Get out of China's Face

[lester1/2jr]

great article  from the libertarian perspective about the current left-right agreement on China's evilness.  rooted, as always, in hypocracy, protectionism,  and war mongering.

[Dave M]

So the occassional mass-murder isn't even a tiny factor? Libertarianism departed from the Libertarian Party when all the Libertarians became too cool to make libertarian arguments for a libertarian foreign policy, and decided that it's easier to just pretend that no nations other than the US ever do anything aggressive.

[Captain Tars Tarkas]

Libertarians are all about being selfish and f**king over everyone else, then crying like babies when they get f**ked over.  Its just resentment from Mommy making them share their toys when they were 2. 
\


LOL at "Liberal War Mongers".

[indianasmith]

interesting read, Lester.  On the one hand, I despise the repression and denial of civil rights that the Beijing crowd imposes on their people, particularly the brutal treatment of Christians.  On the other hand, not picking fights you can't win is a generally wise adage - and we have our hands full fighting Islamofascists right now.

[IRSISRSRI]

Just an interesting note on the topic, I was talking to a chinese friend last week about all this. And she was shocked I told her the Dalai Lama is well liked in the west. She described him as a terrorist.


I agree with the article. But to be honest about 2/3rds of the way through thought tl;dr >_>.

What annoys me about the new, popular, anti Chinese sentiment is it seems the majority of them don't even have the most shallow of understandings of the issue. And the smallest peices of infomation they do bother to collect seem completely polorised.

I guess it's a pointless step to understand what you protest >_>

[lester1/2jr]

tars-  clinton bombed iraq for most of his presidency, invaded bosnia, bombed a sudanese pharmacutical factory and held the sanctions on iraq, killing thuosands. 

most liberals voted for the iraq war authorization and virtually all of them voted in favor of last summers war in lebanon by israel.   

and more recently, as the author describes, are the "humanitarian" calls for invasion of darfur and support of tibet against china, who we have borrowed a trillion dollars from.


pat buchanan and ron paul were AGAINST the Iraq war, Hillary, Lieberman, kerry and edwards were for it.


dave m-  libertarianism was founded by austrian economists like Murray Rothbard and Ludwig Von Mises specifically against nearly all interventionism , even "good" wars.

"war is the health of the state" said randolph bourne.  if you are against the state,  war is your mortal enemy as the government grows,  takes on more of a central role, drums up nationalism, and all sorts of coercians it would otherwise not be allowed to do.



libertarianism = anti war, anti state, pro market

indianismith-  it is our mentality these days that we either subsidize things or ban them.  like stem cell research "we NEED to have it,  we NEED to ban it".  let people who care about it pay for it and leave the government out of it.

[indianasmith]

You know, Lester, I do respect you and your willingness to put your opinions out there, even when they are unpopular and controversial.  Hooray for free speech! 

But where you and I part company is at this point.  I believe that the line from SPIDERMAN is true: "With great power comes great responsibility."
America is one of the most powerful nations on earth, and THE most powerful democracy.  Sometimes it falls upon us to use that power to crush evil for the betterment of the whole world.  Sometimes we misjudge and fail, but more often in the last century we have used our power well.  We stopped the militarist Imperial Germany from conquering Europe 90 years ago, and we crushed two of the most evil regimes in the history of world in 1945, liberating millions and ending the agony of the Holocaust.  We buried the Soviets in the Cold War, ending the deadliest dictatorship the world had ever known (Stalin executed more people, it is believed, than died in all of World War II) without resorting to a third World War that would have destroyed all humanity.

Heck, I still believe that toppling Saddam was a good thing, and will be viewed positively 100 years from now. 

But, I still respect your opinion.  If America had not had the gumption to act contrary to your philosophy, though, you might not be free to utter it!

[lester1/2jr]

I believe all of that is a fallacy.  had Germany not had to pay through the nose after ww1 there never would have been a hitler.  heck, if hitler had been admitted to art school there never wuold have been a hitler.

all of the statecraft of the 20th century led to all of the disasters of the 20th century.

and nationalism is sually a tool of the elites.  in argentina the government was doing a bad job and wetre on the outs with the people.  then came the falkland island crisis.   All the sudden patriotism was everywhere and you had to fly the flag and worship the state or you were unpatriotic.   

have you ever read "the discovery of freedom"?  it's by rose wilder lane, who was laura ingells wilder's daughter.  it was written when social security and the federal reserve and things like that were coming in to vogue.  her, Garett Garett (that's his name) and afew others tried to fight it but lost.

edit here  check out the chapter "the old world"

[indianasmith]

This is where you and I must part company, then.  If you cannot acknowledge the evil of Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan and recognize the necessity of their defeat, we simply aren't speaking the same language, and further debate is useless (on this topic  )










i

[lester1/2jr]

the question is do you believe man is free?  I do.

[soylentgreen]

You know, Lester, I do respect you and your willingness to put your opinions out there, even when they are unpopular and controversial.  Hooray for free speech! 

But where you and I part company is at this point.  I believe that the line from SPIDERMAN is true: "With great power comes great responsibility."
America is one of the most powerful nations on earth, and THE most powerful democracy.  Sometimes it falls upon us to use that power to crush evil for the betterment of the whole world.  Sometimes we misjudge and fail, but more often in the last century we have used our power well.  We stopped the militarist Imperial Germany from conquering Europe 90 years ago, and we crushed two of the most evil regimes in the history of world in 1945, liberating millions and ending the agony of the Holocaust.  We buried the Soviets in the Cold War, ending the deadliest dictatorship the world had ever known (Stalin executed more people, it is believed, than died in all of World War II) without resorting to a third World War that would have destroyed all humanity.

Heck, I still believe that toppling Saddam was a good thing, and will be viewed positively 100 years from now. 

But, I still respect your opinion.  If America had not had the gumption to act contrary to your philosophy, though, you might not be free to utter it!

Didn't I hear this in a John Wayne film? 

I've made it a point to keep out of political or religious threads in this forum as it's usually a great opportunity for things to blow out of control real fast.  That being said I have to take issue with a few points in your post Indiana.

America is one of the most powerful nations on earth, and THE most powerful democracy.  Sometimes it falls upon us to use that power to crush evil for the betterment of the whole world. 

There's an awful lot of evil going on out there.  That it's fallen on us to crush it only in places that offer a geopolitical prize or involve resource conerns is just coincidence?  An extrapolation of manifest destiny to cover questionable military adventures around the globe has the net result of squandering any good p.r. our better efforts as a people may have earned.  The last few years should have been clear enough proof of that for anyone.  If not, the hundred years prior have plenty of similar instances.

I'm also at a loss to understand how I'm expected to buy the "crush evil for the better of the whole world" rhetoric when in one breath our leader thumps his chest about our determination to ensure freedom for Afghani women then in the next confirm his dogmatic obsession with curtailing the freedom for women to do with their bodies as they please in our own country.  Sounds like pots and kettles to me.

Sometimes we misjudge and fail, but more often in the last century we have used our power well.  We stopped the militarist Imperial Germany from conquering Europe 90 years ago, and we crushed two of the most evil regimes in the history of world in 1945, liberating millions and ending the agony of the Holocaust. 

I think success/fail tallying is never going to yield an accurate answer...just too much of it that's based on perspective or bias.  Did we win in Korea?  Did we win in Viet Nam?  Did we win in Central America?  There is no definitive answer for these that I know of.

What about Afghanistan in the 80s?  Some people actually hold that effort up as a laurel in our "toppling the Soviets" cap.  Yeah, too bad the shortsightedness of it guaranteed blowback.  And we got it in spades, didn't we? 

We were a little late to the Kaiser's party as it was.  I think you might be overstating America's role in that fiasco just a little bit.  With the second world war, Lester's right about the Austrian corporal.  Weimar Germany was a breeding ground for the germs of unrestrained aggresive nationalism.  Sure, everyone's heard the song about the harsh Versailles Treaty(it's the "Don't be ridiculous!" of the causes of WWII sitcom), but their implimentation was a significant factor. 

A whole forum could be devoted to the analysis of the maelstrom out of which the NSDAP rose alone, so it's pointless to mention much, suffice to say our preordained role in it's being checked was hardly canon in the 30s and early 40s.  In fact, the US was as obnoxious about the plight of the victims of Nazi ideology(the jews being the largest segement) as other nations.   And don't even get me started on the papacy.

It's not hard to see the zeitgeist of the time and realize that without the attack on Pearl Harbor(and incidentally, Hitler's declaring war on the US as part of the tripartite pact), the average American had little understanding of what was really going on Europe, let alone interest in signing up to give their lives in the struggle there. 

It's also vital to remember who our strongest ally was in defeating Germany.  Erstwhile, to be sure, but an ally nonentheless, Russia is often consigned to the same politically useful role of boogeyman/joke/target, the way another vital ally, France, has usually been (and without them our nation would most likely have been strangled in it's crib).  Of course, the Germans(or more approrpiately, Hitler)did themselves no favor by opening fronts on every side humanly possible.  Without the chewing the Red Army gave the German forces(after taking a bit themselves), Overlord may well have been a Market Garden.

If I even have to say that our efforts around the globe 1942-1945 were necessary or just, then you're just looking to snipe.  The most important learning experience I've ever had in my life has been the countless conversations I've had with my wife's grandfather who fought all over the damn Pacific.  He still bears the physical scars of combat, the emotional scars of death up close and, just as defining, the racist scars of a war waged in totality between two very different cultures. 

I have a great respect for folks in the armed services.  I, myself, had wanted from an early age to be a B-52 pilot, but a conspiracy of open-heart surgeries that rendered me 4-F kept me from that particular avenue of serving my country.  The idea, in my country now, that knowing the history of my country and being objective about it and it's place in the larger scheme of world history is somehow unpatriotic makes my heart sink.  And to be honest, like any other jingoistic one-liner, "If you like freedom, thank a vet" leaves a crummy taste in my mouth.  To be frank, the last vet I believe I should personally thank for preserving my freedom fought in WWII....and I did thank him numerous times...personally.  I actually believe it's patriotic to not confuse appreciating the service rendered in, say, cold war chess moves like Korea or Viet Nam, with some altrustic rampart defense of the homeland from invaders.  That these engagements have bettered the situation of  some people in these locales is beyond question(then again, so is the severe damage done to some!), but only when applied to the abstract and ultimately futile cold war machinations of MI complex do these wars even involve the American people. 

A few weeks after VE day, think tanks were already concocting just how we could knock the Soviets out of the global game....by wiping a few of their cities off the map!  "Dropshot" and it's human corollary Curtis LeMay tried to sell the efficacy of "the only safe Soviet Union was a smoking, radiating one!" to a nation convinced that mom, apple pie and your virginal little sister were only one Red Dawn away from oblivion.
which leads to....

We buried the Soviets in the Cold War, ending the deadliest dictatorship the world had ever known (Stalin executed more people, it is believed, than died in all of World War II) without resorting to a third World War that would have destroyed all humanity.

I don't know if you noticed the Politburo with their shovels right alongside Reagan and all the other cold warriors.  They were notoriously ignorant of the 5 P's and their nation suffered for it.

Though Stalin did cark before the cold war really got up some steam, everything you mention about the man of steel is on the money.  And I agree, there are alot of folks in this country who just don't get how, when it comes to the unimaginable scope of death involved, Stalin could be said to have had his finger on the trigger more so than even Hitler.  In the end though, it's splitting tyrannical hairs.  Besides, like Rasputin, I don't think mere humans could kill Stalin.  He had to be consumed from within by the vile fires of hatred and fear.  One still has to account for the practicality of alliance with him concerning the Third Reich, over the moral obligation to censure him.  Very murky waters to be sure.  He was already understood to be a bloodthristy tyrant before he became Uncle Joe.   This is also relevant to our dealing with the other menacing mustache of the twentieth century, Saddam Hussein.  I don't know about you, but when my nation's leaders ask(and expect) me to practice short-term memory loss in the service of patriotism or to gloss over short-sighted foreign policy chicanery, I have to balk.

The four and a half decades of the cold war(going by the most common timeframe used) involved more sabre rattling and brinksmanship than outright aggression.  The idea that the Soviets were just waiting for a chance, that one moment of fleeting superiority, to pulverize us has been discounted for some time.  The American leadership and strategists had, of course, wasted no time in providing the game, and an increasingly red scared populace, with phantom fears like bomber gaps, missle gaps, etc....all the way up to the horrific garbage trotted out by Reagan and his cadre of lunatics about fighting and winning a nuclear war! 

We were actually in a greater danger during those years in the early 80s than we were with the Cuban Missile crisis.  In 1962, it could be trusted that both the American civillian leadership(not so much the chiefs) valued human life and knew a nuclear war was a lose/lose proposition...so did Kruschev. (Though I won't discount that fear of a coup in the USSR would have been a real concern) In the early 80s, Reagan, Weinberger and Co.^(tm) not only believed a nuclear war was not all that much a problem when dealing with such satanic folks as russians, but that such a war was fightable to an acceptable outcome!  "With enough shovels..."  Remember that line?  I do. All you need is a hole, a spare door and some dirt.  With enough shovels, America would triumph.  Somewhere down in storage I have an old phone book from New York state that included the FEMA guidelines and emergency route info should commies start pouring through the Fulda Gap and we end up facing Herman Kahn's unthinkable.  The very architects of the latest foolishness are children of that amazing time in our history...Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz(both Scoop Jackson acolytes) cut their teeth with the actor in the oval office.

While I wouldn't say your thoughts are wrong, I feel they misportray the issues as having been so white hat/black hat.  From a human perspective, the last century was a mess.  There were plenty of times were one can get a sincere chill from the pride of saying "This too, is America".  Yet, just as often, one can see the instance in film, read the letter home, feel the scar under the shirt or hear the exhausted reminiscence and be reminded that even our nation has made some, at best, muddle-headed moves.  At worst, catastrophic.

Plus you have to admit, Indiana, that if that line from SPIDERMAN is applied to us, then we've let Uncle Ben down pretty badly, haven't we?
 
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Whew...Lastly, and to the point of this thread(Oh yeah )  Holding sponsors of the Olympics up to any standard of moral obligation is silly.  They've never been capable of it before, so why now?  Any 'move' they made to appear righteous would be hollow and simply done to preserve their own marketability.  Same goes for politicians.  End of story.  Even suggesting some kind of force be applied in this scenario is asinine, yet not surprising.  So commenting on the usual response one can expect from Washington, one party or the other, should hardly be considered bias.  This is what they always do.  And the more impotent or irrelevant they become, the louder the barking.  My aunt's chihuahua does that.  I can only hope Bush doesn't end up p**sing on my floor too.

Someone wants to make a stand?  Let it be the athletes.  Let the American athletes first and foremost.  They should boycott.  Show the world that, contrary to the impression of being a bunch of ethically lazy, xenophobic rednecks we've given the world for the last 6 years, they actually understand and take comfort in the principles our songs and commercials brag about endlessly.  I want to be shown that these hopefuls treasure principle over the lure of monetary endorsements and adulation.  Imagine the signal that would send to see them live up to all the rhetoric about just what these games are supposed to be in the spirit of.  Ya know...Mankind and s**t?!


NOTE:  Sorry about the length of this...not to mention that all was said in the spirit of frankness.  No acrimony was intended at all.  I'm a bit passionate about some of this stuff and Jeez, I'd hate for this to be some alienating move.  For myself, this has made me a little grumpy about humankind.  I'm gonna go take a nap and then watch some MEGAFORCE.

[indianasmith]

I am runmning late and don't have time to give this thoughtful post the full response it deserves, but I must comment on this -

"I'm also at a loss to understand how I'm expected to buy the "crush evil for the better of the whole world" rhetoric when in one breath our leader thumps his chest about our determination to ensure freedom for Afghani women then in the next confirm his dogmatic obsession with curtailing the freedom for women to do with their bodies as they please in our own country.  Sounds like pots and kettles to me."

How is it in this country that you can be FOR equal pay for equal work, AGAINST sexual discrimination and sexual harassment, and appoint a woman to the highest ranked cabinet position that there is . . .

and yet, if you oppose unborn children being cut into pieces and sucked into sinks, you are against women somehow?  Women have the right to do as they please with their bodies - but when a tiny heart starts beating in the womb, the right to life - a right enshrined and protected in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - has to be taken into account.  Why is it that abortion has become the SOLE litmus test of feminism in America?  with the level of contraceptive technology available today, why do we INSIST that women must have a right to murder unborn children in order to be truly free?

I don't care if I lose all my 120 karma points on this, it needed to be said.  Freedom of choice should not supercede the inalienable right to life.

[JaseSF]

Personally I don't think any truly democractic nation should have anything to do with China. It's still an oppressive Communist dictactorship last I looked that will easily use its might and propoganda machine to hide its many evil atrocities committed upon those still oppressed. What about the recent treatment of the Tibetian people? Since when was any of that tolerable? Apparently these days money and greed means turning a blind eye to almost anything.

[indianasmith]

I wanted to take a minute to address some of the points that were raised by Soylent Green in his lengthy post.  It's funny - I really do come here to talk about the cheesy B-movies I love, yet invariably I get drawn into these lengthy threads about religious, political, and moral issues.  I guess one of the reasons I enjoy those discussions here so much is that this community seems to be able to disagree without resorting to name-calling and flame wars.

Soylent, I know that history is very complex, and that America is far from perfect.  However, given the world we live in, I would rather live here, in the USA, than under any other government or administration in the world.  One reason I am proud to be an American is because we, as a nation, for the last hundred years or so, have made a determined effort to let our foreign and domestic policy be dictated not JUST by self- interest but also by a sense of right and wrong.  Sometimes that has worked out well, sometimes it hasn't, but I think, as  a nation, America sincerely tries to do the right thing for the most people most of the time.  That being said, we are also capable of being shortsighted and jingoistic.  But, let's look at the examples you mentioned in your post.

First of all, yes, we don't intervene everywhere in the world where evil deeds are being done.  National interest must also play a part;  that is why we will never put a large force ashore in Africa to stop the constant barbarism and slaughter that seem to make up so much of that continent's way of life.  We tried it once, in Somalia, and the locals just hated us for interfering, and the left that had cried out for us to DO something reversed those calls in a hurry when American boys started dying.  As much as we might despise the bloodshed and wrong that takes place there, for the moment we have no pressing national interest in Africa.  Also, to be honest, I don't think our presence there would make any difference.  The natives would quit killing each other just long enough to turn their weapons on us, then go back to self-slaughter as soon as someone yanked our troops out.

But I do believe in good and evil as absolute concepts.  I think that most of the time, when people go on and on about "shades of gray", they are deliberately trying to muddy the clarity of the issue in order to justify their own behavior!  But, I digress.

Back to WWII - of course the treaty of Versailles created the conditions that made Hitler's rise to power possible.  Had the English and French actually listened to Wilson and made the treaty less vindictive than it was, Hitler would have had a much harder time achieving that power.  But does that make him any less evil, or his defeat any less pressing a necessity for the free world?  He was bent on short-term conquest of all Europe, and long-term world domination.  As for the Japanese, their conquest of China, launched in 1937, was as immoral as any act performed by any nation.  200,000 civilians were brutally murdered by the Japanese army in Nanking that year, AFTER the city had surrendered.  Opposing those two powers was the only responsible choice our nation could make, both in terms of morality and in terms of self-preservation.  Many of the American people were frankly too ignorant and short-sighted at the time to see that, but thank God President Roosevelt was not.
  Of course, crushing Hitler meant that we would have to side with Stalin for a time.  As Winston Churchill said in 1941: "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would try to find a few kind words to speak for the devil."  Stalin was one of the most evil men who ever lived, no doubt.  However, Hitler wanted to conquer the world in his own lifetime.  Stalin was just as ambitious, but more patient.  We were using a long-term ideological enemy to fend off a short-term, more dangerous ideological enemy. 
  Once Hitler was defeated, the U.S. did make an honest attempt to get along with the Soviets, even offering to rebuild Eastern Europe with the Marshall Plan.  But Stalin's brutal repression of democracy in Poland and his siezure of Eastern Europe left no room to doubt where he stood.  You seem to have a certain distaste for the Cold War, but in the end, it was a necessary struggle.  You discount the expansionist nature of Soviet-style communism, but the fact is that the long-term goal of the Soviet Union was the destabilization and ultimate overthrow of all the Western democracies, particularly the U.S.  The fact that the Soviets were still agressive and expansionist is clearly demonstrated by their multiple offensives AFTER America's defeat in Vietnam.  In ten years, they attempted to move into Afghanistan, Angola, and Central America.  NOT to oppose them would have been not only immoral but also to ignore our own national interests.  Yes, there were many ugly things done during the Cold War - I certainly am not trying to justify McCarthyism - and we had to accept some pretty unsavory allies.  But in the end, the defeat of the Soviet Union was a moral necessity.  By the way, I don't know how much you've read about Reagan, but the man was not an advocate for nuclear war.  The highest goal of his life was to eliminate nuclear weapons forever, hence his obsession with "Star Wars" technology to make them obsolete - and his offer to Gorbachev to share that technology once it was perfected, in order to make them obsolete for both sides.  Reagan's "Second Cold War" of the 80's was risky, but necessary, and it achieved its goal. 

In short, yes, America has occasionally made a muddle of things, but it has generally done so in an attempt to do right, and in the big picture, has succeeded more often than it has failed.  On our current attempt to fix things overseas, the jury is still out.  But I for one think that Uncle Ben wouldn't be that disappointed with all we have tried to do.  Thanks for your thoughtful and well-written post!

[lester1/2jr]

THE most powerful democracy

just fyi, Eurozone now has a slightly larger economy than the US

crushing Hitler meant that we would have to side with Stalin for a time.

the ruination stalin caused makes that argument impossible for me personally to make.   he's STALIN!!  tgermany was very sophisticated  in the 20's, moreso than probably the rest of the world in many respects.  the communist empire went on for most of the 20th century and it's brutality was deeply engrained in the people out of fear. 



but I'm not intersted in debating ww2, it happened and we won.  i think these are different times.  post cold war, I don't see the purpose for a cold war size military and that's the bottom line.

the world is a big scary dangerous place and it always will be.