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[RedKing]

@Redking

Son of a bitch. Much like every time the topic came up in debate, I forgot that Iraq and Afghanistan were a lot further apart than I think they are, sorry about that.

Man, I am full of apologies today.

Looking back on it, it seems a lot of people make the same mistake too. The war in Afghanistan was most definitely not a mistake, for the reasons listed above. However, Iraq was far more tenuous a situation, and caused far more trouble than it was worth.

Okay, see, now i'm embarrassed, i'm supposed to know this shit.

No worries. See, I think people who were very young (or not born) at that time conflate the two because they don't remember it.
Everyone else conflates them because there was so much propaganda out there conflating the two and it just got absorbed into the collective consciousness.
Hell, I used to have this argument with my mother, who was convinced that Iraq had attacked us on 9/11. I pointed out that 15 of the 18 hijackers were Saudis and that NONE of them was Iraqi. That made her question why were at war in Iraq.

A month later, she was back to parroting the same thing about Iraq attacking us on 9/11. Now, my mother is not the best example because she was pretty dim to begin with. But that's how the propaganda works. People get it in their heads that things happened a certain way (especially if they're not the kind to be otherwise interested in doing their own research) and once that takes root, it's hard to change.

[ggamer]

Eh, I understand, i'm just supposed to know this shit, it's my forte.

In other news, apparently people decided to take flight to Facebook today to tell everyone about how muslims are poisoning American culture, and that they should probably just stop being muslims on 9/11

[Sergarr]

Not to mention the fact that the whole WMD claim of Saddam having nukes was based on the statement of an informant with low (or even no) credibility and the info had been tortured out of the person.

It was an even flimsier causus belli than Putins claim of protecting Russians from harm, which at least was plausible.

yet nobody has even started to talk about sanctioning USA for that

aren't all countries supposed to be the same in the eyes of the international law

[KingofstarrySkies]

Who doesn't love Cultural Appropriation? Who wants to learn a new language? Noone, of course! And if you do, you're a terrible person!

:/

(Besides. Then we wouldn't have Babymetal. And who doesn't fucking love Babymetal?)

[hops]

USA never plays by the rule. That's always been a thing since the country was founded.

Also I don't understand the flack about cultural appropriation. I mean, it still enrich both culture with the exchange of memes. It's only harmful when said appropriation is applied back to the original culture like the tourists expecting Hawaiians to treat their sacred ceremony like a party.

[ggamer]

It wasn't American intelligence broheim, it was British sourced through like five other informants.

[scrdest]

USA never plays by the rule. That's always been a thing since the country was founded.

Also I don't understand the flack about cultural appropriation. I mean, it still enrich both culture with the exchange of memes. It's only harmful when said appropriation is applied back to the original culture like the tourists expecting Hawaiians to treat their sacred ceremony like a party.

Yeah, I don't get it either. Member of a culture A trying to steal from culture B, but not managing to completely get rid of his culture A habits is essentially how most of new ideas are formed.

[SealyStar]

Who doesn't love Cultural Appropriation? Who wants to learn a new language? Noone, of course! And if you do, you're a terrible person!

:/

(Besides. Then we wouldn't have Babymetal. And who doesn't fucking love Babymetal?)

Yeezus. The extreme Tumblrinas' notions of "cultural appropriation" already sound like "voluntary segregation" to me, but the idea of learning a foreign language being appropriative of their culture always seemed... really, really, really shitty. As is their idea that speakers of other languages learning English isn't appropriation, because oppression. The same reason you can't be racist against white people or sexist against men.

Like, I don't think that me trying (and somewhat failing) to speak Spanish ever hurt any native Hispanophones.

[Willfor]

I would like to point out that actual cultural appropriation, for people who are not aware, is when you take the most visible elements of culture and add them to your own without any understanding of the significance behind them. Also when a costume is made and worn purely for the purpose of entertaining people with jokes about ethnic stereotypes. At best you are giving no actual thought to your actions and thereby ignorant, and at worst you are being actively malicious.

Learning a language is ... actually quite the reverse of appropriation because you are making a conscious effort to understand someone else. .___.;

[smjjames]

It wasn't American intelligence broheim, it was British sourced through like five other informants.

Bad intelligence is still bad intelligence no matter where it's from.

@segarr: yeah, all countries are supposed to be viewed the same under international law. I don't know why nobody sanctioned the US for its bad actions, I can't answer that. Kind of late to be sanctioning the US years after the fact since that isn't the point of sanctions and wouldn't give the right message.

[Flying Dice]

It wasn't American intelligence broheim, it was British sourced through like five other informants.

Doesn't matter, broheim. (Speaking of which, Broheim sounds like a 10th world in neo-Norse mythology.)

The neocons in power at the time were looking for any excuse they could find, because obviously their theoretical models were correct in spite of the rather severe lack of meaningful data, considering that the core assumptions were all derived from an arrangement of the international system which was predisposed to act in a certain way, which they then extrapolated to mean that all arrangements of the international system would behave in the same way. So it was less a matter of "Saddam is doing something, we need to intervene," so much as "What pretext can we find to invade that the public will buy for a few months?"

tl;dr: Iraq 2: WMD Boogaloo wasn't about WMDs. Nor was it about oil, or (as much) hefty contracts for firms with close ties to the administration. It was about democracy, just not in the way the layperson thinks it was.

[ggamer]

It was a frustratingly straightforward reply to a situation that required a lot more nuance than our government were willing to apply at the time. Though, honestly, i'm starting to think that with regards to the middle east, the administration in power is always the loser politics-wise.

[Flying Dice]

* Flying Dice shrugs.

That's the thing about wars, especially ones fought against combatants that can't really be visibly defeated the way a pre-20th century state could be. You get all the domestic unrest associated with war without the eventual popularity boost associated with winning one, and to boot you're never going to achieve much of a rally-around-the-flag effect because it's damned near impossible to justify an unequal conflict in which the stronger power is clearly the aggressor, except to folks who'll buy any line you feed them.

[nenjin]

I think communications technology has a lot to do with it too. Pre-the collapse of the Soviet Union, fighters such as ISIS (Al Qaeda, al-Aqsa, ect and so forth) remained isolated from the rest of the world. Knowledge of them and their agendas didn't spread to the degree it does now. So while enhanced communications technology has lots of benefits (see: Police/Citizen relations in the US) it also empowers everyone to create global identities. When the Mujaheddin were fighting the Soviets for Afghanistan, those fighters were forced to rely on nations to tip the balance when conventional sources of support were not enough. They couldn't turn to the rest of the world en masse for support. They couldn't organize fighters as quickly or efficiently.

Now, every extremist group has a website. They recruit online. They post on Twitter. They network. As fucked up as it is, in an academic sense I'd be interested to know what an extremist group Kickstarter could bring in. (Which will never happen because of Kickstarter policies.)

Subsequently, in the course of doing their jobs (poorly), the media picks up on their "brand" and reports on it, and elevates them in all our consciousnesses, bestowing recognition and, for lack of a better term, legitimacy on them. Sometimes that should happen, when real issues are being under-reported. But a lot of the time it's a mixed bag of pros and cons at best. I really hate the beheading news stories in the American media for this reason. So lucky for the media that it is both sensational and important, so they get the best of the both worlds while essentially giving extremists exactly what they need. Despite the internet, not everyone would pick up on a video of a beheading in the course of their normal lives. But when the American media picks it up, there is basically no way of avoiding it for the average citizen.

[smjjames]

Well, they can't just not report it at all, as much as that would be ideal. Even if the news media didn't pick it up, someone would and you know how fast a firestorm starts on twitter.

They did get rather sensationalistic with the LAPTOP OF DOOM!!!!1!1!  I thought that it would be better if the fact that it fell into American hands should be kept as quiet as possible because you just don't let the enemy know you got your hands on their battle plans.

At least CNN didn't show the actual video, most media stations wouldn't.