The Crazy SOB Actually Did it!

[ralfy]

OK, I guess? No false flags in Iraq, even intentional misrepresentation of WMDs would not technically meet the definition of "false flag." Like most of your posts, it seems intelligent but wanders way off topic.

I think that was a false flag, especially given the claim that Saddam was working with terrorists. Also, I don't understand how I am wandering way off topic when I am simply responding to points to you raised, i.e., Vietnam and Iraq.

[Allhallowsday]

...
Lester: "I don't get it"
All: "We know..."
Ralfy: "I think he's trying to point out in a 4chan way that you're just cheerleading for the pro-Russia crowd. The problem is that much of media is doing that for the U.S. and its allies."
All: "WAH-rong!" [That is, I'm not claiming that he's cheerleading for the pro-Russia crowd."
Ralfy: "'Wrong' means the opposite." [That is, the opposite of the claim that "you're just cheerleading for the pro-Russia crowd."]
All: [posts the same pic in response to Ralfy]
Ralfy: "Instead of acting like a buffoon, why don't you contribute important points to this discussion?" [A buffoon is not interested in contributing important points. Rather, he only wants to annoy others.]
All: "I'd rather annoy you.  You don't like being wrong, but you don't have to resort to insults.   Tap dancer.  "

 

[Morpheus, the unwoke.]

OK, I guess? No false flags in Iraq, even intentional misrepresentation of WMDs would not technically meet the definition of "false flag." Like most of your posts, it seems intelligent but wanders way off topic.

I think that was a false flag, especially given the claim that Saddam was working with terrorists. Also, I don't understand how I am wandering way off topic when I am simply responding to points to you raised, i.e., Vietnam and Iraq.

IMS that I agree with you here.  Iraq had zip to do with 911, Hussein hated hard-core Islamic extremists as they were a threat a to his power base. When  a large group of them tried to organize in Iraq he massacred hundreds of them.

Bush Jr planned to seize iraq somehow from his first day in office, he was looking for an excuse from day one as later exposed documents revealed.  911 was just an excuse todo what he wanted  to anyway.  A book called ''why we invaded iraq'' I believe lays out the case that we invaded iraq because Bush Jr. wanted too.

Maybe other states petitioning to join NATO just gave poots his excuse to do what he always wanted to do in Ukraine.

Russia sure has had a hell of a bad time since the SU collapsed. It invaded Afghanistan to stop it becoming a hostile Muslim power, got shellacked in it and  now it is a hostile islamofascist state next to them.  It's economy tanked, it got taken over by a total despot and his cult of personality junta,  now it's a pariah state and it's economy is a tragic mess, plus it's population figures are in a crisis AND it's dictator has thrown away thousands of healthy young men in a Charlie foxtrot of an invasion.

I honestly can't help pitying the average Russian people. I mean the country is almost as much a chronic trainwreck as Haiti. If there truly is a higher power in the universe (I think there is but I don't claim to be certain) I wish it would send russia some sort of practical, secular 'savior' to get that country running like a state and not a perpetual trainwreck ran by psychopaths and mobsters.
 

[Rev. Powell]

wrong
/rôNG/

    1.not correct or true; incorrect. "that is the wrong answer"

Lester: "I don't get it"

All: "We know..."

Ralfy: "I think he's trying to point out in a 4chan way that you're just cheerleading for the pro-Russia crowd. The problem is that much of media is doing that for the U.S. and its allies."

All: "WAH-rong!" [That is, I'm not claiming that he's cheerleading for the pro-Russia crowd."

Ralfy: "'Wrong' means the opposite." [That is, the opposite of the claim that "you're just cheerleading for the pro-Russia crowd."]

I could be wrong, but I interpreted Allhallowsday's tap-dancing post as a reference to the American idiom "tap dance around the subject," i.e. refusing to answer a direct question or accusation by bringing up other subjects. So if I understood correctly he's not accusing lester of pro-Russia cheerleading, but of evasiveness.

[Rev. Powell]

OK, I guess? No false flags in Iraq, even intentional misrepresentation of WMDs would not technically meet the definition of "false flag." Like most of your posts, it seems intelligent but wanders way off topic.

I think that was a false flag, especially given the claim that Saddam was working with terrorists. Also, I don't understand how I am wandering way off topic when I am simply responding to points to you raised, i.e., Vietnam and Iraq.

I think the term "false flag" is thrown around too casually and tends to decrease your persuasiveness, since it's a favorite claim of 911 truthers and Alex Jones types. A false flag is not merely misinformation, propaganda, or an untrue claim. It's a deliberate staging of an act for which you blame others, like bombing your own people and claiming terrorists did it. True false flags are exceedingly rare in history (or are small scale events).

"Wandering way off course" was a misrepresentation on my part, but to follow up with you would lead to off-topic conversation. In context, I was just responding to lester's hypothetical, which I found was somewhat interesting, not trying to start a new off-topic conversation about Vietnam or Iraq. I still don't know why lester posted his hypothetical since he didn't follow up.

[Morpheus, the unwoke.]

OK, I guess? No false flags in Iraq, even intentional misrepresentation of WMDs would not technically meet the definition of "false flag." Like most of your posts, it seems intelligent but wanders way off topic.

I think that was a false flag, especially given the claim that Saddam was working with terrorists. Also, I don't understand how I am wandering way off topic when I am simply responding to points to you raised, i.e., Vietnam and Iraq.

I think the term "false flag" is thrown around too casually and tends to decrease your persuasiveness, since it's a favorite claim of 911 truthers and Alex Jones types. A false flag is not merely misinformation, propaganda, or an untrue claim. It's a deliberate staging of an act for which you blame others, like bombing your own people and claiming terrorists did it. True false flags are exceedingly rare in history (or are small scale events).

"Wandering way off course" was a misrepresentation on my part, but to follow up with you would lead to off-topic conversation. In context, I was just responding to lester's hypothetical, which I found was somewhat interesting, not trying to start a new off-topic conversation about Vietnam or Iraq. I still don't know why lester posted his hypothetical since he didn't follow up.

Well by your definition then yes, it's not likely Bush was involved with 911, but I do believe he used it as an excuse to invade iraq.  Maybe it was a false flag of convenience where somone uses an event others used to justify a wrobg action.

Real false flags? Well likely tge Reichstag fire and an alleged polish attack against German forces are the two that I think were legit.

[indianasmith]

Look, Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 and got his butt severely kicked for doing so.
After withdrawing, he signed on to ten UN resolutions as part of the peace deal, the violation of ANY of which were grounds for resumption of hostilities by the Western allies.  He then proceeded to violate all ten of those resolutions over the next decade and change, despite repeated warnings and occasional retaliatory bombings.  He even went so far as to send a team of assassins into Kuwait to assassinate former President Bush in 1993.
I remember the runup to the Iraq War quite well.  GWB never said Saddam was tied to 9/11, but he did express concerns that Iraq might supply future terrorist organizations with biological or chemical weapons.
I believed and still believe that toppling Saddam was legal and just, no matter how badly fought the later stages of the war turned out to be.

[Allhallowsday]

...I could be wrong, but I interpreted Allhallowsday's tap-dancing post as a reference to the American idiom "tap dance around the subject," i.e. refusing to answer a direct question or accusation by bringing up other subjects. So if I understood correctly he's not accusing lester of pro-Russia cheerleading, but of evasiveness.

You are right.  Hopefully, Ralfy will understand that is as in "correct", and not the opposite of left, or Wilbur or Orville, or a place to buy meds. 

[ralfy]

I could be wrong, but I interpreted Allhallowsday's tap-dancing post as a reference to the American idiom "tap dance around the subject," i.e. refusing to answer a direct question or accusation by bringing up other subjects. So if I understood correctly he's not accusing lester of pro-Russia cheerleading, but of evasiveness.

Criticism of Putin, of Russia, and of the invasion is very clear in this thread. What's being evaded are the circumstances that led to that. There are more details here:

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and in other sources shared in my previous posts. Take note that the lecture is from 2015. The professor also has a written report here:

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf

The gist is that the mainstream view is that Putin annexed Crimea and will attack Ukraine because he wants to bring back the Soviet Empire. The point is wrong: rather, there is NATO enlargement, and the goal is to put Ukraine in the orbit of the West and away from Russia.

This ties up very clearly with points that I and Sachs made. That is,

The U.S. gains power by (1) making sure that other countries remain dependent on it by using the dollar as a reserve currency, (2) using that dependence to attain more debt and thus pay for a very expensive military (i.e., the military industrial complex), which (3) is being used to coerce dozens of countries and encircle both Russia and China, because that's what makes (1) possible.

So, you see, I have been doing the complete opposite of tap dancing around this subject. If any, I've been raising what several has been tap dancing around: this is not so much an unprovoked attack from a "crazy SOB" but a reaction to provocation from other even stronger "crazy SOBs". The same professor repeats his points here:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine

The political scientist John Mearsheimer has been one of the most famous critics of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Perhaps best known for the book he wrote with Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Mearsheimer is a proponent of great-power politics—a school of realist international relations that assumes that, in a self-interested attempt to preserve national security, states will preëmptively act in anticipation of adversaries. For years, Mearsheimer has argued that the U.S., in pushing to expand NATO eastward and establishing friendly relations with Ukraine, has increased the likelihood of war between nuclear-armed powers and laid the groundwork for Vladimir Putin’s aggressive position toward Ukraine. Indeed, in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, Mearsheimer wrote that “the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for this crisis.”

And this is not an isolated. We're looking at a country that has a long history of employing false flags and engaging in all sorts of provocation for strategic and economic advantages:

https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan/interventions/

There's a lot more where that came from, from the NS Archives at GWU to the Pentagon Papers to works like Chalmers Johnson's Blowback to Pilger's documentaries to various papers by Chomsky and others. That's also why claims made by even former Presidents of the U.S. can't be ignored easily:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/19/jimmy-carter-us-most-warlike-nation-in-history-of-the-world/

See also color revolutions taking place in various countries during the last two decades or more.

Might this also explain Pilger's points about possible flashpoints in Asia?

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1	Small | Large

https://johnpilger.com/videos/the-coming-war-on-china

When the United States, the world’s biggest military power, decided that China, the second largest economic power, was a threat to its imperial dominance, two-thirds of US naval forces were transferred to Asia and the Pacific. This was the ‘pivot to Asia', announced by President Barack Obama in 2011. China, which in the space of a generation had risen from the chaos of Mao Zedong's ‘Cultural Revolution’ to an economic prosperity that has seen more than 500 million people lifted out of poverty, was suddenly the United States's new enemy.

The build-up of naval forces would reinforce the US's already overwhelmingly superior military position in the region. Seldom referred to in the Western media, 400 American bases surround China with ships, missiles and troops, in an arc that extends from Australia north through the Pacific to Japan, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India.

Do you also see the connections between such pivots and military build-up and what I and Sachs stated above? As not only China but Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa, and over forty countries become stronger economically, they will likely rely less on the dollar and prefer to use their own currencies and baskets of currencies for trade, as well as form bilateral relations and even economic blocs? As that happens, how will the U.S. continue borrowing and spending heavily to not only pay for its expensive military but to even maintain its economy?

[ralfy]

Well by your definition then yes, it's not likely Bush was involved with 911, but I do believe he used it as an excuse to invade iraq.  Maybe it was a false flag of convenience where somone uses an event others used to justify a wrobg action.

Real false flags? Well likely tge Reichstag fire and an alleged polish attack against German forces are the two that I think were legit.

They immediately pointed at Iraq only a few days after the attack, found no WMDs, came up with the absurd claim that Iraq, who is against Islamic fundamentalism, was supporting terrorists, etc. He even made a joke out of it later:

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1	Small | Large

The hilarity continues years later:

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1	Small | Large

Even though he insisted that God told him to attack:

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1	Small | Large

And if Chomsky is right, the other Presidents are no better.

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1	Small | Large

[ralfy]

Look, Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 and got his butt severely kicked for doing so.
After withdrawing, he signed on to ten UN resolutions as part of the peace deal, the violation of ANY of which were grounds for resumption of hostilities by the Western allies.  He then proceeded to violate all ten of those resolutions over the next decade and change, despite repeated warnings and occasional retaliatory bombings.  He even went so far as to send a team of assassins into Kuwait to assassinate former President Bush in 1993.
I remember the runup to the Iraq War quite well.  GWB never said Saddam was tied to 9/11, but he did express concerns that Iraq might supply future terrorist organizations with biological or chemical weapons.
I believed and still believe that toppling Saddam was legal and just, no matter how badly fought the later stages of the war turned out to be.

They claimed that he was supporting terrorists:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam%E2%80%93al-Qaeda_conspiracy_theory

In addition, Saddam was supported by the U.S.

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

This is not an isolated case: the U.S. was also supporting the Shah of Iran and various dictators worldwide, all in exchange for retaining military bases, accessing natural resources, etc. The U.S. had been doing such and more for at least a century:

https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan/interventions/

Chalmers Johnson provides lots of details in books like Blowback, and so does Chomsky. More can be seen in documentaries by Pilger and others.

It's likely that the U.S. supported Saddam to counter Iron Curtain influence in the Middle East and later Islamic fundamentalists in his own country, then invaded Iraq to take control of Basra plus attempt establishing military bases in the country. It could not maintain control because, as I recall, most Iraqis are against the U.S. That's why latter had to use Saddam's former men to work with their U.S.-educated puppets to rule the country.

Similar happened in Afghanistan, where they had to get Northern Alliance drug pushers and rapists to work with their own puppets. That didn't succeed.

[ralfy]

You are right.  Hopefully, Ralfy will understand that is as in "correct", and not the opposite of left, or Wilbur or Orville, or a place to buy meds. 

But I've been doing the opposite of evading the subject. If any, I think the majority were doing that by believing that this is a simple case of a "crazy SOB" invading a country to bring back the Soviet Empire. It's explained in the first paragraph here:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine

The counterclaim is that the attack was provoked by the West attempting to expand its power by pulling in countries near Russia to its orbit. If you read the rest of the article plus the sources I provided in earlier messages, then you will see that not only have I been addressing what many want to avoid but I've been providing multiple sources to explain them.

I think what Mearsheimer said makes sense because the U.S. has been doing such for many decades, and to countries ranging from the Philippines to Iraq. How can one discount what happened in Ukraine from 2004 onward?

[ralfy]

"How NATO's expansion helped drive Putin to invade Ukraine"

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/29/1076193616/ukraine-russia-nato-explainer

Ukraine, as the largest former Soviet republic in Europe besides Russia itself, has been a key part of alliance talks since it declared independence from the USSR in 1991. In the three decades since, NATO expansion has put four members on Ukraine's borders.

"The Russians were always concerned about how far NATO enlargement was going to go. It's one thing for Poland to come in, or the Czech Republic to come in. That's not such a big deal. But there was always a concern about Ukraine," Goldgeier said.

"The Roots of the Ukraine War: How the Crisis Developed"

https://www.nytimes.com/article/russia-ukraine-nato-europe.html

After the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, NATO expanded eastward, eventually taking in most of the European nations that had been in the Communist sphere. The Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, once parts of the Soviet Union, joined NATO, as did Poland, Romania and others.

...

As a result, NATO moved hundreds of miles closer to Moscow, directly bordering Russia. And in 2008, it stated that it planned — some day — to enroll Ukraine, though that is still seen as a far-off prospect.

"The U.S. and NATO Helped Trigger the Ukraine War. It’s Not ‘Siding With Putin’ to Admit It"

https://www.cato.org/commentary/us-nato-helped-trigger-ukraine-war-its-not-siding-putin-admit-it

It has become especially fashionable in such circles to insist that NATO’s expansion to Russia’s border was in no way responsible for the current Ukraine crisis. Many dismiss all arguments to the contrary as “echoing Putin’s talking points,” “siding with Putin,” or circulating Russian propaganda and “disinformation.” Leaving aside the ugly miasma of McCarthyism enveloping such allegations, the underlying argument is factually wrong.

Russian leaders and several Western policy experts were warning more than two decades ago that NATO expansion would turn out badly—ending in a new cold war with Russia at best, and a hot one at worst. Obviously, they were not “echoing” Putin or anyone else. George Kennan, the intellectual architect of America’s containment policy during the Cold War, perceptively warned in a May 2, 1998 New York Times interview what NATO’s move eastward would set in motion. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” he stated. “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.”

[Alex]

Of course, the slight flaw in all of that is Putin himself at one point wanted to join NATO and the countries that didn't want to join NATO that used to be part of the USSR that Putin has grabbed bits of. But hey, you keep going and only seeing half the picture.

[Rev. Powell]

I could be wrong, but I interpreted Allhallowsday's tap-dancing post as a reference to the American idiom "tap dance around the subject," i.e. refusing to answer a direct question or accusation by bringing up other subjects. So if I understood correctly he's not accusing lester of pro-Russia cheerleading, but of evasiveness.

Criticism of Putin, of Russia, and of the invasion is very clear in this thread. What's being evaded are the circumstances that led to that. There are more details here:

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

and in other sources shared in my previous posts. Take note that the lecture is from 2015. The professor also has a written report here:

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf

The gist is that the mainstream view is that Putin annexed Crimea and will attack Ukraine because he wants to bring back the Soviet Empire. The point is wrong: rather, there is NATO enlargement, and the goal is to put Ukraine in the orbit of the West and away from Russia.

This ties up very clearly with points that I and Sachs made. That is,

The U.S. gains power by (1) making sure that other countries remain dependent on it by using the dollar as a reserve currency, (2) using that dependence to attain more debt and thus pay for a very expensive military (i.e., the military industrial complex), which (3) is being used to coerce dozens of countries and encircle both Russia and China, because that's what makes (1) possible.

So, you see, I have been doing the complete opposite of tap dancing around this subject. If any, I've been raising what several has been tap dancing around: this is not so much an unprovoked attack from a "crazy SOB" but a reaction to provocation from other even stronger "crazy SOBs". The same professor repeats his points here:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine

The political scientist John Mearsheimer has been one of the most famous critics of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Perhaps best known for the book he wrote with Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Mearsheimer is a proponent of great-power politics—a school of realist international relations that assumes that, in a self-interested attempt to preserve national security, states will preëmptively act in anticipation of adversaries. For years, Mearsheimer has argued that the U.S., in pushing to expand NATO eastward and establishing friendly relations with Ukraine, has increased the likelihood of war between nuclear-armed powers and laid the groundwork for Vladimir Putin’s aggressive position toward Ukraine. Indeed, in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, Mearsheimer wrote that “the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for this crisis.”

And this is not an isolated. We're looking at a country that has a long history of employing false flags and engaging in all sorts of provocation for strategic and economic advantages:

https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan/interventions/

There's a lot more where that came from, from the NS Archives at GWU to the Pentagon Papers to works like Chalmers Johnson's Blowback to Pilger's documentaries to various papers by Chomsky and others. That's also why claims made by even former Presidents of the U.S. can't be ignored easily:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/19/jimmy-carter-us-most-warlike-nation-in-history-of-the-world/

See also color revolutions taking place in various countries during the last two decades or more.

Might this also explain Pilger's points about possible flashpoints in Asia?

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

https://johnpilger.com/videos/the-coming-war-on-china

When the United States, the world’s biggest military power, decided that China, the second largest economic power, was a threat to its imperial dominance, two-thirds of US naval forces were transferred to Asia and the Pacific. This was the ‘pivot to Asia', announced by President Barack Obama in 2011. China, which in the space of a generation had risen from the chaos of Mao Zedong's ‘Cultural Revolution’ to an economic prosperity that has seen more than 500 million people lifted out of poverty, was suddenly the United States's new enemy.

The build-up of naval forces would reinforce the US's already overwhelmingly superior military position in the region. Seldom referred to in the Western media, 400 American bases surround China with ships, missiles and troops, in an arc that extends from Australia north through the Pacific to Japan, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India.

Do you also see the connections between such pivots and military build-up and what I and Sachs stated above? As not only China but Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa, and over forty countries become stronger economically, they will likely rely less on the dollar and prefer to use their own currencies and baskets of currencies for trade, as well as form bilateral relations and even economic blocs? As that happens, how will the U.S. continue borrowing and spending heavily to not only pay for its expensive military but to even maintain its economy?

This is what I mean about you going way off topic. No one is going to watch hour-long lectures or follow the seven links you post in response to a two-sentence explanation of a post. There are other forums where you might find more engagement on those topics if that's what you seek.