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The question is: what is in our best interests? Often what is in our best interests in short term can play against our best interests in the long term. I would say, for example, that the Vietnam War served our purposes in the short term. In the long term it was a black eye for this country for decades.
Mostly courtesy of the protesters. And in the nature of full disclosure I was one of them. Among others, I went to a demonstration on January 20, 1973, when I was almost 16, against the war.
Quote:
Originally Posted by phetaroi
Our Cuba policy was absolutely necessary for the short term and medium term, but going on for over a half-century just makes it look like a big, bloated bully picking on a tiny, impoverished country.
The country became impoverished only as a result of Castro's misrule. And by the was Fidel and Raoul Castro are among the world's wealthiest men.
Mostly courtesy of the protesters. And in the nature of full disclosure I was one of them. Among others, I went to a demonstration on January 20, 1973, when I was almost 16, against the war.
The country became impoverished only as a result of Castro's misrule. And by the was Fidel and Raoul Castro are among the world's wealthiest men.
1. In other words, you're blaming free speech.
2. That's irrelevant to the point I was making. It was another example of us being poor winners.
1. The US has an interest in preventing climate change. The Paris Treaty is not perfect, but moves everyone in the right direction. Trump's withdrawal from the accord makes the USA the only nation in the world that no longer adheres to the Paris Treaty. If you blithely dismiss the treaty as not doing anything constructive about climate change than you take a position that is literally at odds with every other country in the world.
The reality is Trump withdrew America from this treaty to appease some people in the fossil fuel industry, supporters in places like West Virginia and Kentucky, and nut reactionary groups who believe there are things like "one world government".
2. Recognition of Jerusalem as capitol of Israel. This is a complex issue and too many people fail to grasp the nuances involved in it. By moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the USA sends a message that it is no longer an honest broker who is attempting to resolve issues between Israel and the Palestinians. Rather, this move signals the USA is now firmly on Israel's side period. As such, the USA no longer has the credibility to act as a neutral broker in this dispute. I have other issues with Trump's action as well. Any real negotiator who was considering such a move would have extracted a concession from Israel first. Perhaps, they could have agreed to stop building settlements on the West Bank? Trump's failure to ask for anything in return, leads me to (1) question his negotiating skills; and (2) do anything in the Middle East that isn't 100% pro Israel. I personally think moving the embassy should wait until an overall resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict takes place. If it takes fifty years, fine. Meanwhile, we still have an embassy in Tel Aviv. Israel has the right to designate its capitol. The USA has a right to say where it will maintain an embassy in a country.
I suspect the real reason this occurred was because of two people: Jared Kushner (Trump's son-in-law) and Sheldon Adelson (a huge contributor to the republican party). In any event, its poor foreign policy to simply be acting on the wishes of a couple of people.
The reality is that neither of these two actions are in the long term interest of the American people.
1. Trump withdrew from the "Climate Treaty" because climate change aka global warming is a fraud designed to loot the USA and other wealthy nations.
If the planet actually warmed 1-3 degrees F over the next century, it would be a huge benefit to almost all people of the world.
Many actual real scientists think we're entering a solar minimum period, which means cooling. Cooling would be a disaster.
You need heat to grow crops. CO2 is GOOD for plants, the carbon panic is another agitprop campaign. Carbon is GOOD. Earthlings are carbon units.
Jerusalem IS the capital of Israel. Calling a spade a spade is somehow harmful?
There will be no peace between Israel and those who want to destroy her. To think otherwise is delusional at best.
Trump SAID he would move the embassy. To mind-read that The Kush and some zillionaire pushed Trump to do this is, well, mind-reading.
1. Trump withdrew from the "Climate Treaty" because climate change aka global warming is a fraud designed to loot the USA and other wealthy nations.
BS. There is a wealth of evidence that global warming is real. However, if you run a whole presidential campaign on the idea of encouraging extraction of fossil fuels, it becomes awfully convenient to try and deny the reality of climate change. Of course, for decades tobacco companies denied that smoking caused lung cancer despite overwhelming evidence that it did.
If the planet actually warmed 1-3 degrees F over the next century, it would be a huge benefit to almost all people of the world.
So, your point here is that after denying that global warming is occurring, you say that if it is real it would be a good thing. Let's ignore your inconsistency. Tell that to the people whose lives have been turned upside down by increased hurricanes and wild fire.
Many actual real scientists think we're entering a solar minimum period, which means cooling. Cooling would be a disaster.
Scientists who deny global warming amount to less than 5% of all the legitimate researchers who study the issue.
You need heat to grow crops. CO2 is GOOD for plants, the carbon panic is another agitprop campaign. Carbon is GOOD. Earthlings are carbon units.
Yes, you need heat to grow crops. However, if the sun is blazing hot every day for weeks without any rain, your crops die. Much of the western US has experienced drought like conditions for years.
Jerusalem IS the capital of Israel. Calling a spade a spade is somehow harmful?
Israel calls Jerusalem its capitol. The problem is that Jerusalem is territory whose ownership is disputed. Only if and when there is a final treaty between Israelis and Arabs will the true ownership of that area be resolved.
There will be no peace between Israel and those who want to destroy her. To think otherwise is delusional at best.
Is your point there can be no peace between Arabs and Israelis? How about Muslims and Christians? Are they all bad? Speak up and tell us. While you're gathering your thoughts try to remember that peace treaties do exist between Egypt and Israel as well as Jordan and Israel. Other Muslim countries (Turkey) have diplomatic relations with Israel.
Trump SAID he would move the embassy. To mind-read that The Kush and some zillionaire pushed Trump to do this is, well, mind-reading.
A comment he made without doing any research.
Here's a simple point: I thought what we were doing was discussing pursuing a foreign policy that is in the self interest of the United States. I fail to see how doing everything that Israel wants is the best foreign policy for the United States. There are multiple actors/players in the Middle East. A foreign policy that is truly in America's self interest would try and steer between all the actors, rather than simply siding with one. We have now told Israel that, essentially, it can do no wrong.
....The West (except the Axis powers) has had nothing to apologize for going back a century or so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MadManofBethesda
You've got to be kidding.
How about France's colonial rule of Indochina?
How about Great Britain's colonial rule of India among other places, as well as the atrocities committed in an attempt to maintain rule? Or their support for the apartheid South African government? (Margaret Thatcher used to refer to Nelson Mandela as a terrorist.)
How about the U.S.'s involvement in a little fracas in Southeast Asia?
How about the U.S.'s secret bombing of neutral Cambodia?
How about the puppet governments the U.S. has installed and/or supported in Latin America, including coups specifically instigated by the CIA.
How about the CIA instigating a coup against the democratically-elected prime minister of Iran in 1953 and installing a dictator? In fact, how about the U.S.'s overall involvement in Middle East internal politics throughout the 1950s and beyond by way of covert CIA operations?
How about the U.S. secretly selling arms to our "good buddies" in Iran in the 1980s in order to secretly fund an effort to overthrow the democratically-elected government in Nicaragua.
How about the U.S. invading Iraq in 2003 under the false pretense of Iraq having "weapons of mass destruction."
I appreciate the fact that you recognize that I made some good points in my post above. With respect to your final comment regarding the title of this thread and your initial post, I wasn't responding to the issue of whether the U.S. should put its interests before the world. I think the answer to that is an unequivocal yes, at least in certain circumstances.
That said, my comments were in direct response to your statement that the West basically has done nothing wrong for the past 100 years and has absolutely nothing for which it needs to apologize. That's a completely separate issue from your OP and it's one on which we obviously disagree. (Unless I managed to change your mind with my insightful rebuttal. )
To those, like the OP, who believe we just need to be TOUGH and UNBENDING, I would say...like Rome? Like Spain? Like the sun never sets on the British Empire?
And while I believe that Israel has a right to exist, and that we should assure that, I would like know -- in concrete terms -- exactly how our relationship with Israel has been so beneficial to the United States. A much better case can be made that the relationship -- which has spawned much Arab hate against our country...and, as a result, terrorism -- has cost us far more than we have gained.
Let's talk about the more than 2100 Palestinians, including children, who were murdered by the Israelis in 2014 alone. (Source: the BBC.)
There is simply no comparison between what the two groups have done. The modern non-nation of Israel is evil, and the reasons why the US continues to lick the rear end of that foreign entity are completely contemptible and not defensible.
In 2014, Israel launched an incursion of Gaza in retaliation for the kidnapping and murder of several Israel youths, and after many unprovoked rocket launches from Gaza.
The Arabs' approach to warfare against Israel is to hide munitions in crowded apartment buildings and schools. A cache of missiles was found in the basement of a UNESCO school, sparking outrage in the West and accusations that the U.N. people obviously knew about it.
Civilian casualties are a tactic of war for the Arabs. The more, the better. They know that liberal idiots in the West will instantly jump to their side without bothering to investigate the facts other than a casual internet search of a BBC article (BBC being notoriously pro-Arab and hostile toward Israel).
Meanwhile, the Israelis have bent over backwards to avoid civilian casualties, more than any other military force in history according to British and other military observers. They have a tactic called "knock on the roof" in which they drop an inert bomb or a harmless noisemaker on the rooftop of a building suspected to contain both Hamas fighters and families, to warn the families to get out. A minute or two later, they drop a real bomb. It's virtually impossible to avoid casualties in a civilian guerrilla war setting, but they do a pretty decent job.
It's also suspected that a number of Arabs were killed by Hamas in friendly fire incidents or when munitions detonated by accident.
So, yes, Jerusalem is Israel's self-proclaimed capital city, has always been so, has always been the spiritual and cultural center of Judaism since circa 1,000 B.C., long predating Christian and Muslim civilization. The only people who might have a legitimate claim on part of the area would be the Canaanites, who predated the Hebrews, but there aren't any Canaanites in existence today to make such a claim.
Since 1995, it has been official U.S. law that the Embassy is to be moved to Israel. However, every six months since then, every President has signed a waiver to delay the move. Mr. Trump simply got fed up with this baloney and is following through on a campaign promise.
As Obama famously said, elections have consequences. If Trump decided to renege on his campaign promises, he'd get in trouble with the people who elected him.
As for those who hate him and didn't vote for him, but wanted a corrupt criminal instead... well, that's democracy; deal with it or move to Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Somalia, etc. Lots of places where you can live in your ideal totalitarian collective kind of place where you don't have to live by democratic principles.
In 2014, Israel launched an incursion of Gaza in retaliation for the kidnapping and murder of several Israel youths, and after many unprovoked rocket launches from Gaza.
The Arabs' approach to warfare against Israel is to hide munitions in crowded apartment buildings and schools. A cache of missiles was found in the basement of a UNESCO school, sparking outrage in the West and accusations that the U.N. people obviously knew about it.
Civilian casualties are a tactic of war for the Arabs. The more, the better. They know that liberal idiots in the West will instantly jump to their side without bothering to investigate the facts other than a casual internet search of a BBC article (BBC being notoriously pro-Arab and hostile toward Israel).
Meanwhile, the Israelis have bent over backwards to avoid civilian casualties, more than any other military force in history according to British and other military observers. They have a tactic called "knock on the roof" in which they drop an inert bomb or a harmless noisemaker on the rooftop of a building suspected to contain both Hamas fighters and families, to warn the families to get out. A minute or two later, they drop a real bomb. It's virtually impossible to avoid casualties in a civilian guerrilla war setting, but they do a pretty decent job.
It's also suspected that a number of Arabs were killed by Hamas in friendly fire incidents or when munitions detonated by accident.
So, yes, Jerusalem is Israel's self-proclaimed capital city, has always been so, has always been the spiritual and cultural center of Judaism since circa 1,000 B.C., long predating Christian and Muslim civilization. The only people who might have a legitimate claim on part of the area would be the Canaanites, who predated the Hebrews, but there aren't any Canaanites in existence today to make such a claim.
Since 1995, it has been official U.S. law that the Embassy is to be moved to Israel. However, every six months since then, every President has signed a waiver to delay the move. Mr. Trump simply got fed up with this baloney and is following through on a campaign promise.
As Obama famously said, elections have consequences. If Trump decided to renege on his campaign promises, he'd get in trouble with the people who elected him.
As for those who hate him and didn't vote for him, but wanted a corrupt criminal instead... well, that's democracy; deal with it or move to Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Somalia, etc. Lots of places where you can live in your ideal totalitarian collective kind of place where you don't have to live by democratic principles.
How is it that you began your post making salient, well thought out, cogent points, and then ended up frothing at the mouth in a diatribe of incoherent nonsense?
BTW, I was under the impression that the vast majority of Jews in the U.S. are Democrats (or "liberal idiots" in your parlance). So I suppose it will come as a shock to them that they are, according to you, apparently pro-Arab.
How is it that you began your post making salient, well thought out, cogent points, and then ended up frothing at the mouth in a diatribe of incoherent nonsense?
BTW, I was under the impression that the vast majority of Jews in the U.S. are Democrats (or "liberal idiots" in your parlance). So I suppose it will come as a shock to them that they are, according to you, apparently pro-Arab.
How is it that you began your post making salient, well thought out, cogent points, and then ended up frothing at the mouth in a diatribe of incoherent nonsense?
The majority of Jews don't support Hamas, even though they also don't support Trump. So I'm not sure what your point is. I was responding to a guy who apparently hates Israel and called them "evil".
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