Is the USA uncivilised?

[Blind groper]

All of which leads to the firm statement that Cuba has never, ever been a threat to the USA. It is no longer even a potential base for soviet weapons because...... Oh that's right. No more Soviet Union.

The embargo is bullshit.

[JimC]

All of which leads to the firm statement that Cuba has never, ever been a threat to the USA. It is no longer even a potential base for soviet weapons because...... Oh that's right. No more Soviet Union.

The embargo is bullshit.

Not sure about the never, ever, but in the here and now, zilch threat, but a big opportunity to show a very positive side of the US by burying the hatchet...

(no Seth, not in Castro's skull... )

[Seth]

All of which leads to the firm statement that Cuba has never, ever been a threat to the USA. It is no longer even a potential base for soviet weapons because...... Oh that's right. No more Soviet Union.

China, Russia and North Korea have long been courting Castro. Did you read the article about the missile parts and radar systems being sent from Cuba to North Korea for "repair" that were intercepted in Panama because of the embargo? No, I didn't think so.

The embargo is bullshit.

Maybe to a communist sympathizer, but that's just personal opinion.

[Warren Dew]

Seth's views are just weird. The USA has little power to achieve positive outcomes, but has the power to cause great harm, wich it does with monotonous regularity.

Until 2006 or 2008, the U.S. achieved lots of positive outcomes for Americans. It's not our government's responsibility to achieve positive outcomes for other peoples.

[Seth]

Seth's views are just weird. The USA has little power to achieve positive outcomes, but has the power to cause great harm, wich it does with monotonous regularity.

Until 2006 or 2008, the U.S. achieved lots of positive outcomes for Americans. It's not our government's responsibility to achieve positive outcomes for other peoples.

Even though we do so all the time, to a greater extent than any other nation on earth, and have for a long, long time...even people whose nations brutally and wantonly attacked us and killed soldiers and citizens in a despicable, cowardly sneak attack. Just look at Japan now...thanks to the forgiving and generous nature of the United States.

[Blind groper]

It's not our government's responsibility to achieve positive outcomes for other peoples.

It is if your government insists on interfering. If the US government had the decency to leave other nations to get on with their business in peace, I would agree. But they don't. As long as they interfere, they have to accept responsibility for their actions.

[Warren Dew]

It's not our government's responsibility to achieve positive outcomes for other peoples.

It is if your government insists on interfering. If the US government had the decency to leave other nations to get on with their business in peace, I would agree. But they don't. As long as they interfere, they have to accept responsibility for their actions.

Indeed. That's why the Iraq war was necessary - to fix the problems we caused in the Gulf War.

[pErvinalia]

Iraq is fixed, is it?

[Warren Dew]

Iraq is fixed, is it?

Our part in helping Saddam Hussein defeat Shiite rebels is fixed.

[Blind groper]

That is like having a party on a public park, with your guests shitting on the lawn and dropping rubbish everywhere, and you saying you have no responsibility for clean up.

When the USA intervenes in the sovereign affairs of another country, it is doing something very wrong. If it leaves without cleaning up its mess, that is another wrong piled on top.

[Audley Strange]

Seth's views are just weird. The USA has little power to achieve positive outcomes, but has the power to cause great harm, wich it does with monotonous regularity.

Until 2006 or 2008, the U.S. achieved lots of positive outcomes for Americans. It's not our government's responsibility to achieve positive outcomes for other peoples.

Even though we do so all the time, to a greater extent than any other nation on earth, and have for a long, long time...even people whose nations brutally and wantonly attacked us and killed soldiers and citizens in a despicable, cowardly sneak attack. Just look at Japan now...thanks to the forgiving and generous nature of the United States.

Classic Seth.

There's the problem with Afghanistan, you should have nuked a couple of population centres.

[Seth]

That is like having a party on a public park, with your guests shitting on the lawn and dropping rubbish everywhere, and you saying you have no responsibility for clean up.

Except it ain't a party and we're not the host. When we get invited into a country by its leadership to clean up a mess they already had, they get to do the final cleaning when we're done. When we go into a country uninvited it's always to clean up a mess that has spilled outside that country's borders that it refuses to clean up. Our role there is to to play the role of Eliot Ness and the Untouchables, raid the joint, destroy their ability to make messes outside their borders, and leave them with the mess to clean up so they don't have time or treasure to be a public nuisance anymore as an object lesson in good international citizenship.

When the USA intervenes in the sovereign affairs of another country, it is doing something very wrong.

You're right. But the US doesn't intervene in the "sovereign affairs" of other countries (although we're constantly pestered to do so by other countries). It intervenes only when those affairs negatively affect people and nations outside that nation's sovereign boundaries in ways that make it necessary to take action to prevent the exportation of harm.

If it leaves without cleaning up its mess, that is another wrong piled on top.

War is a messy business. If you don't like the mess, don't provoke us to war. If we have to go to war with you, the mess is part of the punishment for provoking us. Remember that and don't annoy us again.

[Seth]

Seth's views are just weird. The USA has little power to achieve positive outcomes, but has the power to cause great harm, wich it does with monotonous regularity.

Until 2006 or 2008, the U.S. achieved lots of positive outcomes for Americans. It's not our government's responsibility to achieve positive outcomes for other peoples.

Even though we do so all the time, to a greater extent than any other nation on earth, and have for a long, long time...even people whose nations brutally and wantonly attacked us and killed soldiers and citizens in a despicable, cowardly sneak attack. Just look at Japan now...thanks to the forgiving and generous nature of the United States.

Classic Seth.

There's the problem with Afghanistan, you should have nuked a couple of population centres.

Afghanistan is something unique. It doesn't want to "recover," it wants to remain mired in tribalism and barbarism. There's massive mineral resources in Afghanistan that American (and most other country's) entrepreneurs would love to help Afghanistan exploit so that they would have the capital resources to modernize, but they are seemingly uninterested in modernization. I'm fine with that. I couldn't care less if they want to live in mud huts with goats and shit out the back window. I don't even care if they want to bully their women. Those are "sovereign" internal affairs that the Afghans must resolve for themselves.

But when Afghanistan becomes a haven for international terrorism I have no compunctions whatever about taking military action to ameliorate that threat.

They can rot in their feces-filled stone-age mountain villages for all I care, but they need to keep to themselves and not annoy the rest of the world by allowing terrorists to use Afghanistan as a base of operations. If they do so, then we will intervene in the interests of international security.

[mistermack]

There's massive mineral resources in Afghanistan that American (and most other country's) entrepreneurs would love to help Afghanistan exploit

[Blind groper]

Seth

The USA was not invited into Iraq, and nor was it cleaning up a mess. It was creating a worse mess. George Bush senior had the smarts to carry out a minimal action, to drive Saddam out of Kuwait, and then stop. George Bush junior was a nutter who could not stop there, and played the school year bully. He mired Iraq and the USA into a terrible war, which cost literally millions of lives. I would like to see Dubya hauled up before the international court on a charge of crimes against humanity.

The American intervention in Afghanistan was another crime. A response to Al Qaeda after 9/11 was justified, but not an attack on the Afghani people, who were innocent of that crime. As I pointed out, the USA and other nations have, in fact, launched an attack on Al Qaeda by means of undercover operatives, and surgical strikes against their leaders. This is slowly destroying Al Qaeda, and represents intelligent action. But the invasion of the country, Afghanistan, was utterly unjustified, and terribly, terribly damaging to the soldiers sent there, and to the Afghani people. Dubya should be arraigned for crimes against humanity for Afghanistan also.