What is an “Islamist”? Do you have any clue how bigoted this appears? As for communists, the 1950s called. They want their paranoia back.
Collateral damage is made-up jargon bullshit to obscure the reality that modern warfare is an indiscriminate killer. “Murder of noncombatants” would be a more accurate term.
And yes, it isn’t completely unavoidable, but it can be minimised to a greater extent than it currently is. But then, of course, someone is going to have to get their precious ass out from behind a remote joystick and into harm’s way.
Dost thou employ other archaic phrasing withal?
Then I guess any organization which kills civilians and accepts support from repressive governments ought to be condemned.
Regards,
Shodan
Firstly, a complete non sequitur - we’re discussing collateral damage, not deliberate targeting of civilians, which attacking a crowded square at rush hour definitely was, all the TRC platitudes not withstanding.
Secondly, tu quoque is not an argument, it’s empty rhetoric.
Thirdly, do you think I’m an ANC supporter or apologist for some reason?
I don’t (and didn’t) approve of their methods.
Fourthly, damn, man, but that second site is ugly and unreadable. Maybe you could highlight which particular repressive governments I should be berating the ANC for accepting help from?
It does make me laugh, though, that you think pointing out something the ANC has done is some kind of killer gotcha.
What are you, Montomery Burns? Do you also enjoy iced-cream and put tar-tar sauce on your fish sticks
Irrelevant. You don’t get to apply future knowledge into the past. You don’t guess when it comes to human life. Look at Iraq. Bush guessed wrong. Untold thousands of innocents killed for nothing.
Calling it a “military action” is simply facile. Timothy McVeigh did the same thing.
IIRC, didn’t Bill Clinton actually try to take out Bin Laden – and that’s the whole episode when he was accused of “wagging the dog?”
Yes, and Curtis has been told that. He has asserted that Clinton should have gone after Al-Qaeda for the Cole attack anyway.
And I’m not that a big fan of George W. Bush-I don’t consider him a great President, he could have done better in a whole lot of areas.
Would you call all bombing campaigns that?
Ah, but we have to deal with the Chinese to keep the economy afloat-we dealt with the South Africans because they were anti-Communist after all another African freedom fighter-Robert Mugabe has turned out be worse than the former white overlords.
Islamic fundamentalism, especially Wahabbism and Radical Shiaism from Iran.
Please, the original Curtis was more cavalier. 
- Curtis E. LeMay, commander of the B-29s that firebombed Japan.
It depends on the situation if bombings are justified or not, but we are going further away from the point, this USS Cole part of the debate came from you saying that Clinton should had attacked al-Qaeda by guessing. Besides being a very foolish tactic, there were still doubts about where to attack, and even during during the Dim son Bush administration:
http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing9/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-04-08.htm
AFAIK more evidence came up that the countries most likely involved in the Cole attack were Sudan and Yemen (still involved al-Qaeda guys but they had the support or came from those countries). But by that time we were already busy making an “adequate” response in Iraq…
Where al-Qaeda did not get any help, until we got rid of an old enemy of them.
And that was a grave mistake by the Bush administration. I’m not denying their faults.
Who knows? What if we hadn’t invaded Iraq but than developed WMDs?
Don’t avoid the subject, you were wrong in telling us that we should had gone for a guess or a gut feeling in the response to the USS Cole attack.
As for Iraq, the reality was and still remains that they had no or really inadequate WMDs.
Firstly, you don’t “have to” deal with anybody you don’t want to.
Secondly, that *still *doesn’t make it right.
They were anti-Communist because that was what got them support. Likewise, the ANC sided with the Communists because they were the only people willing to arm and fund resistance movements in Africa.
And there’s nothing *inherently *right about anti-Communism vs Communism. Not when the anti-Communists are racist murderers.
I don’t know about worse. He’s a pretty shitty ruler and a mad bastard, for sure, but…*he *wasn’t the one using poison and biological warfare on his enemies, like the White Rhodesians did. So no, he hasn’t turned out worse so far.
But it is a necessary evil.
Cite?
No evil is *ever *necessary. But this, least of all.
Rather say “we are too lazy or entitled or spoiled to do without the cheap stuff and other toys we’re used to, just to make a moral point”. That would be more accurate than bullshit like “Necessary evil”. It’s from exactly the same school of semantic mangling as “collateral damage” and “War on Terror”. A little bit of wordplay to distract you from the man behind the curtain.
And besides that,* even if* it were necessary, it would *still *be absolutely no argument against supporting the Apartheid government. It’d still be the Fallacy of Two Wrongs.
So far, your only argument that actually addresses the Reagan-era support of Pretoria is that they were some sort of bulwark against Communism. I’ve shown that’s bullshit, and it really is - but even so, if the *majority *of the actual people in South Africa *wanted *Communism, who was Reagan to say no?
Here, let me Google that for you…
Cite
Cite
Cite
Cite
Note who provided the Rhodesians with their weaponised anthrax and other BW agents - the South African military. You know, those same upstanding defenders of right and freedom Reagan was rooting for.:rolleyes:
To use the example of China-it’s economic growth is the best hope for China to become a democracy. It’s hundreds of millions of people would suffer without American investment-now China is booming.
I personally disagreed with Reagan on this issue but I also think most of the time you can understand why someone would take a certain position.
Hardly compares actually with what the Zimbabweans are going through right now-not as showy but far more deadly.
I see - you’re doing it for the Chinese, you paragons of virtue,you.:rolleyes:
Look, stick with, and finish, *one *argument at a time, please. You were arguing that it was a necessary evil for America. Finish that first (or just admit it’s a non-starter) and then we can go on to whether Chinese really would suffer without American investment, whether that will lead to democracy (it hasn’t yet) etc., etc.
Understand =/= condone. What you’ve been doing is making up excuses for Reagan’s defence of Pretoria. That goes way beyond mere understanding (I can understand why Reagan did as he did, too - he was a racist with a Communist bugbear) into whitewashing.
A lot of people in Zim are in danger because of drought and mismanagement. Mugabe is not *actually *responsible for the drought in Zimbabwe, the way White Rhodesians *were *responsible for anthrax in the Bush War. And as for mismanagement - yes, I’m sure that puts him up there with Mao in some minds, but it is still not the same as deliberately killing people. Morality (to me, anyway) is not just a results-based paradigm. Method and motivation counts a lot, too.
Booting White people off their land and mismanagement of government merely to enrich yourselves is not, morally, in the same league as poisoning wells and starting plagues in defence of a racist government system. When Mugabe starts regularly rounding up opponents for execution, rather than beatings and prison, you can declare equivalence.
If China hadn’t been opened up to the United States and the rest of the West it’s people would have stuck in '60s and '70s agarian socialism rather than the industrializing and commercial China we see today.
The South African Apathareid government was not a threat to anyone outside and simply could not survive long-term while the Communists certainly were a threat.
The MDC’s supporters, white farmers, and their black workers have constantly been attacked and killed.
Prove it. I contend China would likely have industrialized anyway - all it took was Mao and crew to peg off, really.
But once again, this is still a Fallacious Argument.
Tell that to Namibia, Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique - hell, since the mad fuckers developed nukes and probably could have developed missiles too, tell that to the entire world.
Not that that has anything to do with whether what they did was morally right, at all. Stop evading issues.
In the same numbers as in the Bush War? Cite?
And ffs, learn how to spell Apartheid, already.