New Testingstan

It may be an oxford. I haven't looked at it for a while

anyway ITT people go to some lengths to explain that it's ok when brown people gas each other, and we shouldn't actually try to stop them, because that would be worse than them gassing each other, and failing that, expensive, and failing that, none of our business

fuck that noise

Would you be willing to personally go over there and blow up parts of the country to feel as if something sufficient is being done or is this strictly a theoretical self-righteousness

RyanThunder wrote:It may be an oxford. I haven't looked at it for a while

anyway ITT people go to some lengths to explain that it's ok when brown people gas each other, and we shouldn't actually try to stop them, because that would be worse than them gassing each other, and failing that, expensive, and failing that, none of our business

fuck that noise

Or, you know, would make it even worse in the long run?

Can you point to a singlewestern european colonial foreign intervention that has helped increase safety and security, anywhere in the world, any time in history since the collapse of the western empire, that did not include substantially succeeding at genocide (North America, Australia, South Africa).

EDIT: For a minute, I was narrowing it down to western europeans, but in reality, since I already excluded the Romans, there's no real reason to limit it at all. Foreign interventions ALWAYS fail unless you're prepared to be the Empire, and nobody has done that in the last 2000 years.

EDIT AGAIN: Lets say that through some act of insanity, some foreign government actually invades Syria to take the chemical weapons away. What happens when Assad uses chemical weapons on the invaders? Lets pretend for the moment that the invaders are the US, France, or even Russia (long shot, but if Putin wants to, he's got room to do the whole "having been convinced by neutral third parties" thing and end up as a leader in an intervention if he wants to and thinks he can get something out of it).

What happens? Well, Russia has threatened to use chemical weapons in Chechnya, so I see no reason to believe they'd be squeamish. Not sure what the French policy is, maybe Oxy knows? In the US, if American soldiers were gassed, there would be a VERY loud group, not just within the lunatic fringe, that would be advocating a reaganesque* (the quote is actually about biowarfare, but it will work here) response.

* something like: We don't need the bugs, if someone uses the bugs on us, we'll nuke them.

Questor wrote:Can you point to a singlewestern european colonial foreign intervention that has helped increase safety and security, anywhere in the world, any time in history since the collapse of the western empire, that did not include substantially succeeding at genocide (North America, Australia, South Africa).

East Timor, 1999. That took me .00002 of a second. Imagine how many examples you could come up with if you actually bothered to learn something.

Your definitions of military intervention and mine are apparently different. How exactly is being invited in by the ruling power the same thing, or are you being purposefully moronic?

Another option might be Australian jingoism, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt you apparently don't want to give me (EDIT: on second thought, no I won't.). Lets think of some marginally applicable american examples, too. Heck, South Korea's a lot better off than it was in the late 40s, should I consider that a success?* Or maybe I should count Grenada and Haiti? Because of the four, the closest to what I'm (and Ryan, though he might not realize it) talking about is Korea.

Do I need to qualify that the FBI taking over interstate kidnapping cases isn't a military intervention as well? And that INTERPOL doesn't count either?

* Vietnam is too, now that I think about it. USA! USA! U! S! A! I was wrong, FREEDOMIZATION works! How could I have been so blind? Lets nuke every major city in the Middle East and invade immediately! If we just put the Australians in command on the peacekeeping AFTER we screw everything to high heaven, it'll all turn out great!

Edit: To clarify, I'm referring to the fact that the Indonesians had already screwed everything up so badly that ANYTHING was an improvement, even a government effectively imposed by the UN. The Indonesians also provide a handy "bad guy" for the narrative and allow the UN force to be considered a rescuing group, but the question I have to ask is, how're Australia's relations with Indonesia at the moment? With the rest of the area? Things got better in Kuwait after Desert Storm, too, but if you've ever actually read al Queda's list of gripes, and particularly Bin Laden's you'll understand why that particular intervention was SO DRAMATICALLY HELPFUL.

That 'invitation' was, at best, an indication that the TNI would not actively oppose an Australian intervention. It in no way guaranteed that the TNI proxy militia would honour that guarantee, and ultimately Australian forces would fight a a number of separate actions against them and TNI over the border. These came against a backdrop of Australian forces absolutely assuming their reception would be hostile - and manoeuvring within Timor to guard against Indonesian intervention - and having the F-111 force sitting on the ramp in Darwin armed, fuelled and waiting to strike against Indonesian targets should TNI take action. So having established that your nitpick is fucking ridiculous, can we move onto the bigger point - that Western military intervention massively reduced violence against a civilian population and allowed the building of an (admittedly far from robust) East Timorese state?

Well, if you'd been at least even a little bit less of an ass with your final phrase, I might have said something along the lines of: "You know, you've got a point, I wasn't really thinking along those lines, but more along the lines of interventions opposed by a significant plurality of the populace."

But since you weren't and since I replied as an asshole, too:

A) You failed to address the larger context, which is the bigger picture, or did the Desert Storm example (Which I've already admitted was a textbook case of a just war.) go right over your head? While I can't prove that your country's currently wonderful relations with Indonesia were worsened by the intervention, they certainly weren't helped.

B) I don't think my "nitpick" is in any way ridiculous, particularly with your complete red herring about the fact that the Australian's planned it like an opposed invasion. That just means that your generals were doing their jobs. The UN referendum pretty clearly established that a majority supported you, a 50% margin on a 98% voter turnout's a pretty compelling mandate. If you had to blow your way in with F-111s ( or even had to ask the US to blow your way in with B-52s), that would still not have really changed the fact that a vast majority of the Timurese wanted you there. The comparisons with Haiti and Grenada are apt (if of vastly different durations).

C) I can make the argument that Kosovo has lower violence against its civilian population today, with a semi-functional government, but I don't think anyone argues that KFOR was an unqualified success either. If one wanted to, you could even make that argument relating to Afghanistan (I'd have a hard time doing it with a straight face, I admit, but I don't say that it can't be done).

D) Ooh, KFOR's a fun example. Didn't everyone in the world basically contribute to that one? I seem to recall even the Russians were there. Just looked it up, the UAE contributed forces!

Regarding Syria and the use of chemical weapons in case of a foreign invasion...

I'm not sure what's the current policy on the subject, and it's hard to check sources as I'm on my phone, but from the cold war era the policy was IIRC to respond to the use of WMDs with other WMDs. In the context of the cold war, the pluton missiles stationned in West Germany would be used in a pre-strategic role, as a last warning before a general nuclear strike in case the warsaw pact force were to move their forces past the border and our conventionnal forces proved unable to contain them. Nukes being used there to ensure the continued existence of our Nation - there will never be a 1940 again.

It is to be noted that currently, apart from these pre-strategic nuclear weapons, the French Arsenal does not include any tactical weapons : our arsenal is geared in such a way that if we have to use nukes, it's for a genocide.

You know what? I'm willing to concede that interventions can work when supported by a significant majority of the populace, or when the occupation stays long enough to cause a significant cultural shift, but those are still irrelevant to the more traditional "opposed by the local populace" style intervention disguising what is really a colonial attack being discussed for Syria.

In addition to the "Not horrible outcomes" that we've already discussed (Kosovo, Haiti, Grenada, East Timur, nominally Desert Storm) we can add Libya, and I think the French in Mali (or at least that one looks to be working), not to mention the whole of the European (and arguably the Pacific) theater of World War II.

EDIT: I'd also like to point out that unless one weights that last example, we're still talking about an infinitesimally small percentage of foreign interventions, and as I've shown, some of those ended up with shitty consequences despite nominally positive outcomes. And I do admit that I challenged Ryan to come up with a single example, which I should know well enough to not do, you can find a single example of almost anything in history. There's even at least one libertarian leftist isolationist.

Unrelated : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pM_DOVCzA4

haha good ol ryan


on a related note apparently on the internet there is a difference between "real" racism and sexism, and "post 2010" racism and sexism

if you have been to the internet you know the difference is that the real stuff is, like hitler, and unreal is the jokes and truescience common sense of average joe gamer bros

but the question is

happened in 2010???

probably tumblr

Questor wrote:Foreign interventions ALWAYS fail unless you're prepared to be the Empire, and nobody has done that in the last 2000 years.

Clearly, we need a new paradigm, a new way of thinking. Hmmm...



The Emperor approves of this message.

I thought Real Racism was calling out white people on anything short of a second holocaust

Can any of you WoW people explain the whole Alliance v Horde thing, and why it seems to always boil down to "ALLIANCE/HORDE PURE EVIL LIKE HITLER TIMES 9000, HORDE/ALLIANCE PURE INNOCENT VICTIMS"?

LABOR DAY

NOT JUST AN EXCUSE TO HAVE A BARBECUE

yes it is.

Memorial day's the one where you're supposed to be contemplative of the efforts of the soldiers.

Get it right.

well mother nature has other plans anyway

thunderstorm lol

...he didn't actually say that, did he?

Because I could totally see him saying that

Oh god get that image out of my head

Wakka wakka.

I dunno, read the other articles on that site and build your own opinion on the subject, I guess?

ha ha. we got trolled with the canadian version of the onion or some such shit.

very funny

Wouldn't "trolled" imply that there was an intent to deceive ?