Debatable. Some historians now believe, based on his surviving correspondence, that Kaiser Wilhelm wanted war and was determined to find a pretext for it sooner or later. He was convinced it would be a short, successful affair like every war Germany had fought since unification, and would elevate Germany, already the greatest continental power in Europe, to world-power status to rival Britain.
Kaiser Wilhelm was a fool, but did he have the power to make his wishes manifest on his own ticket? Dubious, or else why did the war not start sooner? Why did it depend on “some damn fool thing in the Balkans?”
Be that as it may, a fascinating debate theme, but rather tangential to the matter at hand.
Even dictators usually find a pretext for war. Saddam Hussein’s rationale for invading Kuwait was that the Kuwaitis were stealing Iraqi oil using slant drilling (and the specious though flimsy suggestion that Kuwait was part of Iraq’s historical sphere of influence since it was briefly administered from Basra during Ottoman rule).
And his pretext for invading Iran was to liberate the Arabs of al-Ahwaz, or Khuzestan, from Persian rule.
A trick that has not escaped the notice of the Bush Admin – see the OP.
What in that biography should lead me to believe that he is a reputable, impartial journalist who can be relied upon to report facts, not his political views? I don’t know this guy from Adam, but I have a hard time considering someone a credible source when so many of his publications are predicated upon his political views.
Now, he could be a perfectly honest person who is calling things as he sees them, but I have a difficult time believing that he is the one and only journalist who is capable of uncovering a very important story about Bush reversing a 30-year old ban on assassinations. And yet, no other news source is reporting this story at all.
And I really wish we could spend two seconds thinking about Tuchman’s real arguments in The Guns of August before spouting off about how today’s situation could be like that of pre-WW1. You have to be completely oblivious to current events to arbitrarily take a lesson from history, fail to analyze it in any meaningful way, ham-handedly apply it to today’s circumstances, and warn about the dangers of our ways.
You might as well say that total thermonuclear nuclear war is almost upon us because you’ve recently read Graham Allison’s “The Essence of Decision,” which shows that a nuclear holocaust could happen despite people not wanting it to.
The absence, even in the sections devoted to controversy, of any indication that he has ever been caught out in a lie, or deceived by one.
Assasination nonesense aside, you seem quite upset at the idea of expanding covert intelligence operations against Iran. Tell me, BrainGlutton, what exactly is it that you think the CIA does?
You don’t think his stance that anthropomorphic climate change is a myth doesn’t count as being deceived by a lie?
“Intelligence operations” are for gathering information. This stuff is more in the nature of black ops.
You mean anthropogenic climate change, and while I incline to the view that it is real, I also acknowledge that it is less clearly settled than, say, the evolution-creation controversy.
Er… no… I mean that as the earth gets hotter, it starts to look like us… er… aw, fuck it. :smack:
Tom Wolfe says that Cockburn supported the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and that Cockburn believed that “Afghanistan deserved to be raped.” Link. Is that the kind of stuff you expect from a clear-eyed journalist?
Paging Dr. Context… Dr. Context to the thread, please.
I don’t know about that, but I do know the Soviets never “invaded” Afghanistan, no more than they ever invaded Cuba. They were invited in by, and to defend, a purely homegrown Communist government. At least, it started out that way.
Do the Algiers Accords, which brought about the end of the hostage crisis, enter into this at some point?
Doesn’t the President have a legal obligation to uphold agreements entered into by his predecessors?
There’s a nice hanging curve ball; anybody want to take a swing at it?
Under international law, yes. It isn’t the rest of the world’s problem if your country’s previous government signed an accord binding you to some onerous duty. International agreements are between nation-states (or NGOs, or whatever), not between specific governments; you can’t unsign a treaty.
Under this President, however, international law has become a polite fiction - hence our withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the '98 Rome Statute which established the ICC.
Best I can find without going to the library is this: "“an unspeakable country filled with unspeakable people, sheepshaggers and smugglers, who have furnished . . . some of the worst arts and crafts ever to penetrate the Occidental world. . . If ever a country deserved rape, it’s Afghanistan. Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets.”
Link.
What the hell are you saying? That Cockburn was right to support the Soviet invasion…er, intervention in Afghanistan?
During my graduate studies in history, I read declassified transcripts of Politburo debates on whether to send troops into Afghanistan. The idea that Soviet leaders didn’t view their actions as anything but a takeover of a weak country on its borders (that they viewed as a threat to the USSR) is pure fucking horseshit.
I don’t know about you but that sounds like it was written with tongue pretty firmly in cheek.
ETA: yeah, the Soviets were very definitely in Afghanistan for one reason only - one step closer to occupying Pakistan, and therefore one step closer to a warm-water port.
Not this president:
No. (Nor is it entirely clear at this point that he was actually doing so, see Really Not All That Bright’s post above.)
Of course it was all that, but it was never an invasion – they were, after all, invited by the government. And how could they possibly have viewed Afghanistan as a threat to the USSR? I presume you mean, should the Communist government there fall; but, still. I always assumed their intervention was predicated on the Brezhnev Doctrine.