No matter how well intentioned, I think military interventions nowadays that aim to dethrone an authoritarian regime are practically guaranteed to fail.

Modern combat is fought through surgical air strikes with a limited ground force. It minimizes invading state casualties but poor intelligence from limited local manpower inevitably leads to mass civilian casualties. This progressively undermines local support. Fostering a vibrant democracy or training a self sufficient military and police force, hell, let alone rebuilding the infrastructure from the initial invasion cannot be done quickly. As has been seen from Afghanistan especially, this allows insurgencies to organise and further air bombing simply adds to their recruitment numbers.

Removing totalitarianism also reveals long-held grudges and power imbalances such as how removing Saddam's minority Sunni Ba'ath Party fermented a civil war with the oppressed Shi'ite majority. Local revolutions on the other hand, without intervention create a sense of solidarity regardless of past differences. A foreign coup d'état does not.

States that have democracy thrust upon tend to squander them or relapse back into authoritarianism. Often this is from a lack of established and respectable candidates to choose from, haphazard transition to a market economy (e.g Russia) or a lack of consistent ground level demands from the people resulting in simple pandering by politicians to secure votes with no intentions of governance. Democracy is only able to work effectively when individuals with growing affluence over time begin to demand better infrastructure, services and generally representation of their interests.

Not to mention, especially in Africa, many countries were wished into existence by exiting colonial powers with no logical cultural, religious or ethnic links among them. There is simply no genuine sense of national unity. This is arguably what caused the violence in Kenya in 07-08 following the disputed election. Foreign interventions in ex-colonial countries also inevitably leads to the perception of renewed imperialism, not matter how pure actual intentions. This is why intervention in Zimbabwe to remove Mugabe is inconceivable unless it by the African Union, which is far too weak and unwilling. Even now, Mugabe has considerable support by his colonial independence credentials.

Other countries simply have never had a legitimate and effective government in generations. The Taliban did not so much rule Afghanistan as loosely impose Sha'ria law on individual tribes who otherwise had signficant autonomy. Now that representational democracy has been imposed, there is simply no willingness on the part of an individual tribe to work together to improve the livelihood of all, but merely their own people. Politicians and officials are not corrupt because they are immoral but because political survival means following this creed.

Point is, military interventions don't work in removing despotic governments simply because something can and will go wrong. The only place they are appropriate is preventing genocide or aggressor nations. NATO was correct to intervene in Kosovo, the UN was correct to prevent Iraqi aggression into Kuwait (ignoring Iraqi invasion of Iran was not). Intervention should have occurred in Rwanda and equally in Sudan.

The Powell Doctrine more or less sets out what I wrote above concisely. In short, intervention should occur only with mass popular local support, and be undertaken swiftly and effectively with overwhelming force with a clear exit strategy established.

Thanks to Bush though, the US is overstretched militarily and lacks the moral authority to incite other nations into intervening where necessary. More importantly it's lost the deterrence its successful interventions in Kosovo and Kuwait created.

>> ^bcglorf:

Hurray for anything bringing some attention to the situation over there, particularly in correctly referring to it as Burma and not the Myanmar moniker imposed by the military dictatorship.
RedSky said:
For countries that have essentially had institutionalised repression for a generation or more like North Korea and Burma, I honestly think that the best way forward is to encourage trade with some restrictions in the hope that some of it filters through to the people.
I completely agree with your feeling conflicted on how best to help the poor people imprisoned in these countries. Honestly, I think using a foreign military to remove the regime followed by a nation building program on the scale used in post war Germany and Japan is the best way forward. But no nation on Earth has any reason to spend that enormous amount of money and political good will on something that in essence gains them nothing in the end anyways.
I do dearly wish that when Burma was hit so bad by natural disasters a few years ago the world have reacted more appropriately. Instead of allowing the ruling military to refuse and block any aid from going in, the world should have come in by force with as many soldiers and weapons as needed to deliver the volunteered aid to the devastated areas by force, then simply withdrawn after the aid had been delivered and provided. Sure the military would come and take it all for themselves after anyways, but the people there could've seen for a few months that the outside world actually cares about them and would gladly treat them for better than the junta is. Maybe allowing a base of resistance and opposition to gain wider support.

>> ^Fusionaut:

It was fireworks! http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/03/3105511.htm?section=just
in


I'm guessing the fish are a coincidence due to the distance involved (they weren't next to each other; so to speak...).

Although, fireworks (or things like that) due make some sense. I wonder if there were any "town" shows as I saw mention of only revelers for fireworks (which seems highly unlikely to cause something like this; unless these birds have a form of mass hysteria, like humans).

The lightning sounded like a better idea, but they should be able to match it to the autopsies. It'll be better once they have a few thorough autopsies done and a good idea of "where" they died (altitude, in the general area or a slight wind carry). Maybe, even a sonic boom could be at play. A plane might be able to make one loud enough, but if it happened at 30k like proposed I'm unclear whether residents would even hear a sonic boom. Also, I'm unsure as to the strength of a thunderclap (as it's also a "sonic boom", to some degree--far different cause than speed, as in lightning's case it's temperature variants), can the thunder cause a "fish in a barrel type effect, especially if the birds were in a storm with rain or a "heavy" cloud structure.

Maybe they were stunned and the fall actually killed them. Hopefully, we find out quick. I always fine these large die-offs interesting as sometimes the causes can give us more insight into how our planet works. One (actually two, in the same place) that I can think of off the top of my head was a Human die-off.

It was from Lake Nyos, in northwest Cameroon. Lake Nyos is one of three "exploding lakes" here are two interesting articles about them, but there is a (it's a National Geographic show, I'm very unsure of the title, it's related to the BBC show, "Killer Lakes", I just put up here; at the bottom is the link for it), but I know Lake Nyos is included in it) show about it which is a must watch -- they figured out what was happening basically on accident as well (this was not even a theory before; now they're afraid there are "mega-pockets" which is talked about in a History Channel "Mega Disasters" episode (I think "Methane Explosion", though "Methane" is used for sure) -- if something happens at an "ocean geographic scale" it would kill a lot of people; it has the potential to be worse than Yellowstone, but we have absolutely no information on the likelihood of this occurring nor the size of such an event). Nyos killed roughly 3500 livestock and 1700 people, some of the villagers were 16 miles from the lake. One of the other lakes is in Cameroon and the other is in Rwanda.

Here are the Wikipedia links:

Limnic Eruptions or also known as Exploding Lakes -- think of them as being somewhat like a soda can with the lid popped off and some Mentos thrown in.

Second, Lake Nyos which killed a large amount of people in 1986 and left scientists baffled.

There are some media links at the bottom of the wiki articles.


Here is the BBC documentary I just put up for the sift (HORiZONS, BBC World); trust me it's an interesting watch. Make sure you have time to watch it as it comes in at a FULL episode and is 44 minutes long. This documentary talks about the 1986 disaster and the mystery surrounding it.

They'll get into the mechanics and also show the reason some scientists are scared this WILL happen again, but this time it might kill hundreds of thousands--maybe more...

I simply asked a straightforward question. It is a fact that the US invaded and continued the Vietnam War under false pretenses. And facts are darned things.

I'm amazed you're so eager to call someone who leaks confidential documents but apparently are willing to fully brush off a government lying to it's people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers

You know what annoys me the most about what you say is you just don't have any consistent beliefs. Your only consistency seems to be that you always just happen to agree with Republican rhetoric.

If you were really concerned about Vietnamese deaths, you would have realised that a communist regime would have been a far better outcome, spared countless lives and would have resulted in a conversion to capitalism gradually just like Vietnam is doing now.

And hey, I bet you opposed intervention in Kosovo when Clinton was in office, right? Quite ironic if so, right?

And what about intervening in Rwanda and right now in Darfur? Against that too I'm guessing?

>> ^quantumushroom:

Your loaded question was actually the most civil response.
Wouldn't release 'em. Why be a traitor when the Pentagon Papers had zero effect on the Democrat-run Vietnam War?
False pretenses? You mean, communists didn't murder 2 million Vietnamese?
At least Ellsberg was ready to accept his fate.

@ quantumushroom

If you had gained access to the Pentagon Papers, would you have made them available or kept hidden that the US invaded Vietnam under false pretenses?

How would you feel if when you brought up some controversy about representative democracy, I said, 'well, that's not a true democracy. In a true democracy, none of these problems would exist.'? That's how I feel arguing with you. You accept no responsibility for the many likely vulnerabilities your hypothetical doctrine has to corruption.

Assumptions can be right. - Yes, just because you've made an assumption doesn't mean that it's wrong, but if you have no evidence to back up your claim, or if your entire body of evidence consists of criticism of competing ideas, it makes your own assumption less persuasive.

Your assumption vs. my assumption - Your 'assumptions' are hypothetical, as a free market system has never existed or been attempted (unless you count Darfur or Rwanda). My 'assumptions' about representative government are based on evidence of a system that has been around for a long time. It's strengths and weaknesses are well known. There is a huge difference between hypothetical assumptions and assumptions based on observable evidence.

Argument from fallacy - That's actually pretty hilarious that calling out a fallacy is itself a fallacy. Ironic.... dontcha think? Guilty as charged, but you do this too hypocrite.

Red Herring - Half of your PQ is filled with Red Herrings. We both use these.

Negative proof - Yes, because something cannot be proven true doesn't mean it is false. How appropriate. Religious people use this one often and atheists usually rebut 'yes, but that's where evidence comes in'. Yes, blanky, that's where evidence comes in. I know you believe the free market would work as you want it to, but without any evidence to prove this, my brain will not allow me to believe in it, just as my brain will not allow me to believe in God. It doesn't mean you are wrong. You may be right. Bigfoot might be real. Aliens might abduct cows. Could be? Who knows?

Ridicule - You make political jokes too. Are you really suggesting we take humor out of the equation? Fuck that. No jokes and this becomes a droll exercise. It's getting a little stale as it is, but you've pumped some life into the discussion with this whole fallacy thing.

Example - I never said free markets are false, just impossible to achieve as you envision them. Considering that no political ideology has ever existed in its purest, corruption-free form, I feel like history backs me on this one. To clarify, my belief is that the 'free market' is too prone to corruption to make the world a better place, and would almost certainly make the world a worse place, not that it's false.

Repetition - I've never used the fact that you repeat the same arguments over and over as a way of trying to prove you wrong. I'm just noting personal frustration.

Repetition - I've never used the fact that you repeat the same arguments over and over as a way of trying to prove you wrong. I'm just noting personal frustration.

Consequences - I'm not saying deregulation MAY lead to problems, I'm saying it DOES. There are plenty of real life examples of the consequences of deregulation, one big one at the top of the page. We've lived them for decades. Is observable evidence really a fallacy?

Your example of me 'begging the question' - If you limit the role the public plays in affairs of state and country, the public will have less of a role in affairs of state and country. Lewd cat is lewd. Those with means would absolutely have more influence without having to compete with the will of the people. This doesn't seem like a controversial statement to me. What do you find untrue, unproven or unrealistic about this statement?

How does your system end a corporate dictatorship or achieve things? This is the simple question that has prompted much monkey dancing and tangents from you. I want to know specifically how we get from a to b, and doctrinal hypotheticals don't do it for me. Tell me a story, something that could make this seem real and possible.

Example: Dick and Jane open up a competing corporate dictatorship, make a shit ton of cash, then they buy a majority share of the other company and put it out of business. That's not a very believable story. If I could think of a good believable story, I would probably become a libertarian. That's where you come in. This is your bright shining moment to make some sense of this bullshit.

Uganda borders Sudan, Rwanda and the Congo. If you want to be more depressed, realize that 'leadership' like this is actually an upward direction from those neighboring countries.

Coming from "sumone" too "ignorent" to even know how to spell "genoside" I'll take that pithy remark as the highest compliment.

>> ^westy:

nobody noticed because noone cares to listen to sumone as ignorent as yourself.
>> ^bcglorf:
People have probably noticed I have little patience for the pathetic ignorance that leads people to cry how genocide is happening today, and point at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as examples.
You are absolutely right that genocide has continued to happen since the holocaust, and few have cared. You're even right to ascribe guilt to America for some of them. But you need to be pointing at Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. You need to be pointing at the era where America backed, or failed to remove Saddam as he perpetuated multiple genocides of his own.
But more importantly still, if you actually care about genocide being perpetuated then spend some more time talking about the worst ones that are still happening today. Rwanda just recently managed to kill more people more quickly than the nazi death camps, and they did it without setting up camps or factories, they just picked up enough machetes to get the 'job' done. The crew that did it never was caught or stopped either, they were chased out of Rwanda into the Congo, were they are still raping and killing the days away.
Somalia's president is a convicted war criminal by the ICC, and the whole of the Africa Union is willing to protect him, because there are that many leaders of African nations that are all worried that if the Darfur genocide could get him in trouble, they might be too.
The list of genocides going on today, right now, are endless. If the best example you can come up with is the American import of inexpensive chinese labor, I suspect your priorities are NOT on ending genocide and lie in much different place. Don't sully the fight against genocide with your own prejudices.

nobody noticed because noone cares to listen to sumone as ignorent as yourself.

>> ^bcglorf:

People have probably noticed I have little patience for the pathetic ignorance that leads people to cry how genocide is happening today, and point at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as examples.
You are absolutely right that genocide has continued to happen since the holocaust, and few have cared. You're even right to ascribe guilt to America for some of them. But you need to be pointing at Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. You need to be pointing at the era where America backed, or failed to remove Saddam as he perpetuated multiple genocides of his own.
But more importantly still, if you actually care about genocide being perpetuated then spend some more time talking about the worst ones that are still happening today. Rwanda just recently managed to kill more people more quickly than the nazi death camps, and they did it without setting up camps or factories, they just picked up enough machetes to get the 'job' done. The crew that did it never was caught or stopped either, they were chased out of Rwanda into the Congo, were they are still raping and killing the days away.
Somalia's president is a convicted war criminal by the ICC, and the whole of the Africa Union is willing to protect him, because there are that many leaders of African nations that are all worried that if the Darfur genocide could get him in trouble, they might be too.
The list of genocides going on today, right now, are endless. If the best example you can come up with is the American import of inexpensive chinese labor, I suspect your priorities are NOT on ending genocide and lie in much different place. Don't sully the fight against genocide with your own prejudices.

People have probably noticed I have little patience for the pathetic ignorance that leads people to cry how genocide is happening today, and point at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as examples.

You are absolutely right that genocide has continued to happen since the holocaust, and few have cared. You're even right to ascribe guilt to America for some of them. But you need to be pointing at Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. You need to be pointing at the era where America backed, or failed to remove Saddam as he perpetuated multiple genocides of his own.

But more importantly still, if you actually care about genocide being perpetuated then spend some more time talking about the worst ones that are still happening today. Rwanda just recently managed to kill more people more quickly than the nazi death camps, and they did it without setting up camps or factories, they just picked up enough machetes to get the 'job' done. The crew that did it never was caught or stopped either, they were chased out of Rwanda into the Congo, were they are still raping and killing the days away.

Somalia's president is a convicted war criminal by the ICC, and the whole of the Africa Union is willing to protect him, because there are that many leaders of African nations that are all worried that if the Darfur genocide could get him in trouble, they might be too.

The list of genocides going on today, right now, are endless. If the best example you can come up with is the American import of inexpensive chinese labor, I suspect your priorities are NOT on ending genocide and lie in much different place. Don't sully the fight against genocide with your own prejudices.

Gay + Media = Unamerican Communist... everyone who watches the fair and balanced fox news show knows that's just a simple fact.

I'm just waiting for instructions from Fox on what the appropriate way to treat such unamerican traitors is...
I'm guessing they'll lean toward probably something like the Rwanda massacre...
After all it's not like their real people - apparently they're all going to hell anyway.

Rougy said:you're just a warmonger piece of shit and you always have been.

Crawl back into your hole.

It's unfortunate you lash out everytime it's pointed out that the horrors of war can exist without the benefit of war as long as one side is too weak to put up a fight. Call me a war monger if you like, but that doesn't defend the countless atrocities that have occurred when your advise of non-intervention was followed.

blankfist said:Come join the dark side of peace, dear statist.

Our positions are much closer than you might think.

You understand the horrific cost of military intervention and war, and reject it. I was there for 20+ years. The next step is quite simply forcing yourself to look at the cost of non-intervention. The UN had several thousand troops on the ground in Rwanda to ensure a tenuous peace was kept. The policy of non-intervention saw them removed immediately in the face of violence and war, and 800,000 died as a result. I was being derisive in calling that 'peace', it is nothing of the sort, it is merely cowardice and selfishness.

You can try and claim innocence by blaming only those that did the killing, I can't so easily absolve those who turned a willful blind eye to such genocide. Similarly, I hate America far more for it's efforts to ignore and deny Saddam's genocide of the Kurd's than for the casaulties of their incompetent removal of him.

Ta Nic!

In reply to this comment by NicoleBee:
*doublepromote this incredibly moving account of what was happening while so many were transfixed by the spectacle of the OJ Simpson trial.

>> ^NicoleBee:

doublepromote this incredibly moving account of what was happening while so many were transfixed by the spectacle of the OJ Simpson trial.


Touché. Thanks for the promo Nic.

What are we supposed to do? Play world police with sovereign nations?

When it comes to genocide, yes! The US is a signatory to the UN Convention on Genocide. It's leading article 1 reads: The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
The US and all other signatories to this convention are obligated to act prevent acts of genocide.

What about the innocents the US has murdered in cold blood during the war in Iraq?

I thought we were talking about Afghanistan. Though for argument sake, removing Saddam has still saved more lives than the incompetently mismanaged occupation has cost.

Should that be considered an expected casualty during some elusive quest for peace?
You think war can be fought without spilling innocent blood? The question is what costs more innocent lives, American 'peace' with Saddam while he remains in power, or American war to remove him. The benefit of hindsight already answered that question before the invasion began.

You have the power of hindsight that allows you the self-assured ability to judge historic military scrimmages that lead to the winner's version of 'peace'.
I declared the inaction in Rwanda to be intolerable, no hindsight was needed for that observation. All external powers saw the genocide coming, and had their troops on the ground removing their citizens from the country within hours of the violence breaking out, and had their troops and civilians safely away never to return immediately after. The UN force on the ground knew the genocide was happening too, they used that knowledge to withdraw all but 400 peace keepers from the region as well. The blood on Clinton's hands for failing to stop the genocide has NOTHING to do with hindsight and everything to do with the decision to mind his own business and choosing 'peace' over war.

Both sides can use this argument. You could make the same argument to anyone, me included who would have supported intervening in Rwanda to stop the genocide.

Good point. They're all crooks with blood on their hands. The only logical answer then is to stop voting them in from the two non-peace parties. Problem solved.
I look forward to the Green Party vs. Libertarian Party in three years.


I think it's wrong to equate peace with not having blood on ones hands. The most blood on Clinton's hands came from his insistence on 'peace' with Rwanda and minding our own business while 800,000 died for our desire for our own 'peace'.