (Sunni) intervention not simply drive Iraqi Sunnis further into the ISIS camp?

Is religious genocide and mass brutality and murder acceptable?

 

[hrotha]

Is religious genocide and mass brutality and murder acceptable?

That's a bit of a loaded question, don't you think.

 

[Amsterhammer]

That's a bit of a loaded question, don't you think.

How else would you describe what ISIS/ISIL are doing?

 

[hrotha]

How else would you describe what ISIS/ISIL are doing?

It's not about what IS is doing, it's about how you're framing it the issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

 

[aphronesis]

How else would you describe what ISIS/ISIL are doing?

Acceptable/unacceptable according to which overarching paradigms? Or thresholds? Obviously it is and has been to some, so what's the forward looking question(s), and why?

 

[Amsterhammer]

That's a bit of a loaded question, don't you think.

Yes, but this is an internet forum, not an academic seminar - our high content of academics notwithstanding.

Is what ISIS/ISIL has been doing, and is doing, acceptable to you? If not, what do you think should be done, and by whom?

Better, pedant?

 

[python]

i have zero desire to see isis prevail.

i will also admit i did not follow the latest iraqi events close enough to judge the obama announced military involvement as right or wrong...i just have this deep seated skepticism -after observing multiple obama's foreign policy team blunders -that they again did not think the eventualities thru.

another feeling i have - again, i could be wrong - that resorting to this strange american obsession with bombs - will backfire.

in one word, bombastic rhetoric and bombs, imo, are poor substitutes for classic diplomacy. i doubt america has any classic diplomats left,

 

[blackcat]

questions should start at sykes picot and go forward from that, even then, still an arbitrary date.

no one can know the counter-factual when GWBush and Cheney pursue their goddamn(sic) stupid foreign adventurism. Why holding Obama to account for his two term administration, is pretty stupid imo, and I always held the same opinion of Obama as Gore Vidal and Chris Hedges, he is just too beholden to his makers and the bureaucracy in DC. It is just too unwieldy for the most talented and luminous of politicians.

religious genocide? just genocide will do.

the thing is with jdams and drones, you can prevent this militant organisations from travelling across open space. They will need to dig and tunnel. But goodluck to them with their military technology and munitions. Modernity left this ragtag bunch behind a century ago.

 

[blackcat]

Yes, but this is an internet forum, not an academic seminar - our high content of academics notwithstanding.

Is what ISIS/ISIL has been doing, and is doing, acceptable to you? If not, what do you think should be done, and by whom?

Better, pedant?

a few jdams, drones, and appaches will do.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Let's hear from the usual suspects here - what should the international community 'do' about ISIS? Does any western (US) anti-ISIS (Sunni) intervention not simply drive Iraqi Sunnis further into the ISIS camp?

Is religious genocide and mass brutality and murder acceptable?

ISIS is there to help the people of Syria and Iraq. So acceptable.

ISIS is doing Genocide? I thought they were a humanitarian organization that was trying to fix what the USA had done wrong?

 

[Semper Fidelis]

a few jdams, drones, and appaches will do.

There is no sense in you warmongering. You keep on talking about wars and bombing. It is a little troubling. The people of Iraq are comfortable with ISIS.

 

[hrotha]

There is no sense in you warmongering. You keep on talking about wars and bombing. It is a little troubling. The people of Iraq are comfortable with ISIS.

Laaaaal. Shhhyeah.

 

[blutto]

....and speaking of recent US of A foreign policy triumphs here is a wee partial retrospective...

....beginning with the dry run for Iraq, complete with a WMD-like lead-in ( ...the mass graves proof of dastardly deeds thingee, btw kindly sold by a Canadian who went onto bigger and better things soon thereafter )....


http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/07/bill-clintons-most-abominable-freedom-fighters-uncloaked/


....and this more current great grand off the scale success....


http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/07/collapse-in-libya-2/


....and finishing off with some of always poignant, fair, and balanced comments from The Rude Pundit...


http://rudepundit.blogspot.ca/2014/08/in-brief-quotes-that-make-saddam.html

Cheers

 

[blutto]

Way to put words in my mouth.

....ok...ok.... but it was just a just few teensy weensy little words, that could, in the correct light and with the right lawyering, be seen as interpretive (?)....

...though one could also argue that it was covered under licence ( like I have an Artistic Licence eh )...

Cheers

 

[stutue]

ISIS are a symptom.

This is what you get when polygonal borders are drawn on a blank map with no reference to geographical features or ethnic makeup. Trying to understand this from the perspective of people who only understand the concept of the democratic nation state is pretty futile.

The bigger picture involves all of the former Ottoman countries who lucked out when the maps were drawn by the westerners, and it involves the Israelis who, of course, had a policy of swamping through immigration coupled with terrorism and ethnic a cleansing.

Glad I don't live there.

 

[Amsterhammer]

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Islamic State (IS/ISIS) militants have abandoned positions in northern Mosul and retreated into the city after heavy Iraqi air force bombardment on Thursday, with large numbers reported killed or wounded.

Meanwhile on the Kirkuk front, Kurdish commanders said the jihadist armies had pulled out many fighters and most likely had dispatched them to Mosul, the IS stronghold and capital of their self-declared Islamic Caliphate.

Thursday’s bombardment of Mosul by the Iraqi air force came amid the start of a Western surge of support for the Kurdish war effort.

On Thursday, US President Barack Obama authorized air strikes against the militants to stop them from advancing toward Erbil and pledged to help tens of thousands of Kurdish Yezidis hiding from the IS on Mount Shingal, where dozens have died and the death toll mounts daily.

more here - http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/080820141

 

[Amsterhammer]

I enjoyed the Rude Pundit, blutto.

Glenn, nice troll.

With which long-term moral debt of the extended Bush family would you like to discuss first? The one that Junior locked the country into by kicking over the hornet's nest in order to drain the swamp, or the one Poppy ran up by selling the Kurds down the river in 1991? I know, I know, there's a lot more that went into the president's decision to drop humanitarian aid to the Yazidi people stuck on a mountain in northern Iraq, and into the president's decision to drop a couple of 500-pound bombs on the genocidal barbarians who have surrounded the mountain with the intent of killing everybody on it. But if there's one family that best symbolizes the historic price paid by the people of Iraq by a century of Western bungling in that part of the world, it's the Habsburgs Of Kennebunkport. Or, I guess, you can blame the Treaty Of Versailles and/or the League of Nations for helping to create the country of Iraq in the first place and guaranteeing that, one day, its basic ethnic instability would erupt into savagery. See also: Yugoslavia. The Great Game never was so Great for the people whom expiring empires used as chips. I would be surprised if, in five years, there's even a country called Iraq any more.

more here - http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Back_To_Iraq

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Is it worth the money? My opinion yes it is.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/20...ial-raises-questions-of-justice/#.U-T2_PldVGh

Been there on the western border / Koh Kong back in 1992. It was and still is in a bad way. Land mines / large population that was left alive have no arms or legs.