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[Reelya]

That's because of the NATO bombing. The civil war was basically one sided before that. You guys collapsed their existing, stable government.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/obamas-libya-debacle

Also, Mubarak wasn't under occupation, but he was strongly associated with american military aid. They propped him up heavily. It was kind of a thing. That's why CIA planes were flying there with captured people for special torture sessions.

In a New Yorker interview with CIA veteran Michael Scheuer, an author of the rendition program under the Clinton administration, writer Jane Mayer noted,

    In 1995, American agents proposed the rendition program to Egypt, making clear that it had the resources to track, capture, and transport terrorist suspects globally—including access to a small fleet of aircraft. Egypt embraced the idea... 'What was clever was that some of the senior people in Al Qaeda were Egyptian,' Scheuer said. 'It served American purposes to get these people arrested, and Egyptian purposes to get these people back, where they could be interrogated.' Technically, U.S. law requires the CIA to seek 'assurances' from foreign governments that rendered suspects won't be tortured. Scheuer told me that this was done, but he was 'not sure' if any documents confirming the arrangement were signed."

Scheuer testified in 2007 before Congress that no such assurances were received. He acknowledged that treatment of prisoners may not have been "up to U.S. standards." He stated,

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2006/05/egyp-m22.html

The Bush administration has adamantly defended its annual outlay of nearly $2 billion in military and economic aid to Egypt in response to a Congressional debate on the issue. The White House has insisted that US strategic interests in the Middle East would be harmed by any reduction in its assistance to Egypt’s dictatorial regime.

Egypt, led by President Hosni Mubarak, receives more US aid than any other country save Israel. Washington provides $1.3 billion in annual military aid, a sum which amounts to 80 percent of the Egyptian military’s budget. Additional economic aid, which is tied to the country’s ongoing pro-business economic reform, is also directed to Mubarak each year.

America provided 80% of the Egyptian military budget. Consider that.

[smjjames]

It's not a given that Ghadaffi was worse than Mubarak by a long shot.

The stories about Ghadaffi massacring civilians in 2011 turned out to be false.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/obamas-libya-debacle

Another interesting thing was that the USA under Reagan basically used Libya as a talking point whenever Reagan's poll numbers dropped. Usually this involved flying over the Gulf of Sidra and deliberately targeting Libyan ships. Then if the Libyans retaliated American would cry foul about how their planes in international waters came under attack. Lots of it is bullshit.

Again, okay, so we did lots of bullshitty things, that does not help find a solution to current problems in any way. You're basically saying that we should leave the region the heck alone, but we're the only one with the capability to really bring the fight to ISIS.

We should be aware of the past, yes, but looking to the past alone won't solve the issues.

That's because of the NATO bombing. The civil war was basically one sided before that. You guys collapsed their existing, stable government.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/obamas-libya-debacle

And we failed to help them build a stable government because we decided to try and let them do it themselves and avoid what happened in Iraq.

[Reelya]

See my last post edit, America was providing 80% of the military budget of Egypt up until Mubarak's fall. Basically his military dictatorship completely relied on America for it's very existence.

When America is basically bankrolling "the whole show" it's hard to claim a sort of incidental involvement.

[smjjames]

Again, okay, so we did lots of bullshitty things, that does not help find a solution to current problems in any way. You're basically saying that we should leave the region the heck alone, but we're the only one with the capability to really bring the fight to ISIS.

We should be aware of the past, yes, but looking to the past alone won't solve the issues.

[Reelya]

No I never said that. Everything I wrote was contradicting Sergarr's ideas that we should basically economically flatten the whole place and turn it into colonies. Everything I wrote was historical, and pointing out how doing things with those sorts of intent is part of what's caused and is causing the problems.

Intervention to help build institutions is a different matter. But e.g. if we left Assad's Bureaucracy in place, then it would be much eaiser to pressure them into opening up elections rather than trying to topple society itself and rely on grass-roots types to rebuild everything, French Revolution style.

I mean think about it. Washington has a lot of problems, but d'ya think literally nuking Washington then letting the states duke it out over who's in charge is a good idea? That's basically been our middle east policy since at least Bush. There's actually a reason previous administrations basically refrained from utterly destroying governments even in hostile nations that could easily have been taken out. They knew the results are likely to be worse than leaving someone in charge that you can actually talk to.

I mean, nobody likes Assad. But the idea that having his state socialist administration continue on is worse than basically setting fire to the whole country is nonsense. The Russians are actually on the right side here. They want stability first, because then at least you've got a rational state actor who you can negotiate with and put pressure on to make concessions. The problem is that rather than militarily toppling e.g. Ghadaffi, who is an old man, then relying on grass-roots to rebuild everything (guaranteed death and chaos) you could have left his administration and civil institutions in existence, but have heavily pressured his administration to open up reforms after his death. it's not like Ghaddafi was an undead lich.

[smjjames]

*looks back a few pages*

Oh, missed the start of the discussion.

And yeah, making colonies out of the region is a bad idea because that would involve occupation of the region for an indefinite time, and our military was already spread out, we wouldn't be able to afford it for an extended period of time.

Don't know where Sergarr got the idea of making them colonies. The MidEast region countries were never colonies of anybody (except the Ottomans), but they did become protectorates after WWI and the collapse of the Ottoman empire. Closer to the relationship that the US and Philippines had rather than the one Britian and India had.

[Reelya]

Well it's often said America does have an empire, but it's more modern and subtle as a network of "client states". Which is why you see the stories about US CIA intervention in politics in those nations. If you've invested in a client state you don't want some upstart getting elected then changing all the resource extraction deals that have been worked out.

But how do they "invest" exactly? Guatemala and the United Fruit Company* is like the textbook example of this. Empire USA's frontline colonial troops might actually be the corporations themselves. A red flag for this being true would be if US corporations in third-world client states actually operate their own sizeable private military units. And i've read some stuff suggesting that they do. So things like the British East India Company might actually be more relevant to how the USA's "Empire" operates. But the difference is that British East India Company was expected to pay for itself, while the US taxpayer actually pays for most of the security aspects so they're effectively subsidizing these expansionist corporations. When the US government spends a lot of your tax money to pressure Venezuela because they have oil, it's not about cheap oil for american motorists, it's about oil corporation profits.

* United Fruit Company's strategy included buying up all a latin nation's land that they could at low prices, maintained by infiltrating local politics, and then leaving most of it fallow, thus reducing food supply and keeping banana prices high. Then if an elected leader wanted some of the fallow land back so peasants could grow crops, they called in favors from the US government up to and including orchestrating military invasions.

[smjjames]

And btw, Trump tried to continue the oh-so-American tradition of messing with other nations politics with the backchannel deal that he tried to do with Russia over Ukraine. Until it leaked* and Russia dropped and disowned it like a radioactive potato.

*Not sure, but it seemed like the Ukranian politician that they were working with had leaked it. The NYT article didn't say what the source was.

[Reelya]

Yeah the problem is that back-channel deals are much riskier to push as an international norm in a multi-lateral world like we have now. Because if that's the norm for you, it's the norm for everyone.

Basically some in the USA want everything to be direct diplomacy and direct threats, and to render the UN obsolete. But then there's no UN to reign in people you either like or dislike.

[smjjames]

Yeah the problem is that back-channel deals are much riskier to push as an international norm in a multi-lateral world like we have now. Because if that's the norm for you, it's the norm for everyone.

Seems to have gotten started before he was inaugurated, so, it was backchannel because it couldn't go through official channels (because he wasn't President yet). And having Russia 'lease' what they consider a piece of themselves does sound rather absurd. That's what happens when you attempt to treat it as you would a building.

Basically some in the USA want everything to be direct diplomacy and direct threats, and to render the UN obsolete. But then there's no UN to reign in people you either like or dislike.

The UN doesn't do a particularily good job of that anyway. Though what it does do is provide a common forum for diplomats to air grievances and to, well, diplomatize, with each other.

[PTTG??]

If the UN wasn't effective, why would so many nations abide by and participate in it?

The "UN is weak" meme is just an extension of Republican anti-federalism. Call something weak until everyone thinks it's weak, then use the negative pressure to suck the resources out of it to weaken it.

[Reelya]

It's also proving a negative. We can't know what the world would look like if we never had the U.N. Probably not very healthy. Sure UN hasn't fixed all problems in the world, but what ever did. We've avoided direct wars between any sizeable nations for the entire time that the U.N. has existed. The only exceptions included at least one nation that wasn't actually a UN signatory at the time, such as China vs America in Korea 1950 and China vs India in ~1962. Other than those there's been no direct war between any major powers since 1945, which is heading towards 80 years now, and is basically unpresidented.

It's also akin to arguments such as saying that welfare payments help prevent homelessness and reduce e.g. beggars. Someone here I forget who did point out "but there aren't any beggars!" Which is the same "proving a negative" problem. The wealthy nations all feed the poor, and all have welfare systems, and they have many less beggars than nations which don't have a safety net. You don't abolish those programs because the "beggar problem" that they are supposed to deal with "doesn't exist", because that's mixing up the causation.

[smjjames]

It's predecessor (direct ancestor actually, given that it absorbed a bunch of agencies and organizations that were origionally founded under the League), the League of Nations, would be an example of an ineffective UN type organization. Looking at wikipedia, looks like one reason for the League of Nations being ineffective was because the US never joined. Though there were likely lots of other mistakes compounding it.

[Neonivek]

Quite a bit of people believe that the UN should be demolished and rebuilt...

But go on to say that even with that knowledge... the UN is still a force for good and should never not exist in some form.

Only that it is in desperate need of reforms that can never happen because of its current state.

[misko27]

Quite a bit of people believe that the UN should be demolished and rebuilt...

Ask these people about precisely what the propose be done with the replacement, and you'll see why it fails.