Reply With Quote
Polls show American's don't think US should be involved in Rwanda.
http://chapmanspolitics.blogspot.com...l-numbers.html
That turned out well, didn't it?
Polls show American's don't think US should be involved in Rwanda.
http://chapmanspolitics.blogspot.com...l-numbers.html
That turned out well, didn't it?
lol not getting it
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes...bama-on-libya/First, support for military interventions tend to be highest at the outset — the so-called rally-around-the-flag-effect — before declining until and unless some concrete objective is achieved. An important caveat is that the Libyan situation has evolved so quickly that we may still be midway through the rally phase. But if 50 percent approval is as good as the numbers get for Mr. Obama at the peak, overall support may turn negative unless Mr. el-Qaddafi is ousted fairly quickly.
Second, and this is a bit of an educated guess, but I suspect that Mr. Obama is more susceptible to a decline in support from liberals and Democrats on this question than he is likely to benefit from an increase in support among Republicans and conservatives. Reactions from prominent left-leaning bloggers and editors, like Josh Marshall, have been cautious — but generally skeptical and pessimistic. Some liberals, also, are not opposed to the action in Libya per se, but dislike the fact that Mr. Obama did not consult Congress before agreeing to participate in the allied action. (Some conservatives, undoubtedly, are in this camp as well.)
Finally, some of the scholarship suggests that support for military actions tends to be more tentative when the public is fatigued by other foreign entanglements, as they may be on Iraq and Afghanistan. Although they haven’t received much attention, recent polls suggest that Americans are growing continually more skeptical of the war effort in Afghanistan, with as much as a 2:1 majority concluding that the war is no longer worth fighting.
lol still not getting it.
Then there's this little gem:
That's from a thread criticizing mainstream news for misleading the majority of Americans.
Just to spell it out for you because you've made it clear you're "lol not getting it", public opinion does not justify any given position but it is an important variable in the decisions of public officials for obvious reasons.
lol needs hand held.
http://pewresearch.org/databank/dail...?NumberID=1218The public was divided over the possibility of enforcing a no-fly zone -- 44% favored this action while 45% were opposed. Yet just 16% favored bombing Libyan air defenses, while 77% opposed such bombing.
Sorry, public. You can't have the former without the latter.
lol still not getting it . . .
Your articles criticized the position that intervention saved lives by stating that it was impossible to know whether intervention, in fact, did save lives. Hence, the mention of counter-factual scenarios, anti-malarial nets, etc...
This is what you're not getting. My quote criticizes your "impossible to know" so don't intervene position. It does so by saying lack of knowledge, uncertainty, etc... are preconditions for ethical action.
What's laughable is that you then quote poll data dealing with "responsibility" because my quote used that word. That data has no relevance to a discussion of whether the US should or should not be involved in Libya. But good job focusing on one word and confusing it with an entirely separate issue.
You still tirelessly mock the "majority of Americans" for being ignorant hicks who watch Fox News and refuse to educate themselves. Then, when it's convenient for you, you rely on the opinion of said ignorant hicks as support for an "important variable in American politics." Which way is it?
lol public poll data. I kind find polls that say that the US should kill s - should public policy factor in that sentiment too?
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow man, you've got some delusions of grandeur. I didn't post the poll data because of your quote. I read your quote once and didn't give it a second thought. I posted the poll data because its relevant to the decisions made by a public official. I even explained it right before you posted this.
LOL but yeah, its all about you. Thats awesome.
As to the rest of your point, its irrelevant because governing in a democracy means that public opinion matters.
You're like the gift that keeps on giving. Thats golden right there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histrio...ality_disorder
Wow man, you've got some delusions of grandeur. I didn't post the poll data because of your quote. I read your quote once and didn't give it a second thought. I posted the poll data because its relevant to the decisions made by a public official. I even explained it right before you posted this.
LOL but yeah, its all about you. Thats awesome.
As to the rest of your point, its irrelevant because governing in a democracy means that public opinion matters.
You're like the gift that keeps on giving. Thats golden right there.
Congrats on finding the exclamation button on your keyboard btw . . .
That post might as well have been you waving a white flat.
I call you out on your self centered assumption and you try to diagnose me. Brilliant.
In any event, I don't need to make this about you or me so if you feel like actually adding to the discussion feel free. Otherwise, I'll just privately laugh my ass off at your ridiculousness so that you don't feel butt hurt.
Last edited by MannyIsGod; 03-24-2011 at 02:53 PM.
Additional symptoms include:
That post might as well have been you waving a white flat.
I call you out on your self centered assumption and you try to diagnose me. Brilliant.
In any event, I don't need to make this about you or me so if you feel like actually adding to the discussion feel free. Otherwise, I'll just privately laugh my ass off at your ridiculousness so that you don't feel butt hurt.
Exhibitionist behavior.
Constant seeking of reassurance or approval.
Excessive dramatics with exaggerated displays of emotions, such as hugging someone they have just met or crying uncontrollably during a sad movie (Svrakie & Cloninger, 2005).
Excessive sensitivity to criticism or disapproval.
A need to be the center of attention.
Lol white flag. This coming from the guy who's been moving the goal posts from day one.
What self centered assumption? You said something stupid, I called you out on it, and you threw a coniption fit about somethiing both inane and irrelevant per the usual/par the course.
lol taking wiki diagnosis seriously
lol proving wiki diagnosis by taking it seriously
lol acting like a histrionic fainting Victorian woman
Last edited by vy65; 03-24-2011 at 03:11 PM.
A long time since I posted anything I really agreed with from Cato but this is spot on.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/libya...erfect-duties/Glenn Greenwald observes that we're hearing a familiar false dilemma from advocates of intervention in Libya—the same one that was trotted out so frequently in the run-up to the war in Iraq: Either you support American military action, or you must be indifferent to the suffering of civilians under Qadaffi. Bracket for a moment the obvious empirical questions about the general efficacy of bombs as reliable means of alleviating suffering. What I find striking is the background assumption that whether the United States military has a role to play here is taken to be a simple function of how much we care about other people's suffering. One obvious answer is that caring or not caring simply doesn't come into it: That the function of the U.S. military is to protect the vital interests of the United States, and that it is for this specific purpose that billions of tax dollars are extracted from American citizens, and for which young men and women have volunteered to risk their lives. It is not a general-purpose pool of resources to be drawn on for promoting desirable outcomes around the world.
A parallel argument is quite familiar on the domestic front, however. Pick any morally unattractive outcome or situation, and you will find someone ready to argue that if the federal government plausibly could do something to remedy it, then anyone who denies the federal government should act must simply be indifferent to the problem. My sense is that many more people tend to find this sort of argument convincing in domestic affairs precisely because we seem to have effectively abandoned the conception of the federal government as an en y with clear and defined powers and purposes. We debate whether a particular program will be effective or worth the cost, but over the course of the 20th century, the notion that such debates should be limited to enumerated government functions largely fell out of fashion. Most people—or at least most public intellectuals and policy advocates—now seem to think of Congress as a kind of all-purpose problem solving committee. And I can't help but suspect that the two are linked. Duties and obligations may be specific, but morality is universal: Other things equal, the suffering of a person in Lebanon counts just as much as that of a person in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Once we abandon the idea of a limited government with defined powers—justified by reference to a narrow set of functions specified in advance—and instead see it as imbued with a general mandate to do good, it's much harder for a moral cosmopolitan to resist making the scope of that mandate global, at least in principle.
Bolded is a home run, IMO.
I'm loving how they are refusing to call this a war so that congress is not needed. We are bombing the out of another country , what the is war then?
You did say there was oil there.
Jumping off the subject a little bit but I had a simple question.
I believe it was Gadhafi who stated a nice quote a week back pretty much asking what would the US do if it had rebels trying to take over the nation by force.
I find it to be a good statement though because I definitely believe (and this is an opinion from someone who is currently Active Duty in the military) that the acting government would label them terrorists (to sway the public view) and use force to eradicate the uprising swiftly without even trying diplomatic reasoning.
With that in mind how is it we find fault in a sovereign nation doing the same to protect it's en y?
Also, I cannot find a link to the exact quote but will continue searching just for reference sake.
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2011...ity-interests/
Prior to the start of the Libyan war, I frequently said that the U.S. had nothing at stake in Libya, and I still think that’s basically correct. However, Pillar correctly points out that turning against Gaddafi will have some significant security costs for the United States that could have been avoided. This isn’t just a matter of direct blowback from the Libyan war in the form of Gaddafi-sponsored attacks or attacks by jihadists inspired to strike by the intervention in Libya. The costs also come in the form of all the opportunities for anti-terrorist and non-proliferation efforts that have been squandered by targeting the chief example of a rehabilitated proliferator and terrorist sponsor with military action and eventually regime change.
Finally, we should remember that anything done to Qaddafi is being done to someone who had given up terrorism. Much has been said about what lessons other authoritarian regimes in the region will draw if the Libyan ruler is allowed to use force to stay in power. We also should think about the lessons that will be drawn if someone who gave up not only terrorism but also his unconventional weapons programs in return for normal relations and acceptance in the international community is made a target for regime change [bold mine-DL]. The lesson that the mullahs in Tehran and others will draw is that it would be useless to reach any agreement with the West about terrorism or nuclear weapons because the West is really interested above all in regime change and, regardless of any agreements that may have been reached, will seize the first opportunity that comes along to try to realize that goal. ~Paul Pillar
Gaddafi’s example will not only give authoritarian rulers every incentive to seek a nuclear deterrent, but it will convince those that have active nuclear programs that they should not bargain away their ability to create one. The attack on Libya will also encourage authoritarian rulers that cannot afford to build a functioning nuclear program to pretend that they are for the sake of strategic ambiguity, so we can expect many more regimes to engage in elaborate bluffs to create the fear among Western governments that they are developing unconventional weapons to deter attack. Hard-liners in every regime will cite Libya as an example of why Western governments cannot be trusted, and why their governments should not engage in appeasement of the West. They will reckon that negotiating disarmament or the repudiation of nuclear weapons opens their countries up to outside attack that will be justified on ideological grounds. The Libyan war will have significant, negative consequences for U.S. policies elsewhere whether or not the war is a success.
Update: Dr. Jeffrey Lewis at ArmsControlWonk has noted the North Korean reaction to the Libyan war.
(double posted)
Thats a really good point.
Then it obviously comes down to how you define vital interests but I don't define that as the oil supply coming from Libya.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
