11–20 of 76 posts
George W Bush should be trialed in front of the International Criminal Court, if that court wants to remain relevant. Any international lawyer here who knows a way to start the process? I know I'm naive, the guy is going to die of old age after a long and blissful life likely playing golf and having fun. Edit: typos.
To me the lynchpin is the monumental catastrophe represented by Iraq War II and the entire decades-long Middle East quagmire in general. It's been nothing short of national suicide, especially when one considers what else might have been done with all that money. We almost literally set the surplus of an entire American generation on fire and watched it burn. The neocons are the worst villains but not the only ones.…
Germany recovered from that within 40 years. The Iraq war was a disaster, but there's nothing especially trying about recovering from that given time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One hopes neoconservatism is good and dead. It was an ambitious ideology which presumed everyone in the world shared western values or wanted them. I think the American public tired of this neocon hawkishness and I'm hopeful we see a change in our foreign policy.
> It was an ambitious ideology which presumed everyone in the world shared western values or wanted them. Eastern European here. After the fall of the iron curtain, what we really craved for was economic cooperation with the West, liberty of expression and civil and property rights. Instead, we got US-sponsored liberal NGOs to steer the public opinion in certain directions, NATO military bases to protect us from evil…
That's not to deny China as well as Russia take opportunities to push their own visions.
>>>1. US foreign policy over the last decades has been disastrous -- trillions of dollars and thousands of lives expended on middle eastern wars, culminating in utter defeat. Lost me in the first paragraph. It hasn't been "thousands" but tens or hundreds of thousands dead. Thousands may be how many american military lives have been lost but that is certainly nowhere near the actual cost of any war. Such little assump…
The direct cost to America was clearly the point of these remarks to start with.
>>>1. US foreign policy over the last decades has been disastrous -- trillions of dollars and thousands of lives expended on middle eastern wars, culminating in utter defeat. Lost me in the first paragraph. It hasn't been "thousands" but tens or hundreds of thousands dead. Thousands may be how many american military lives have been lost but that is certainly nowhere near the actual cost of any war. Such little assump…
One hopes neoconservatism is good and dead. It was an ambitious ideology which presumed everyone in the world shared western values or wanted them. I think the American public tired of this neocon hawkishness and I'm hopeful we see a change in our foreign policy.
I dunno, seemed to last well into Obama's tenure in practice if not in rhetoric, from what I can tell, and Syria may well be a bigger disaster than Afghanistan and Iraq combined by any measure, including realpolitik (see: its effects on European politics, maybe also on the situation in Turkey though I'm less certain on that one). Yes, yes, the war in Iraq contributed to it in certain important ways, but didn't dictate our response to it, which was about as wrong as it could have been, unless there were some serious poker chips in play with Russia that we mere observers couldn't see, i.e. aside from the obvious ones. There's been no widespread condemnation of that action or even common recognition that we're the reason it's such a big mess, as there eventually was in the case of Iraq at least, and incidentally we're still in Iraq and Afghanistan, so neoconservatism seems to be alive and well in some sense.
Mind, I protested the war in Iraq, was overall a fan of Obama's domestic policies, so I'm not a partisan looking for reasons to bash Obama or try to rescue Bush's incredibly poor legacy or anything like that.
Who is Steve Hsu, and why are his statements, opinions, and speculation about the future of America notable? Or is he just summarizing the statements, opinions, and speculation of the historian in the ~30 minute video linked on the page?
To me the lynchpin is the monumental catastrophe represented by Iraq War II and the entire decades-long Middle East quagmire in general. It's been nothing short of national suicide, especially when one considers what else might have been done with all that money. We almost literally set the surplus of an entire American generation on fire and watched it burn. The neocons are the worst villains but not the only ones.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One hopes neoconservatism is good and dead. It was an ambitious ideology which presumed everyone in the world shared western values or wanted them. I think the American public tired of this neocon hawkishness and I'm hopeful we see a change in our foreign policy.
> One hopes neoconservatism is good and dead. It was an ambitious ideology which presumed everyone in the world shared western values or wanted them. I dunno, seemed to last well into Obama's tenure in practice if not in rhetoric, from what I can tell, and Syria may well be a bigger disaster than Afghanistan and Iraq combined by any measure, including realpolitik (see: its effects on European politics, maybe also on…
Domestically their policies differed a little bit and also Obama was more charismatic, more like B Clinton, in that respect. GW was seen as a buffoon and tool of industry.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One hopes neoconservatism is good and dead. It was an ambitious ideology which presumed everyone in the world shared western values or wanted them. I think the American public tired of this neocon hawkishness and I'm hopeful we see a change in our foreign policy.
> One hopes neoconservatism is good and dead. It was an ambitious ideology which presumed everyone in the world shared western values or wanted them. I dunno, seemed to last well into Obama's tenure in practice if not in rhetoric, from what I can tell, and Syria may well be a bigger disaster than Afghanistan and Iraq combined by any measure, including realpolitik (see: its effects on European politics, maybe also on…