Yes, MBS had an anti-monarchy troublemaking Saudi citizen who wouldn’t keep his mouth shut killed inside the Saudi Embassy in Turkey. Surprise Surpise!
The Saudi’s handled this poorly by lying about it. The King should have simply said: I am the King; I rule by divine right as Allah’s representative on Earth. Of course I had this blasphemous traitor killed, as is my right and duty. End of story.
Much different than sending GRU agents with a banded chemical weapon to a small city in the UK to poison a former spy, but killing British citizen and sickening others.
Much different than sending GRU agents to poison former spy in London with Polonium, a nuclear attack on British soil.
Of course these are just the beginning of Russia’s continuing stream of misdeeds.
We should treat Putin’s Russia the same way we use to treat Cuba and North Korea, with a total trade and travel embargo. We should encourage the UK and others to join us. The Russians would overthrow Putin within a few years.
I remember the first part of my childhood when that is what we did. I remember going to bed some nights thinking about burning to death in a nuclear holocaust. No thank you, I prefer my kids & future grandkids not have to deal with that or get drafted to go fight in a proxy war with our “sworn enemies” the Russians. I don’t care if Saudi Arabia has a king or Russia has rigged elections. I don’t want the US to be police of the world. We should only deal with immediate threats & look out of a narrow scope for our best interests.
The only way that would happen would be a concerted US effort at regime change, and that would push Russia to ally with China. Not to mention that our efforts at establishing free and open democracy in the region have a poor track record, to say the least.
I don’t think the average US citizen could find Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or most other middle eastern countries on a map and had they not been fed propaganda they wouldn’t give a damn about any of those countries. If there was no oil in the region the entire place would be ignored much as most of Africa and South America are. It’s all about the Benjamins. Military contractors get rich, oil investors protect their investments for free, military makes rank quicker and the tax payer foots the bill as well as supplying the bodies. Park your profits in tax shelters, buy politicians with a small percent, rinse and repeat. A great business model.
The proxy wars are the reverse side of American democracy. They come about because political factions build pressure on political leaders to “do something”, and presidents bow to public pressure. The people’s hands are as dirty as the presidents’.
During the Cold War the pressure came from the right, fighting Communism. Any president that didn’t was accused of being Neville Chamberlin and “appeasing” the commies. Back when winning elections meant bipartisanship, presidents caved-in by supporting anti-communist fights in places like Vietnam and El Salvador.
The Gulf War and Iraq War were outliers. They were about oil, and in the Iraq War, mindless revenge.
In the wars since then, pressure has often come from the left, the cause often being freedom from tyranny. After Hussein fell, factions in Arab countries wanted to topple their own dictators. They appealed to factions in our country: those on the left who were militant about freedom, and those on the right who spearheaded the Iraq War and wanted to salvage something from the fiasco.
A president can ignore these factions, but he is supposed to listen to the people. When the people bay for war, a president ignores them at the peril of losing an election. Political parties pay a big role here. They gin up hatred against the other party using media. Use patriotism, etc. Call the other side weak. The people fall for it and start writing their congressmen…
P44 dealt with the aftermath of Iraq. One faction called for compete withdrawal. Another called for the support of democracy. P44 did what presidents do: steered the middle path. Guaranteeing that one faction would call him Chamberlin, while the other called him Hitler.
But don’t understate the people’s dirty hands in all this. The people who consistently call for peace–hippies, Quakers, etc.–are consistently despised in American culture.
P45 and P44 had election promises to withdraw troops from the Middle East. Neither did. There are still troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither P44 or P45 withdrew the troops because they steered the middle course of public opinion. My guess is P46 will do the same thing.
Conversation between base & bomber pilot air support: “You heard me right pilot. I want you to drop your bombs 1/2 kilometer from the front lines then again on the otherside of the front line. Both sides will be cheering their heads off for you.”
The easiest way to get back at Putin is for Americans to agree he tried to rig our elections, then for us to drop the hatchet about the domestic ruckus that followed, and forgive each other. There’s no better revenge, but if you wanted to dig the knife deeper…
We need to tell political party leadership that bipartisan consensus matters, and we refuse to elect any politico that acts otherwise.
But that would entail individuals taking responsibility to control their own emotions. “Control yourself or be controlled by others,” is not a likely political slogan.
Considering I didn’t hear you or anyone with a (D) besides their name utter anything near what you just said when the (R’s) had the House, Senate & WH I’m willing to wager that plan ain’t going to work.
I’m willing to wager it won’t work either. But the reason it won’t work is because the citizens who elect the people with (D) and (R ) next to their names don’t demand they seek compromise.
(FYI: I’m an Independent. I’ve voted for both parties in my life.)
Forgive? No way, I want to see a denazification program that purges the members and former residents of all 3 houses - senate, representative, and white - of those who beat the war drums that lead to the insurrection and attack on congress.
Honestly speaking, how successful do you think such a process will be? How likely would it be that even articulating such an effort would simply drive The Other Side even farther to the extreme you detest?
You are absolutely right, it would drive them to further rioting and extremism. And that is precisely what worries me. It has happened before and probably will again. They are the harbinger of the end of our great experiment and the return of fascism on a scale we haven’t seen since the 1930s.
But, it’s still what I want to see. I want those people removed from any and all public office, their pensions and their right to vote revoked.
And here we go with your leftist rhetoric. This will be another thread that will turn into a shitshow.
I’ll gladly love to see this, as long as at the same time all the politicians condoning, even NURTURING all these cities burning down under looting/rioting the last year be held accountable too.