Greenwald writes well... and lays out what I agree are our only two options. I do think Cheney's being such a major Dick about this now because he knows Bush will issue some kind of blanket pardon.
I don't hold Carter blameless. He did speak out, and Congress did ban aid to the Contras. But that didn't stop the U.S. from supplying the Contras illegally, which only adds to the problem. Carter also provided training and aid. I'm not saying the cold war was a figment of imagination. But to act like the Sandinistas were a great communist menace to the U.S. just isn't true. It was an overreaction. The idea that everything communist had to be opposed simply because it was communist was wasteful, not productive and lead to the U.S. supporting folks who weren't deserving of our support in many cases. As for the Sandinistas and their aid. This is from a 1984 article. http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=329 Certainly there was some aid, not only from Cuba, but also the Eastern bloc early on. But it wasn't as extensive as the U.S. aid was for their opponents.
I missed the original statement by Hayes. I don't think the two were equivalent in prevalence of the tactics though both employed them at times.
As rimrocker's articles point out, the case for Bush being a war criminal shouldn't be based on the invasion of Iraq, but on torture and their willingness to harm innocents by acts such as cutting back the amount of intel from 90% likelihood to 50% likelihood before making a strike.
I don't think we're disagreeing. The internal revolution was caused by the intervention. Once we started bombing water and electric plants, the people had enough. No-fly zones are support. Not sure what your point is though. DD said they should have solved internally. The Shiites and Kurd uprisings are evidence that they tried and failed.
Franchise, the thing is there has never been a military conflict where innocents weren't killed by all sides. People like Hayes try to use this to create a false equivalence between the left and right during this period in Central America. When the reality is that one side committed mass slaughter of civilians as a terror tactic. This doesn't mean that there wasn't abuses by the FMLN, but as the Truth Commission (and many other human rights monitors) have documented, the level of these abuses was dwarfed by the actions of the Right.
I agree with you. That was the point I was trying to make. But Hayes often boils words down to very literal meaning. The original post by Hayes said something like (I'm paraphrasing) "The left is guilty of the same tactics." So yes technically there were some abuses of the left. But as you pointed out, it was not on the same scale as the right.
I didn't say it was clear cut. It is it's ambiguousness that prevents a declaration of illegality, assuming that UN authorization is the ultimate arbiter of legality (which I also disagree with). Interventions outside the UN are not illegal. Saddam killed thousands every year (at a minimum) with spikes every few years that numbered in the hundreds of thousands, add in the oft quoted millions dead from sanctions, and you're already ahead by removing Saddam. Now answer the flip side: how long do you let a genocidal dictator hide behind sovereignty before you do something? 100,000 dead, 200,000 or 300,000 or is it the magic 1 million? Has to be more than that because Saddam already killed more than that, right? So is it ten million? You simply can't prove that - it's an assertion you cannot possibly back up. Almost all of his material support was from the Soviets. That's not proof of anything but a relationship, which I've already acknowledged. Cool. Then you're not in this group. Also understandable. However, I disagree that interventions outside the UN are illegal or undesirable, although I find them (UN interventions) preferrable. I think they were unfortunate, but also connected with your next statement. It's a different thing to sit in 2008 than to be in the middle of the Cold War. Especially if the real choice was between a anticommunist dictator and a communist one, not between democracy and dictatorship. If we'd overthrown Castro and replaced him with a dictator, would that have been replacing a democracy with a dictatorship? I don't think so. Which are swamped by the examples moving the other way by the US. That was an Mi6 operation, although sure it had our tacit support. There wasn't an overthrow in 60-61, I think you meant '65 but that's not really a clear example of your point anyway. There were four or five factions all vying for power in the Congo. You're kidding, right? There was a coup in '66 against Nkrumah who had declared himself 'President for Life.' That's not a democratic government. Right. The US ensures Aristide can come to power over the previous junta, and then kidnaps him and forces him to resign. Doubtful and btw, the UN recognizes his resignation and his successor. That is a different argument from 'they should act themselves.' By your 'none of our business' standard, can we assume you believe Germany exterminating 6 million Jews was 'none of our business' (if they hadn't declared war on us, of course)? It isn't false equivalence. Henry Lee Lucas killed 100+ people, Ted Bundy killed what 10? Are they equivalent? In scope, no. In practice, yes. Unlike others, I actually say what I mean. I would think that would be LESS confusing for you, rather than some trick of obsfucation as you seem to imply. Your paraphrase is fairly accurate which is why I think there is enough condemnation for both sides in most of these conflicts. White hat/black hat analysis is just silly...unless you're talking about communists (clearly black hats).
Hayes must think that the U.S. military is morally equivalent "in practice" to Al Qaeda because both organizations have killed civilians in military operations. At least, Al Qaeda isn't communist so they escape the Hayesian black hat label. I, on the other hand, have no problem putting the black hat on right wing or left wing regimes that slaughter thousand upon thousands of innocent civilians. And I have no problem putting the white hat on the groups that arise to militarily oppose those regimes, even though some civilians are unavoidably killed as a result. In the context of the Salvadoran civil war it was the U.S. supported right wing government wearing the black hats and the leftists wearing the white hats.
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Nope. The US is a legitimate actor while Al Qaeda isn't. Executing Herman Goering is not the same as a serial killer offing someone. Nice try though. Then we disagree both in conclusion and in substance.
I don't think he's a war criminal. But I think he should be impeached. If Clinton did nothing wrong except for some blow jobs and everyone was on his ass, how does Bush get away by getting us into huge debt from this stupid war?
You may have misunderstood what I meant. I didn't mean to imply it was a trick that you were pulling. I was merely speaking of discussions where in the end it comes down to going over definitions and meanings of various words of phrases used in the rest of the debate. I think we've mentioned it at some point in some discussion or another. I just wanted to be clear, and was pointing out why I was being clear. I didn't mean to accuse you of using technical definitions of words to mislead or trick anyone. I do think sometimes it is hard to discuss because words or phrases also have a colloquial meaning which may differ slightly than the technical meaning. So sometimes arguments devolve to where both sides are missing the point the other is making, and the minutia takes away from the larger point. I hope there were no hard feelings. I try and read almost everything you post here, whether I agree with it or not.
If there was no clear UNSC mandate then I deem it illegal and most of the world agrees that it was illegal. This one was. It was hard to do anything about Saddam while he did the majority of his killing, because he was supported by most of the world. Now the real question you need to ask yourself is why the US willfully chose not to do anything despite a genocide happening right before their eyes in Rwanda. Still haven't received an answer to my original question. I think you're politically aware enough to know that Saddam Hussein could not have done the majority of his killing and using WMDs without American and Western support. It's part of a pattern of explicit US support for his actions during that time. Again, it was during this time that he did the majority of his killing with enthusiastic American support. Again, this one was. No imminent threat from Saddam, no WMDs, no legitimate reason, and no UNSC mandate. International law was not on the side of the US. The US simply invaded and occupied because they could. That's not following international law, that's following the law of the jungle. This is not what countries who claim that they are civilized do. I just want to make sure I understand you correctly. You're not condemning those acts, but rather just expressing regret that they happened? Yeah, but we're talking about democracies that were overthrown by the US and pro-American dictators that were installed afterwards. Apparently it was easy to manufacture reasons to do this during the Cold War. Still, no way you can justify these actions. No, they are not. No, you're wrong. It was the other way around. Here's the CIA's own history of the coup, which proves that they were the main actors in the overthrow: http://nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html Again, you're incorrect. Patrice Lumumba's democratically elected government was overthrown. The US tried twice to assassinate him. Then America along with Belgium manipulated the UN with support from the UNSG at the time to isolate and eventually murder him. Subsequently, one of the worst dictators in history, Mobutu, was installed and supported by the West in general and the US in particular. These are all facts. See: http://www.amazon.com/Congo-Cables-Africa-Eisenhower-Kennedy/dp/0025606204 No, I'm not. Nkrumah was democratically elected. The only reason that democratic freedoms had to be suspended (like they have been in other democracies) is because the security of the state was threatened. States often take extreme measures to ensure their security, which is justifiable if it's legitimate government (which in this case it was). Nkrumah's fears were also valid since the US did take part in the 1966 Coup: http://www.seeingblack.com/x060702/nkrumah.shtml This is another example of the US overthrowing a democratically elected government just because it could - using the law of the jungle, where might is right. I already gave you a source that proves that this was a modern coup conducted by forces supported and sponsored by the United States and France, but I'll give it to you again. http://www.amazon.com/Damming-Flood...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229660176&sr=1-1 The history of popular political mobilization in Haiti, which began in the 1980s culminated with the end of US-backed dictatorial rule and the election of Aristide as president in 1990. The author proves that this has been the driving force in Haitian politics over the last 20 years and that it also eventually provoked a backlash from the Haitian elite and their foreign backers. Now, getting back to the main idea of this thread, Bush is a war criminal for the main reasons (which have been highlighted in this thread): The invasion and occupation of Iraq, disregard for the Geneva Conventions, and for torturing people to death.
I don't think Obama will have the stones to prosecute former high level cabinet members, and I don't think there will be too much pressure upon him to do so.
We are disagreeing whether force was authorized. My point is that "force" was never specifically authorized. As someone who likes precision in language you should understand that the term "severe consequences" isn't the same as 'force" as it could encompass a variety of things with force being one of the possibilities. We agree that in regards to the UN the use of force against Serbia and Iraq wasn't illegal as the UN never condemned it. My point though is that it wasn't legal either. The UN never ruled on it. True but that was an indirect relationship and the UN only specifically recognized the internal revolution and not the intervention. That there was a relationship between the intervention and the revolution I won't disagree but again to be precise the UN never recognized the intervention in Serbia only the revolution. The US never armed the Shiites or Kurds and the no-fly zones were imposed largely after most of the fighting was done already. During the critical time of the fighting when the Shiites or Kurds might've won the US failed to support them.
Well you see, running up debt is not a crime while perjury is a crime. There has to be a crime in order to justify impeachment.
