1. "Chemical Weapons" means the following, together or separately:
(a) Toxic chemicals and their precursors, except where intended for purposes not prohibited under this Convention, as long as the types and quantities are consistent with such purposes;
(b) Munitions and devices, specifically designed to cause death or other harm through the toxic properties of those toxic chemicals specified in subparagraph (a), which would be released as a result of the employment of such munitions and devices;
(c) Any equipment specifically designed for use directly in connection with the employment of munitions and devices specified in subparagraph (b).
Neither napalm, nor DU, nor phosphorus are chemical weapons. Are you under the impression that any of these weapons kill "through the toxic properties of those toxic chemicals?" Why, I wonder, do helicopters fire DU shells at tanks? To poison people?
Could we please make some minimal effort to acquaint ourselves with what the term "chemical weapons" refers to?
John Kerry's "hyperbolic rhetoric" (apparently, we're no longer allowed to say that chemical warfare is bad, Mr. Morality informs us) has a great deal more to do with what is happening now than the actions of non-John Kerry figures a quarter century ago.
Should Bashar Assad get away with gassing people? Yes, because the Reagan administration blah blah blah. Oh, OK, now I understand why Bashar Assad should be allowed to gas people.
Or did your point, as usual, have nothing to do with the matter at hand, and function solely, again as usual, as nothing but a chance to chant "USA! USA!" backwards?
I'm quite aware that the effort is to smear the entirety of the United States, in order to avoid discussing the Obama administration, John Kerry, and the actual situation and actors we're dealing with.
It's akin to objecting to the prosecution of George Zimmerman on the grounds that Florida law enforcement has done racist things.
Kerry talks in behalf of US policies which is equal to US policies under Regan and the others.
Kerry speaks for the Reagan administration.
I remember, during the runup to the Iraq War, rolling my eyes at people who brought up the Anfal campaign as a reason for their opinion about the war - as if nothing had changed since then.
My eyes continue to roll.
Random Bad Stuff 'Bout America is not a legitimate reason to allow chemical warfare to return as a feature of modern war and global security. There has to be something beneath rooting for or against teams here.
Did the USA build 10 million chem weapons with no intention of ever using them ?
Yes, just as we built thousands of nuclear ICBMs with no intention of ever using them. Deterrence, and deterrence in kind, are concepts that most good international relations texts delve into.
Correction, JT: Ronald Reagan's administration had no problem helping Saddam use chemical weapons.
Ronald Reagan, in short, sucked. I strongly suggest we do very much the opposite of Ronald Reagan.
Anyway, it's good to see that you have your priorities straight: America must learn its lesson about hypocrisy, and the resurgence of chemical warfare as a feature of the modern world is just going to be the price that has to be paid.
Sorry, Uigher Province 2037: JT McPhee had a point to make about America.
Not only would shelling destroy evidence, but it would also contaminate the site.
It's now full of bits from Syrian government artillery and rockets. Which ones are from yesterday, and which ones are from last Wednesday?
This is all moot, however. The UN team's mandate doesn't include determining who launched the attack, only whether one occurred and what chemical was used.
The MSF-affiliated doctors who treated the victims reported being contaminated by contact with the victims.
400 people in Egypt were not killed in a chemical warfare attack. If you object to treating chemical and biological warfare as especially heinous and dangerous, take it up with the Geneva Protocols. It's funny how no one had a problem with the status of chemical warfare until it became necessary in order to be on the other side of the United States.
I notice that Secretary Kerry didn't say anything about the rebels. A series of punitive strikes to deter future chemical warfare attacks may provide some benefit to them, but it is not the same thing as joining up with the rebellion.
The return of chemical warfare is horror that the entire world should abhor. It cannot be allowed to happen. The 90-year-old norm must be upheld.
The next monster that thinks about launching a chemical attacks needs to look at the example of Bashar al-Assad and think twice. Otherwise, get ready for a world with a lot more gas attacks.
The continuing credibility of the 90-year-old taboo on using chemical weapons in warfare.
The one that saved many thousands of American, British, and Russian lives during World War II.
It's become fashionable in certain quarters to assume that opposition to chemical warfare must only be a pretext, but there are very good reasons to believe that the West is honest-to-God opposed to chemical weapons returning as an instrument of war.
A NATO air campaign would probably not be effective at winning the Syrian Civil War. It probably wouldn't be effective at stopping the bloodshed.
Whether it would be effective at punishing Assad's government for using chemical weapons, and providing a significant deterrent effect for future governments that might consider using them, is another matter.
Well, JT, it started out with the opponents talking about law - you can go back and look at Professor Cole's earlier posts - to which the "apologists" wrote replies, but you're right: after a certain point, the opponents dropped the subject of legality entirely, and began treating the entire topic as some sort of dirty trick.
The Nusra Front has been attacking Kurds and trying to establish a zone of control in the north of Syria. They don't seem to have been able to take over the rebellion as a whole, or establish their own areas in the Syrian National Council areas.
That was a great piece then, and it's a great piece now.
Except for this addition: Obama seems to be attempting to find a face-saving way of getting a little involved but not too much, by sending light weaponry (which of course is not what the rebels need). [and now by a few strategic strikes from the air.]
Obama doesn't "seem to be attempting" a few strategic strikes from the air. He seems no more enthusiastic about bombing Syria now than he did last June, or this past January.
Atta boys to the US, UK, and Kuwait. Shame on the rest of the world, especially Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia, and Iran, which have found money for the war but not for the refugees.
You're smooshing together two dramatically different issues here. This is a case about whether the police can look at your cell phone after you've been arrested with it on your person, the same way they can search your pockets, your wallet, or your backpack. In fact, it has long been the law that they can. What is happening now is a challenge to the existing case law, based on the argument that the amount of information on a smart phone is greater than just the calling records on a phone from ten years ago.
I haven't made up my mind about how the changing facts should, or should not, result in changes to the longstanding constitutional doctrine that the police can search your personal effects after you've been arrested.
I have made up my mind, though, that we're not going to have an intelligent discussion about the issue here if people write about it in a misleading way.
<i?Obama’s refusal to call it a coup infuriated Morsi supporters. “What is a coup?” Wael Haddara, a senior adviser to Morsi, told the New York Times. “We’re going to get into some really Orwellian stuff here.”
The U.S. has also funded programs to promote democracy and good government in Egypt — again with few results. It has sent about $24 million a year between 1999 and 2009 to a variety of NGOs in the country. According to a 2009 inspector general’s audit, the efforts didn’t add much due to “a lack of support” from the Egyptian government, which “suspended the activities of many U.S. NGOs because Egyptian officials thought these organizations were too aggressive.”
Too bad the study cut off in 2009. Many of the leaders of the 2011 protests had received funding from those programs.
As a German, you don't get planes flown into your office towers if the United States stays in bed with those "reliable partners."
Where do terrorists come from? Contrary to popular theory, they do not come from places that the United States has bombed - Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon. Quite the opposite, they come from allied countries, against which the United States has never made war, run by oppressive, undemocratic regimes with close ties to the United States - Saudi Arabia (bin Laden), Egypt (Zawahiri), Kuwait (Khalid Sheik Mohammed), the UAE (the 9/11 hijackers who weren't Saudi or Egyptian), Nigeria (the underpants bomber), etc. The correlation is very strong.
In the 21st century, the geopolitical arguments for staying on the good side of the Egyptian generals and the House of Saud (and there are such arguments, and they are valid) just aren't as important as the security threat posed when stateless terrorist organizations turn their eyes to us because of our support for the governments they hate.
The UCMJ does recognize parole. The best estimates are that Manning will be paroled in less than 10 years. Wikileaks says it could be less than four and a half.
It’s relevant to note that Manning did exactly as international law dictates; report war crimes and don’t follow illegal orders.
Under international law he is obligated to do as he did.
Except he released a great deal more than evidence of war crimes. International law does not obligate an Army private to release hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables he never read, and which contain no evidence of wrongdoing.
It's an interesting counterfactual to think about what would have happened if Manning had limited himself to whistle blowing.
Bill, there have always been two parts to the "rubber stamp" argument:
1) The judges on the FISC are obedient lapdogs who do whatever the intelligence community tells them to do.
2) The structure of how the FISA works is so tilted towards the intelligence agencies that the FISC cannot provide an appropriate level of oversight.
The released decision, and the desire of the court to release it, certainly do undermine point 1. Those judges sound pretty feisty and arms-length to me!
But it seems to only bolster point 2, with the judges complaining about their dependence upon the applicants' information.
Lesson to Mr. Obama: don’t bluff and don’t set red lines unless you’re really committted to reacting if they are crossed.
According to contemporaneous reporting, President Obama did not intend to use the term, or push the idea, of a "red line" when he began that press availability, and used it when speaking without notes. Once it was out there, there was no taking it back.
This is similar to Franklin Roosevelt's use of the the term "unconditional surrender" in a speech during World War II. That was not US policy, and there was no discussion of making it US policy. It sounded good, so he put it in a speech, and his military aides were horrified that he'd inadvertently committed the US to that policy.
Chemical weapons are terror weapons. They thus have a great strategic value: demoralizing and terrorizing the enemy.
One need only look at how much more attention this episode is getting, compared to larger massacres conducted with firearms and explosives, to see the greater psychological impact of a chemical weapons attack.
And has Obama cut off military and Wonder Bread aid to the Egyptian Generalate, or not?
The position that is about as clear as their position on whether a coup occurred. They seem to have fired a warning shot so far, and are waiting to see the response.
And in case you haven't noticed, you invoke me in virtually every comment you write - I've never understood that - while I don't believe I've ever written a comment about you. By all means, let us stick to the facts, and leave aside the personal sniping that one of us seems to value so highly.
Actually, it is a violation of international law to blast, bomb, or strafe civilians in a war.
The actual distinction here is that it is lawful to blast, bomb, and strafe combatants in a conflict, but not to use poison gas against combatants in a conflict.
Where it gets weird is this: it is equally unlawful to use chemical irritants like pepper spray or tear gas against combatants in a conflict, while it is lawful to use them against civilians for law enforcement.
If the rebels used chemical weapons, it wouldn't take the US jumping in to deal with them. It would merely require doing nothing, and letting Assad do it.
I find it hard to believe that the Syrian Regime however brutal is so stupid as to use chemical weapons on the eve of a UN investigation into the use of such weapons.
True. By the same lights, I find it hard to believe that the rebels would fake a big chemical weapons attack on the eve of a UN investigation.
But to both points, there is the rejoinder that sometimes people do stupid things.
If a chemical attack happened - and that's a big if - then the UN needs to respond.
If Russia and China were to block the UN from responding to an actual use of chemical weapons, that would be different, but the US cannot go rushing in like Superman.
Say, JT, why do you think that the United States is taking actions - which totally aren't real or good enough - against the military government that it never took against the Morsi government?
Because they were out to get Morsi and back the military all along, amirite?
Bill and I have political viewpoints that have very little in common, JT. You just can't tell from the eccentric bubble in which you ensconce yourself.
It's always the most extreme people who think the world can be meaningfully divided into "people like me" and "the other 99.5%, which is all the same."
I've always thought the "War is a Racket" argument ignored important factors like ideology, culture, and even (oh yeah) legitimate security concerns that have always been part of why polities engage in armed conflict.
Is war a racket for al Qaeda? Or do they do it because they believe in the cause?
How about the British and French declaring war against Nazi Germany in September 1939? Was that a "racket?"
And what are we to make of socialist revolutions? Or the people who went to Spain to fight on the loyalist side? "War is a racket, except when it's carried out by noble proletarians led by dashing intellectuals who happen to remind me of myself!"
I don't think "a lower form of argument" is a fair way to characterize Dan B.'s point, which I responded to.
Frankly, I think it's a more honest and substantive point than most that have been addressed to me on this thread, even if I don't find it convincing.
I don't think you should be jumping in and telling me what Dan B.'s argument is and is not, and I certainly don't think your characterization is at all correct in this case. That he sets up the argument as a choice between cameras providing information vs. cameras intimidating people strongly suggests that the words you are putting in his mouth do not belong there.
it is well established that private letters, phone calls, and mail — and so also email, etc. — have a strong expectation of privacy.
Not quite right. The contents of letters, phone calls, and mail have a strong expectation of privacy. The outside of the envelope, the billing data on the phone call, and the email equivalent do not. This, too, has been extensively litigated.
When you give something to other people so they can look at it and gain certain information from it - the postal service looking at the address, the phone company routing your call - you do not have an expectation of privacy.
You have evidence that Mr. Miranda was in “possession of highly classified intelligence that was unlawfully passed on by Snowden” that you are withholding from the UK investigators who detained and questioned him for nine hours and confiscated his equipment missed and failed to arrest him for?
Yes, I do. I have the confession of his co-conspirator, Glenn Greenwald, in which he states that Miranda was carrying stolen documents, from the trove of documents Snowden stole.
The question of why the Brits let him go is as irrelevant as the question of why Dick Cheney has been charged. Maybe it was politics - they were contacted by the Brazilian embassy. Maybe it was an intelligence operation - they want to watch his movements and see who he leads them to. Maybe they put a GPS becaon on him. (I strongly suggest you all give serious consideration to pulling out your fillings, because you just never know.) Maybe it is the muddy legal standing of someone who is kinda sorta a journalist in possession of leaked materials.
None of this matters a whit. We know, beyond any plausible shadow of a doubt, that Miranda was carrying stolen documents, a subset of the cache of stolen documents Snowden took. We do not need to look at the British government's actions to determine whether he had stolen documents. His coconspirator - who is, inexplicably, considered a reliable source among the people feigning ignorance on this - has confessed.
We're done here. Come up with another pretext. You don't have a legal to stand on with this performance.
What about if the NSA stole the documents from us in the first place?
You're using (I hope) the word "stole" in a figurative sense. Swiping data that you don't have the right to take is literal theft.
But to play along: you are legally liable for theft even if the item you stole had been previously stolen. Imagine a car thief who gets car-jacked. The car jackers could not cite the car's status as stolen goods as a defense.
So, as for this theory that the search of Miranda means journalists - not "journalists carrying stolen classified documents across international borders," but simply "journalists," unmodified - are in danger: I look forward to seeing all of the stories of journalists who aren't engaged in international criminal conspiracies being detained. If that were to happen, it sure would prove the point.
But...but...what if it doesn't? What if this was a particular case in which a journalist ('s husband) was stopped because he was carrying stolen classified documents? Wouldn't that rather step on a much-beloved narrative?
Otherwise said documents would have been discovered and Miranda promptly arrested. Didn’t happen.
Answered, above.
To compare this to the actions of journalist Greenwald is to turn reality on its head. The WMD scam would be more accurately compared to the subject of Greenwald’s reporting.
Wow. You really have no basis for ascertaining truth beyond political convenience, do you?
If, indeed, Miranda was carrying “stolen” documents, then it was the UK’s responsibility to arrest him, charge him, and detain him for trial — or for extradition to the victim nation. The mere fact that UK did not so proceed is enough to explode your point
This isn't actually true. Governments decline to press charges against foreign nationals whose embassies get involved all the time.
Anyway, we don't have to judge whether the documents that Greenwald acknowledges his husband was carrying were stolen by making some deduction from the British police behavior. We know, for a certainty, that they were documents Stolen by Snowden. Period, we're done here. The Snowden documents were stolen. End of story.
In awarding Miranda his liberty after nine hours, the UK had no right to confiscate any of his possessions
This is false as well. From plants to pocketknives, governments confiscate things that violate the law all the time at borders and airports without pressing criminal charges.
That's a different question. The question is, does the collection of mainly useless information render the system useless?
Let's go back to the Boston Marathon bombing. All of the footage collected by the security cameras covering the street near the finish line was completely useless...except for those few minutes of footage that captured the Tsarnaev brothers setting down the bags.
No, Dan B, stores do not have cameras (which are frequently hidden, which would seem to reduce their intimidation factor) for intimidation. They have them so they can go back over the footage after something is stolen to see who did it.
Which brings us back to the NSA. If they were collecting data for the purpose of intimidation, why would they try to keep it secret? Does that mean Greenwald and Snowden, by publicizing it and making people afraid, are working for the NSA?
99.9% of what is captured on store security cameras is equally meaningless garbage. Person shopping, person shopping, person shopping, person scratching himself while shopping, person shopping....
So, does that render the use of security cameras pointless?
Mr. Miranda was in Berlin to deliver documents related to Mr. Greenwald’s investigation into government surveillance to Ms. Poitras, Mr. Greenwald said. Ms. Poitras, in turn, gave Mr. Miranda different documents to pass to Mr. Greenwald. Those documents, which were stored on encrypted thumb drives, were confiscated by airport security, Mr. Greenwald said. All of the documents came from the trove of materials provided to the two journalists by Mr. Snowden.
It's ok, now, Professor. Glenn Greenwald himself has given you permission to acknowledge that the "innocent person" who was "falsely detained" was, in fact, stopped for carrying stolen, classified documents which were found on the searched equipment.
I cannot for the life of me understand why people continue to take Glenn Greenwald's self-serving claims at face value. Something I learned from Bush's WMD scam: when you catch the used car salesman in his second or third lie, you walk away.
Please note that it consists of a State Department cable calling the coup a coup, followed by some discussion about whether the coup was a military coup or some other kind of coup.
There is never, at any point, the slightest evidence provided to suggest the State Department did not immediately call the coup a coup - which is why we see this little soft-shoe routine.
Until the June 28 coup d'etat (June coup), the country was a constitutional, multiparty democracy with a population of approximately eight million. The coup was preceded by months of political tension between ..Although the coup was bloodless, subsequent related events resulted in the loss of life as well as limitations by the de facto regime on freedom of movement, association, expression, and assembly....While civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces prior to the June coup
because this is an electoral process that began way before the military coup took place. This is an election that began in November of 2008. When the primaries took place, the vice president resigned from office and actually became a candidate. That was Mr. Santos.
So the coup d’état takes place while this electoral process, in fact, was coming to a conclusion.
Efforts by the Government of Honduras (GOH) in conjunction with U.S. law enforcement agencies directly addressed the air, land and sea drug transshipment of cocaine through the country during the first six months of 2009. Prior to the coup d’état that took place on June 28, 2009, increased and improved cooperation between U.S agencies and Honduran police and military units led to a significant increase in cocaine seizures. Since the coup, the de facto regime’s deployment of security forces to the capital to maintain order and the suspension of U.S. assistance diminished the ability of Honduran police and military to fight narcotics trafficking. Honduras is a party to the 1988 UN Drug Convention.
Would you like more? There are many, many, many more to be found by going to http://www.state.gov and typing the words "honduras coup" into the search bar.
I don't like McCain and Graham, either, but it is very common for the President to send members of the opposition party to treat with foreign governments that are closer, ideologically, to the opposition than to the President's own party. For instance, George W. Bush sent Jesse Jackson to Libya to treat with Gadhaffi when they were pursuing a warming of relations. Bill Clinton sent him to Serbia to try to talk down Slobodan Milosevic - and act which, if nothing else, gave the world this awesome visual: http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/odd-moments-in-history/?_r=0
The grain of truth is that the US called it a coup, but not a military coup. The State Department shut off military aid, but not humanitarian aid, like the anti-AIDS funding, until the elections were held.
There are certainly legitimate arguments to made about the USA's handling of that crisis, but there have been some truly weird stretches made to try to portray what happened as 1956 all over again.
The frustrating part is that the effort to pin the tail on the Clinton State Department came largely at the expense of highlighting the very real evidence of involvement by out-of-power, Republican baddies like Otto Reich.
Obama called the Honduras coup a coup the days after it happened.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, let me first of all speak about the coup in Honduras, because this was a topic of conversation between myself and President Uribe.
All of us have great concerns about what's taken place there. President Zelaya was democratically elected. He had not yet completed his term. We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the President of Honduras, the democratically elected President there. In that we have joined all the countries in the region, including Colombia and the Organization of American States.
Actually, the law puts the decision to "find" that a military coup occurred in the President's hands, and doesn't establish any binding rules for how to do so. It's certainly weaselly for him to remain agnostic on the question, but not illegal.
Anyway, where were these appeals in February 2011, when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces removed the Egyptian head of state and replaced him with Field Marshall Tantawi? Big protests against the President, the military acts to remove him to thunderous applause in the streets - but I don't recall anyone making this demand back then.
If the US cuts off aid - and I think we should - it should be a political decision in response to the crackdown.
If you don't understand that the West has been scrambling around, responding to events they didn't foresee, and trying to figure out what to do - if you think it has all been one well-choreographed performance - you just aren't paying attention.
A constitution isn't the same thing as an ordinary bill. It's perfectly ok for one side to win and the other side lose in a debate over what the top tax rate should be, or how much to spend on tanks.
But a constitution needs to be a consensus documents that all parties buy into.
Your "point exactly" seems to have changed quite a bit.
Fine, fine, the Obama administration being harder on the Sisi government than the Morsi government proves exactly the same point as the Obama administration (allegedly) favoring the Sisi government and helping to remove the MB government.
As always, all roads lead exactly where you want them to.
And your statement of some “undeniable fact” to the effect that The Empire is “being much harder on, not more supportive of, the Sisi government than the Morsi government” ain’t on the evidence, either undeniable or fact.
Actually, I've cited the evidence and provided the links. I'm afraid your "Nuh-uh, you gotta be wrong, cuz narrative" pushback seems little thin.
If I was citing the actions of the Obama administration against the generals' regime to argue "The US sure is giving hell to the Egyptian military regime," your rebuttal would be valid.
But I'm not. I'm citing those actions in response to claims that the US government is backing the military regime over the Muslim Brotherhood government.
Whether you think Obama's response is strong enough or not, the undeniable fact is that they are being much harder on, not more supportive of, the Sisi government than the Morsi government.
So, kindly lay out for me the actions the U.S. government took in opposition to the Morsi government.
You talk about the aid continuing to the Egyptian government; you do know that the same aid continued, wholly unimpeded, throughout the Morsi period, right?
You seem to blame the MB disproportionately and use language like Morsi pushed through a constitution with only 30% participation. Come on sir, what kind of participation and victory margins have we had in the greatest democracy (USA).
The low voter turnout for the constitutional referendum was not, like low American voter turnout, a phenomenon of disinterest that crossed party lines. The opposition (stupidly, in my opinion) boycotted the vote because of corruption and cheating. That is not the same thing at all.
The blame lies very squarely in the lap of the military and its supporters(incl.US government) who never wanted a popular democracy in Egypt
Uh, the Egyptian military's "supporters" in the Obama administration didn't lift a finger to save Mubarak (even working to undermine him), worked closely with Morsi in the early months (such as on the Gaze cease fire), and have taken actions (such as delaying the shipment of military equipment and canceling joint military exercises) against the Sisi regime that they never took against Morsi.
You mean, the government that they worked with to negotiate a cease-fire in Gaza?
The government that they never made any move to distance themselves from, unlike the delay of the F-16 shipment and the cancellation of the joint military exercises?
More recently, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry expressed strong approval of the Egyptian military’s removal of former President Mohamed Morsi in a statement he made to Pakistan’s Geo News on August 2. Kerry said the military was “restoring democracy” when it ousted Morsi, which he said was at the request of “millions and millions of people.”</i?
A statement that the notoriously poor-spoken Kerry immediately walked back, unlike every one of the other examples you gave.
Oh, and where does the American threats over military aid made towards the generals, which were never made towards the Morsi government, fit into all of this?
Apparently, that has much less to do with American policy towards Egypt than Bradley Manning.
Iran is always two years away from having a nuclear weapon, and we're always six months away from bombing them. Remember when Obama was going to give the Israeli permission to fly over Iraq just before we left?
Whether he's "to the right" of Ahmedinejad on domestic issues is irrelevant to your theory. The issue here is foreign relations in general, and relations with America in particular.
The idea that American actions are making a peaceful resolution to the situation less likely by inflaming the Iranian public against collaboration just took a rather significant body blow.
I don't see the sanctions as having produced the Rouhani victory, either. I see that NOT precluding it, as some would predict they would.
Iran just completely failed to elect a hardline, anti-American, anti-negotiations candidate, to the surprise and consternation of some who thought they would and should.
If "The main effect of US sanctions is to strengthen the state against potential challengers," then why did Iranians just elect a reformer who wants to cut a deal?
If the doctor's "diagnosis" was that I was a charade and a fraud, yes I'd take that as personal criticism. You wouldn't?
But here's the thing: I didn't write anything about the merits of the anti-peace talks points. I asked a different question, one about prescription, not diagnosis.
The comments here are scarcely “anti-peace-talk,” but extra points to you for artfully dishonest framing.
Ahem:
More evidence the current “peace talks” are a charade.
‘Negotiations’ meaning, “We’re going to have to ask you to go ahead and be bend over, Israel is going to annex and assimilate you, like it or not”?
This is how it works. Israel does what it wants. All the parties at the negotiations are just playing along.
No, JT, everyone is absolutely *$%&ing giddy about the talks. Does anything ever happen inside your skull besides "That guy I hate on the internet must be wrong?"
© 2024 All Rights Reserved
We'll see, when they start making definitive statements.
I submit that when you hear hoof beats you should think horses, not unicorns.
Gee, who could have possibly fired chemical shells at the Syrian rebels?
Not that nice Bashar Assad. That doesn't make any sense.
Whoops, blockquote fail. That last, snarky part is me.
From the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993:
John Kerry's "hyperbolic rhetoric" (apparently, we're no longer allowed to say that chemical warfare is bad, Mr. Morality informs us) has a great deal more to do with what is happening now than the actions of non-John Kerry figures a quarter century ago.
Should Bashar Assad get away with gassing people? Yes, because the Reagan administration blah blah blah. Oh, OK, now I understand why Bashar Assad should be allowed to gas people.
Or did your point, as usual, have nothing to do with the matter at hand, and function solely, again as usual, as nothing but a chance to chant "USA! USA!" backwards?
Brian,
I'm quite aware that the effort is to smear the entirety of the United States, in order to avoid discussing the Obama administration, John Kerry, and the actual situation and actors we're dealing with.
It's akin to objecting to the prosecution of George Zimmerman on the grounds that Florida law enforcement has done racist things.
Kerry talks in behalf of US policies which is equal to US policies under Regan and the others.
Kerry speaks for the Reagan administration.
I remember, during the runup to the Iraq War, rolling my eyes at people who brought up the Anfal campaign as a reason for their opinion about the war - as if nothing had changed since then.
My eyes continue to roll.
Random Bad Stuff 'Bout America is not a legitimate reason to allow chemical warfare to return as a feature of modern war and global security. There has to be something beneath rooting for or against teams here.
Did the USA build 10 million chem weapons with no intention of ever using them ?
Yes, just as we built thousands of nuclear ICBMs with no intention of ever using them. Deterrence, and deterrence in kind, are concepts that most good international relations texts delve into.
Correction, JT: Ronald Reagan's administration had no problem helping Saddam use chemical weapons.
Ronald Reagan, in short, sucked. I strongly suggest we do very much the opposite of Ronald Reagan.
Anyway, it's good to see that you have your priorities straight: America must learn its lesson about hypocrisy, and the resurgence of chemical warfare as a feature of the modern world is just going to be the price that has to be paid.
Sorry, Uigher Province 2037: JT McPhee had a point to make about America.
Well, if the US wanted to give Assad a reason or motivation to supply chemical weapons to al-Quaeda, they could hardly do better than attacking him.
Because increasing the military power of the people fighting him would cause him to even further increase their power?
"I'm being attacked by al Qaeda! Oh no, now I'm being attacked by al Qaeda and the United States! I'd better give chemical weapons to al Qaeda!"
Donald Rumsfeld's own Office of Special Plans couldn't dream up a sillier scenario.
It wouldn't take our support for Assad, merely the cessation of aid. Assad would be quite happy to do the job himself.
Not only would shelling destroy evidence, but it would also contaminate the site.
It's now full of bits from Syrian government artillery and rockets. Which ones are from yesterday, and which ones are from last Wednesday?
This is all moot, however. The UN team's mandate doesn't include determining who launched the attack, only whether one occurred and what chemical was used.
The MSF-affiliated doctors who treated the victims reported being contaminated by contact with the victims.
400 people in Egypt were not killed in a chemical warfare attack. If you object to treating chemical and biological warfare as especially heinous and dangerous, take it up with the Geneva Protocols. It's funny how no one had a problem with the status of chemical warfare until it became necessary in order to be on the other side of the United States.
Predictably, when the rebels were winning, the comments were full of explanations about how the US wanted the rebels to win.
Now that things have reached a rough balance, the same people are explaining that the US wants a stalemate.
It's always the same game: look at any given situation, and make up an explanation about how the CIA wanted that all along.
You think the party making definitive statements, early, in the fog of war is the more trust-worthy party?
I didn't realize John Kerry worked for Ronald Reagan.
That is even less plausible than Saddam giving them to al Qaeda.
At least Saddam, in 2002-3, was not actively involved in a shooting war with an al Qaeda affiliate.
Not to mention, it was already universally known, even before Arab Spring, that Syria had chemical weapons.
The chemicals that were used, yes.
But evidence of the means of delivery - rocket parts, for instance - would be destroyed by heavy bombardment.
And that is the evidence that would be most useful for ascertaining who carried out the attack.
So, there's Syria's allies, Pat Buchanan, and a former diplomat with no access to intelligence who is guessing about motives.
I notice that Secretary Kerry didn't say anything about the rebels. A series of punitive strikes to deter future chemical warfare attacks may provide some benefit to them, but it is not the same thing as joining up with the rebellion.
The return of chemical warfare is horror that the entire world should abhor. It cannot be allowed to happen. The 90-year-old norm must be upheld.
The next monster that thinks about launching a chemical attacks needs to look at the example of Bashar al-Assad and think twice. Otherwise, get ready for a world with a lot more gas attacks.
What would he have to gain?
The continuing credibility of the 90-year-old taboo on using chemical weapons in warfare.
The one that saved many thousands of American, British, and Russian lives during World War II.
It's become fashionable in certain quarters to assume that opposition to chemical warfare must only be a pretext, but there are very good reasons to believe that the West is honest-to-God opposed to chemical weapons returning as an instrument of war.
Define "effective."
A NATO air campaign would probably not be effective at winning the Syrian Civil War. It probably wouldn't be effective at stopping the bloodshed.
Whether it would be effective at punishing Assad's government for using chemical weapons, and providing a significant deterrent effect for future governments that might consider using them, is another matter.
Because neither of those are forbidden by any international treaty?
Well, JT, it started out with the opponents talking about law - you can go back and look at Professor Cole's earlier posts - to which the "apologists" wrote replies, but you're right: after a certain point, the opponents dropped the subject of legality entirely, and began treating the entire topic as some sort of dirty trick.
I wonder what that could mean?
The Nusra Front has been attacking Kurds and trying to establish a zone of control in the north of Syria. They don't seem to have been able to take over the rebellion as a whole, or establish their own areas in the Syrian National Council areas.
I'm already seeing self-proclaimed progressives arguing that chemical weapons usage is no worse than any other kind of warfare.
Unsurprisingly, this is coming from the same people who invoke international law in every other sentence in discussions of the drone program.
That was a great piece then, and it's a great piece now.
Except for this addition: Obama seems to be attempting to find a face-saving way of getting a little involved but not too much, by sending light weaponry (which of course is not what the rebels need). [and now by a few strategic strikes from the air.]
Obama doesn't "seem to be attempting" a few strategic strikes from the air. He seems no more enthusiastic about bombing Syria now than he did last June, or this past January.
Top donors to the Syria Human Response Plan can be found here:
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2013/jul/25/aid-funding-syria-humanitarian-crisis-data
Atta boys to the US, UK, and Kuwait. Shame on the rest of the world, especially Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia, and Iran, which have found money for the war but not for the refugees.
...after you're been arrested.
You're smooshing together two dramatically different issues here. This is a case about whether the police can look at your cell phone after you've been arrested with it on your person, the same way they can search your pockets, your wallet, or your backpack. In fact, it has long been the law that they can. What is happening now is a challenge to the existing case law, based on the argument that the amount of information on a smart phone is greater than just the calling records on a phone from ten years ago.
I haven't made up my mind about how the changing facts should, or should not, result in changes to the longstanding constitutional doctrine that the police can search your personal effects after you've been arrested.
I have made up my mind, though, that we're not going to have an intelligent discussion about the issue here if people write about it in a misleading way.
This has no connection to the NSA.
<i?Obama’s refusal to call it a coup infuriated Morsi supporters. “What is a coup?” Wael Haddara, a senior adviser to Morsi, told the New York Times. “We’re going to get into some really Orwellian stuff here.”
Who removed Hosni Mubarak from power?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Council_of_the_Armed_Forces
Who succeeded Hosni Mubarak as the Egyptian Head of state?
Answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Hussein_Tantawi
Wael Haddara can climb right down off that high horse.
The U.S. has also funded programs to promote democracy and good government in Egypt — again with few results. It has sent about $24 million a year between 1999 and 2009 to a variety of NGOs in the country. According to a 2009 inspector general’s audit, the efforts didn’t add much due to “a lack of support” from the Egyptian government, which “suspended the activities of many U.S. NGOs because Egyptian officials thought these organizations were too aggressive.”
Too bad the study cut off in 2009. Many of the leaders of the 2011 protests had received funding from those programs.
As a German, you don't get planes flown into your office towers if the United States stays in bed with those "reliable partners."
Where do terrorists come from? Contrary to popular theory, they do not come from places that the United States has bombed - Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon. Quite the opposite, they come from allied countries, against which the United States has never made war, run by oppressive, undemocratic regimes with close ties to the United States - Saudi Arabia (bin Laden), Egypt (Zawahiri), Kuwait (Khalid Sheik Mohammed), the UAE (the 9/11 hijackers who weren't Saudi or Egyptian), Nigeria (the underpants bomber), etc. The correlation is very strong.
In the 21st century, the geopolitical arguments for staying on the good side of the Egyptian generals and the House of Saud (and there are such arguments, and they are valid) just aren't as important as the security threat posed when stateless terrorist organizations turn their eyes to us because of our support for the governments they hate.
I know, tough question.
As for peace prizes, our Orator-in-Chief has done nothing to promote peace
I remember when people on the left considered nuclear arms reduction to be a valuable cause.
I guess I'm just old-fashioned.
The UCMJ does recognize parole. The best estimates are that Manning will be paroled in less than 10 years. Wikileaks says it could be less than four and a half.
It’s relevant to note that Manning did exactly as international law dictates; report war crimes and don’t follow illegal orders.
Under international law he is obligated to do as he did.
Except he released a great deal more than evidence of war crimes. International law does not obligate an Army private to release hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables he never read, and which contain no evidence of wrongdoing.
It's an interesting counterfactual to think about what would have happened if Manning had limited himself to whistle blowing.
Bill, there have always been two parts to the "rubber stamp" argument:
1) The judges on the FISC are obedient lapdogs who do whatever the intelligence community tells them to do.
2) The structure of how the FISA works is so tilted towards the intelligence agencies that the FISC cannot provide an appropriate level of oversight.
The released decision, and the desire of the court to release it, certainly do undermine point 1. Those judges sound pretty feisty and arms-length to me!
But it seems to only bolster point 2, with the judges complaining about their dependence upon the applicants' information.
I of course wish Manning had been more selective in the leaking so that only crimes were revealed.
Why?
Lesson to Mr. Obama: don’t bluff and don’t set red lines unless you’re really committted to reacting if they are crossed.
According to contemporaneous reporting, President Obama did not intend to use the term, or push the idea, of a "red line" when he began that press availability, and used it when speaking without notes. Once it was out there, there was no taking it back.
This is similar to Franklin Roosevelt's use of the the term "unconditional surrender" in a speech during World War II. That was not US policy, and there was no discussion of making it US policy. It sounded good, so he put it in a speech, and his military aides were horrified that he'd inadvertently committed the US to that policy.
Chemical weapons are terror weapons. They thus have a great strategic value: demoralizing and terrorizing the enemy.
One need only look at how much more attention this episode is getting, compared to larger massacres conducted with firearms and explosives, to see the greater psychological impact of a chemical weapons attack.
And has Obama cut off military and Wonder Bread aid to the Egyptian Generalate, or not?
The position that is about as clear as their position on whether a coup occurred. They seem to have fired a warning shot so far, and are waiting to see the response.
And in case you haven't noticed, you invoke me in virtually every comment you write - I've never understood that - while I don't believe I've ever written a comment about you. By all means, let us stick to the facts, and leave aside the personal sniping that one of us seems to value so highly.
Actually, it is a violation of international law to blast, bomb, or strafe civilians in a war.
The actual distinction here is that it is lawful to blast, bomb, and strafe combatants in a conflict, but not to use poison gas against combatants in a conflict.
Where it gets weird is this: it is equally unlawful to use chemical irritants like pepper spray or tear gas against combatants in a conflict, while it is lawful to use them against civilians for law enforcement.
Perhaps I'm naive, but I trust UN weapons inspectors...every bit as much as I did when they were rebutting George Bush.
Let the Inspectors Do Their Job remains good advice.
If the rebels used chemical weapons, it wouldn't take the US jumping in to deal with them. It would merely require doing nothing, and letting Assad do it.
As some have desired all along.
We have no national interests, except perhaps in preventing the al Qaeda-aligned rebel groups from seizing control.
There are those of us who don't think that national interest is the sole factor to consider in foreign policy.
I find it hard to believe that the Syrian Regime however brutal is so stupid as to use chemical weapons on the eve of a UN investigation into the use of such weapons.
True. By the same lights, I find it hard to believe that the rebels would fake a big chemical weapons attack on the eve of a UN investigation.
But to both points, there is the rejoinder that sometimes people do stupid things.
If a chemical attack happened - and that's a big if - then the UN needs to respond.
If Russia and China were to block the UN from responding to an actual use of chemical weapons, that would be different, but the US cannot go rushing in like Superman.
“doesn’t matter” to whom
Gee, I wonder: https://www.juancole.com/2013/08/leftovers-released-brotherhood.html#comment-216345
Waiter, this food is terrible, and the portions are too small.
The efforts to explain why an American aid cutoff suddenly doesn't matter are rolling-on-the-floor hilarious.
Say, JT, why do you think that the United States is taking actions - which totally aren't real or good enough - against the military government that it never took against the Morsi government?
Because they were out to get Morsi and back the military all along, amirite?
"The reasoning of the judgment against Mubarak was rather tortured"
Well, that's no surprise.
Bill and I have political viewpoints that have very little in common, JT. You just can't tell from the eccentric bubble in which you ensconce yourself.
It's always the most extreme people who think the world can be meaningfully divided into "people like me" and "the other 99.5%, which is all the same."
I've always thought the "War is a Racket" argument ignored important factors like ideology, culture, and even (oh yeah) legitimate security concerns that have always been part of why polities engage in armed conflict.
Is war a racket for al Qaeda? Or do they do it because they believe in the cause?
How about the British and French declaring war against Nazi Germany in September 1939? Was that a "racket?"
And what are we to make of socialist revolutions? Or the people who went to Spain to fight on the loyalist side? "War is a racket, except when it's carried out by noble proletarians led by dashing intellectuals who happen to remind me of myself!"
I don't think "a lower form of argument" is a fair way to characterize Dan B.'s point, which I responded to.
Frankly, I think it's a more honest and substantive point than most that have been addressed to me on this thread, even if I don't find it convincing.
I don't think you should be jumping in and telling me what Dan B.'s argument is and is not, and I certainly don't think your characterization is at all correct in this case. That he sets up the argument as a choice between cameras providing information vs. cameras intimidating people strongly suggests that the words you are putting in his mouth do not belong there.
Nathanael,
it is well established that private letters, phone calls, and mail — and so also email, etc. — have a strong expectation of privacy.
Not quite right. The contents of letters, phone calls, and mail have a strong expectation of privacy. The outside of the envelope, the billing data on the phone call, and the email equivalent do not. This, too, has been extensively litigated.
When you give something to other people so they can look at it and gain certain information from it - the postal service looking at the address, the phone company routing your call - you do not have an expectation of privacy.
You have evidence that Mr. Miranda was in “possession of highly classified intelligence that was unlawfully passed on by Snowden” that you are withholding from the UK investigators who detained and questioned him for nine hours and confiscated his equipment missed and failed to arrest him for?
Yes, I do. I have the confession of his co-conspirator, Glenn Greenwald, in which he states that Miranda was carrying stolen documents, from the trove of documents Snowden stole.
The question of why the Brits let him go is as irrelevant as the question of why Dick Cheney has been charged. Maybe it was politics - they were contacted by the Brazilian embassy. Maybe it was an intelligence operation - they want to watch his movements and see who he leads them to. Maybe they put a GPS becaon on him. (I strongly suggest you all give serious consideration to pulling out your fillings, because you just never know.) Maybe it is the muddy legal standing of someone who is kinda sorta a journalist in possession of leaked materials.
None of this matters a whit. We know, beyond any plausible shadow of a doubt, that Miranda was carrying stolen documents, a subset of the cache of stolen documents Snowden took. We do not need to look at the British government's actions to determine whether he had stolen documents. His coconspirator - who is, inexplicably, considered a reliable source among the people feigning ignorance on this - has confessed.
We're done here. Come up with another pretext. You don't have a legal to stand on with this performance.
What about if the NSA stole the documents from us in the first place?
You're using (I hope) the word "stole" in a figurative sense. Swiping data that you don't have the right to take is literal theft.
But to play along: you are legally liable for theft even if the item you stole had been previously stolen. Imagine a car thief who gets car-jacked. The car jackers could not cite the car's status as stolen goods as a defense.
So, as for this theory that the search of Miranda means journalists - not "journalists carrying stolen classified documents across international borders," but simply "journalists," unmodified - are in danger: I look forward to seeing all of the stories of journalists who aren't engaged in international criminal conspiracies being detained. If that were to happen, it sure would prove the point.
But...but...what if it doesn't? What if this was a particular case in which a journalist ('s husband) was stopped because he was carrying stolen classified documents? Wouldn't that rather step on a much-beloved narrative?
Otherwise said documents would have been discovered and Miranda promptly arrested. Didn’t happen.
Answered, above.
To compare this to the actions of journalist Greenwald is to turn reality on its head. The WMD scam would be more accurately compared to the subject of Greenwald’s reporting.
Wow. You really have no basis for ascertaining truth beyond political convenience, do you?
If, indeed, Miranda was carrying “stolen” documents, then it was the UK’s responsibility to arrest him, charge him, and detain him for trial — or for extradition to the victim nation. The mere fact that UK did not so proceed is enough to explode your point
This isn't actually true. Governments decline to press charges against foreign nationals whose embassies get involved all the time.
Anyway, we don't have to judge whether the documents that Greenwald acknowledges his husband was carrying were stolen by making some deduction from the British police behavior. We know, for a certainty, that they were documents Stolen by Snowden. Period, we're done here. The Snowden documents were stolen. End of story.
In awarding Miranda his liberty after nine hours, the UK had no right to confiscate any of his possessions
This is false as well. From plants to pocketknives, governments confiscate things that violate the law all the time at borders and airports without pressing criminal charges.
I sincerely hope you are not practicing law.
Shorter Bill: Run away! Run away from the inconvenient facts! La la la la la! I can't heeeaaaaaaar you!
Edgar,
Umwut?
I get that you are unhappy. That's about it.
Brian,
The question here was about whether the collection of informationi, 99.9% of which was useless, has a purpose. Care to address that?
Henry,
That's a different question. The question is, does the collection of mainly useless information render the system useless?
Let's go back to the Boston Marathon bombing. All of the footage collected by the security cameras covering the street near the finish line was completely useless...except for those few minutes of footage that captured the Tsarnaev brothers setting down the bags.
No, Dan B, stores do not have cameras (which are frequently hidden, which would seem to reduce their intimidation factor) for intimidation. They have them so they can go back over the footage after something is stolen to see who did it.
Which brings us back to the NSA. If they were collecting data for the purpose of intimidation, why would they try to keep it secret? Does that mean Greenwald and Snowden, by publicizing it and making people afraid, are working for the NSA?
99.9% of what is captured on store security cameras is equally meaningless garbage. Person shopping, person shopping, person shopping, person scratching himself while shopping, person shopping....
So, does that render the use of security cameras pointless?
Falsely detained?
Innocent people?
Oopise, professor:
It's ok, now, Professor. Glenn Greenwald himself has given you permission to acknowledge that the "innocent person" who was "falsely detained" was, in fact, stopped for carrying stolen, classified documents which were found on the searched equipment.
I cannot for the life of me understand why people continue to take Glenn Greenwald's self-serving claims at face value. Something I learned from Bush's WMD scam: when you catch the used car salesman in his second or third lie, you walk away.
I would like everyone to please read the Huffington Post piece RJLYNN cites. Here it is: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/wikileaks-honduras-state_b_789282.html
Please note that it consists of a State Department cable calling the coup a coup, followed by some discussion about whether the coup was a military coup or some other kind of coup.
There is never, at any point, the slightest evidence provided to suggest the State Department did not immediately call the coup a coup - which is why we see this little soft-shoe routine.
Official statements from the US Department of State about the Honduran coup:
http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2009/wha/136117.htm
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2009/dec/133121.htm
http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2010/vol1/137197.htm
Would you like more? There are many, many, many more to be found by going to http://www.state.gov and typing the words "honduras coup" into the search bar.
I don't like McCain and Graham, either, but it is very common for the President to send members of the opposition party to treat with foreign governments that are closer, ideologically, to the opposition than to the President's own party. For instance, George W. Bush sent Jesse Jackson to Libya to treat with Gadhaffi when they were pursuing a warming of relations. Bill Clinton sent him to Serbia to try to talk down Slobodan Milosevic - and act which, if nothing else, gave the world this awesome visual: http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/odd-moments-in-history/?_r=0
The grain of truth is that the US called it a coup, but not a military coup. The State Department shut off military aid, but not humanitarian aid, like the anti-AIDS funding, until the elections were held.
There are certainly legitimate arguments to made about the USA's handling of that crisis, but there have been some truly weird stretches made to try to portray what happened as 1956 all over again.
The frustrating part is that the effort to pin the tail on the Clinton State Department came largely at the expense of highlighting the very real evidence of involvement by out-of-power, Republican baddies like Otto Reich.
Obama called the Honduras coup a coup the days after it happened.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-President-Obama-and-President-Uribe-of-Colombia-in-Joint-Press-Availability
They mythology that has been built up on the internet around the Honduras coup is very odd.
Actually, the law puts the decision to "find" that a military coup occurred in the President's hands, and doesn't establish any binding rules for how to do so. It's certainly weaselly for him to remain agnostic on the question, but not illegal.
Anyway, where were these appeals in February 2011, when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces removed the Egyptian head of state and replaced him with Field Marshall Tantawi? Big protests against the President, the military acts to remove him to thunderous applause in the streets - but I don't recall anyone making this demand back then.
If the US cuts off aid - and I think we should - it should be a political decision in response to the crackdown.
It's so baseless that a majority of Egypt seems to agree with it.
Just so.
If you don't understand that the West has been scrambling around, responding to events they didn't foresee, and trying to figure out what to do - if you think it has all been one well-choreographed performance - you just aren't paying attention.
A constitution isn't the same thing as an ordinary bill. It's perfectly ok for one side to win and the other side lose in a debate over what the top tax rate should be, or how much to spend on tanks.
But a constitution needs to be a consensus documents that all parties buy into.
I recognize all of those words, JT, but damned if I can figure out what they're doing together.
You're unhappy. I get that much.
Your "point exactly" seems to have changed quite a bit.
Fine, fine, the Obama administration being harder on the Sisi government than the Morsi government proves exactly the same point as the Obama administration (allegedly) favoring the Sisi government and helping to remove the MB government.
As always, all roads lead exactly where you want them to.
And your statement of some “undeniable fact” to the effect that The Empire is “being much harder on, not more supportive of, the Sisi government than the Morsi government” ain’t on the evidence, either undeniable or fact.
Actually, I've cited the evidence and provided the links. I'm afraid your "Nuh-uh, you gotta be wrong, cuz narrative" pushback seems little thin.
JT,
If I was citing the actions of the Obama administration against the generals' regime to argue "The US sure is giving hell to the Egyptian military regime," your rebuttal would be valid.
But I'm not. I'm citing those actions in response to claims that the US government is backing the military regime over the Muslim Brotherhood government.
Whether you think Obama's response is strong enough or not, the undeniable fact is that they are being much harder on, not more supportive of, the Sisi government than the Morsi government.
So, kindly lay out for me the actions the U.S. government took in opposition to the Morsi government.
You talk about the aid continuing to the Egyptian government; you do know that the same aid continued, wholly unimpeded, throughout the Morsi period, right?
One election doesn't give the President free rein to make himself Pharaoh. Even Hitler's party won one election.
He was voted into office to oversee the writing of a constitution, and he decided that the constitution was going to read "L'etat, c'est moi."
You seem to blame the MB disproportionately and use language like Morsi pushed through a constitution with only 30% participation. Come on sir, what kind of participation and victory margins have we had in the greatest democracy (USA).
The low voter turnout for the constitutional referendum was not, like low American voter turnout, a phenomenon of disinterest that crossed party lines. The opposition (stupidly, in my opinion) boycotted the vote because of corruption and cheating. That is not the same thing at all.
The blame lies very squarely in the lap of the military and its supporters(incl.US government) who never wanted a popular democracy in Egypt
Uh, the Egyptian military's "supporters" in the Obama administration didn't lift a finger to save Mubarak (even working to undermine him), worked closely with Morsi in the early months (such as on the Gaze cease fire), and have taken actions (such as delaying the shipment of military equipment and canceling joint military exercises) against the Sisi regime that they never took against Morsi.
A tizzy over the Muslim Brotherhood?
You mean, the government that they worked with to negotiate a cease-fire in Gaza?
The government that they never made any move to distance themselves from, unlike the delay of the F-16 shipment and the cancellation of the joint military exercises?
Apparently, the President' speech is so meaningless that complaining he made it is the only thing you found notable enough to comment on.
It must have been a heck of a speech, since you can't even find anything to denounce.
I can't decide which statement is the most hilarious:
That the constitution approved in an election so corrupt that the election monitors resigned and the opposition boycotted is "democratic."
That the Muslim Brotherhood enjoys the support of 80% of the Egyptian public.
Or that western liberals are being silent about Egypt.
Hey, JT, I know this game!
"Why don't Muslims denounce terrorism?
Uh, they do. Here are some examples.
"OK, but why don't they denounce it more?"
It's been less than 24 hours. How about more "let's see" and less regurgitation of your very favorite catch phrases?
Say, Farhand, can you name the successor to Hosni Mubarak as the Egyptian head of state?
Answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Hussein_Tantawi
And can you tell us who removed Mubarak and appointed his successor?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Council_of_the_Armed_Forces
So, where were you in February 2011? Demanding that the United States cut off aid and call a spade a spade?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/15/obama-egypt-morsi-riots-military-government/2658835/
Obama Cancels US-Egypt Military Exercises
They can’t get off that tiger.
I don't know, John. They're already gone back and forth since spring 2011.
They led the protests against Mubarak, then they led the protests against Morsi.
More recently, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry expressed strong approval of the Egyptian military’s removal of former President Mohamed Morsi in a statement he made to Pakistan’s Geo News on August 2. Kerry said the military was “restoring democracy” when it ousted Morsi, which he said was at the request of “millions and millions of people.”</i?
A statement that the notoriously poor-spoken Kerry immediately walked back, unlike every one of the other examples you gave.
Oh, and where does the American threats over military aid made towards the generals, which were never made towards the Morsi government, fit into all of this?
Apparently, that has much less to do with American policy towards Egypt than Bradley Manning.
There are already signs that labor policy will be a major fulcrum of conflict.
This is something I've been wondering about: where is the left - the youth and labor - in all of this?
Do they not matter in Egyptian politics unless they are aligned on one side or the other of the MB/military divide?
Iran is always two years away from having a nuclear weapon, and we're always six months away from bombing them. Remember when Obama was going to give the Israeli permission to fly over Iraq just before we left?
Whether he's "to the right" of Ahmedinejad on domestic issues is irrelevant to your theory. The issue here is foreign relations in general, and relations with America in particular.
The idea that American actions are making a peaceful resolution to the situation less likely by inflaming the Iranian public against collaboration just took a rather significant body blow.
I don't see the sanctions as having produced the Rouhani victory, either. I see that NOT precluding it, as some would predict they would.
Iran just completely failed to elect a hardline, anti-American, anti-negotiations candidate, to the surprise and consternation of some who thought they would and should.
Except when they didn't, such as Ahmedinejad.
Anyway, I'm not positing a change in Iranian political culture as a result of the sanctions. I'm questioning yours.
If "The main effect of US sanctions is to strengthen the state against potential challengers," then why did Iranians just elect a reformer who wants to cut a deal?
I think I see what you're saying now, Bill.
If the doctor's "diagnosis" was that I was a charade and a fraud, yes I'd take that as personal criticism. You wouldn't?
But here's the thing: I didn't write anything about the merits of the anti-peace talks points. I asked a different question, one about prescription, not diagnosis.
Huh?
Is the babblin' guy who gets mad and says the same thing regardless of the subject supposed to be a doctor now?
The comments here are scarcely “anti-peace-talk,” but extra points to you for artfully dishonest framing.
Ahem:
More evidence the current “peace talks” are a charade.
‘Negotiations’ meaning, “We’re going to have to ask you to go ahead and be bend over, Israel is going to annex and assimilate you, like it or not”?
This is how it works. Israel does what it wants. All the parties at the negotiations are just playing along.
No, JT, everyone is absolutely *$%&ing giddy about the talks. Does anything ever happen inside your skull besides "That guy I hate on the internet must be wrong?"