Seeing how the US invaded Iraq, has used torture, is engaged in mass espionage, etc. (while at the same time refuses to prosecute financial crimes that collapsed the economy) all of which is illegal domestically and internationally why does Obama think he has credibility about using the fact that someone else breaks the law? This is stupid and shows a total lack of self awareness. The US government has no credibility to claim to care about upholding the law foreign or domestic.
I’m not sure what to do about the Ukraine situation. I’d rather Obama say nothing than do what he did in Syria where he drew a line he had no intention of holding up.
Preach it. I loved the leaked phone call where the ambassador to Ukraine and the state department official were trying to decide who should be the next president after all the work the US has done trying to destabilize the last/current administration of Ukraine. I wonder how we would react if Russia pulled shit like this with one of our neighbors, Mexico maybe. Fucking shameful and horribly short sighted.
The US didn’t intend to make Iraq the 51st State and every last country is engaged in espionage against everyone else. The US simply has more resources poured into it (and everything else).
I’ll give you the torture, but for some reason I shouldn’t think Putin is going to point *that *one out, since they did and do it and don’t even bother rebranding it as “enhanced interrogation”. Putin has his detractors *murdered or imprisoned *fer chrissakes. The United States might not be a paragon of virtue and never ever were, but they still can claim a moral high ground over Putin’s Russia.
No nation on Earth cares about upholding the law unilaterally. Everybody cares about the law, but, y’know, selectively.
Is Obama a hypocrite on this ? Well, sort of - after all, his administration didn’t invade Iraq. His administration got out of Iraq. He still carries the sins of his predecessors, but there’s a death tax on those. And of course, every nation, every political figurehead is a hypocrite to some extent. Even moreso if you start considering historical facts.
Ultimately however, it doesn’t really matter. Regardless of what the US did or didn’t do, Putin’s really an ass and he really is breaking international law and waging aggressive warfare with territorial conquest as his endgame goal. Which sort of sets a bad example if left alone.
As if that was at all relevant even if the US had an impeachable record regarding the moral high ground of occupations against international law. The only thing that matters is what force or threat of it can reasonably be applied.
Wesley Clark, having read your posts for years, I find your position here dishonest.
In response Mr Brenton said in a BBC radio interview: ‘If indeed this is a Russian invasion of Crimea and if we do conclude the [Budapest] Memorandum is legally binding then it’s very difficult to avoid the conclusion that we’re going to go to war with Russia’.
Mr. Brenton is quite stupid if he believes the United Kingdom is going to commit itself to a war with a nuclear power, a war for which it is completely unprepared and has no forces appropriately deployed for and which, if it did fight, would stand an excellent chance of becoming a nuclear war that would annihilate Western civilization.
Russia may be violating the Budapest agreement but this doesn’t obligate the UK to start a goddamn nuclear war.
Well, hey, the United States hasn’t done anything to violate the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine or violate its existing borders. We aren’t the ones sending troops into Crimea.
The United States, along with the UK and Russia, also pledges in that memorandum to “to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine” and “to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind”. Well, again, we aren’t using force or threatening to use force against Ukraine, or subjecting Ukraine to any sort of economic coercion. Russia is not living up to its obligations under the memorandum, but the memorandum doesn’t say the U.S. and U.K. will respond militarily if someone else threatens the territorial integrity of Ukraine, just that they promise not to do any of that.
The memorandum does say that all three powers will “seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used”–emphasis added–so if Putin actually nukes Ukraine, a red line would have been crossed, no doubt about that.
Contrast that with a treaty which establishes an actual alliance between the United States and other countries, the North Atlantic Treaty, of which Article 5 states:
That is an alliance. The United States has never given that sort of assurance to Ukraine.
In Against All Enemies Richard Clarke tells an anecdote about Bill Clinton and his Chiefs when they are deliberating about strike options on terrorist camps in the Sudan. In walks Al Gore and Bill asks him, ‘we’re discussing whether to hit bases in the Sudan with special forces, the military says it’s against international law, what do you think?’ and Al Gore goes, “Of course it’s against international Law, that’s why it’s a black op.”
But it was a *sternly worded *statement where Obama made it clear that he was or wasn’t going to do something.
I understand that Obama may not attend the G8 meeting because of this. That is some bold shit going down. It is just the sort of leadership that the world needs at this time.
Of course, Ukrainians needed that assurance in 1994, in exchange for giving up the nuclear weapons, that US will not invade them. THAT’s what that memorandum means.
I’m sure you think you’re making a point but you’re not.
Are you under the impression that the US circa WWII didn’t also engage in violations of human rights?
That certainly didn’t mean we weren’t right to condemn either the Nazis or Tojo’s Japan.
I’ve never understood this idiotic idea that America can’t condemn others because they, like all comparable countries break the law or the US has done so in the past.