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Category: Global Politics
The World Sheriff— or Rogue Nation?
Sommmmebody stop mmmmmeee!
(Original image may surprise you.)
Congressman Alan Grayson is catching flack for his arguments against our intervention in Syria.
Grayson sums it up like this:
First, it’s not our responsibility.
Secondly, whatever we do won’t actually accomplish anything useful.
Third, it’s expensive.
And fourth, it’s dangerous.
Let’s clarify.
First, it’s not only our responsibility, it’s every nation’s responsibility.
Secondly, if we do something on our own, we won’t accomplish anything useful, but we will create even more global animosity towards the United States.
Third, yes, bloody expensive.
Fourth, dangerous, foolish, and criminal.
Here is Grayson’s DontAttackSyria.com petition:
“The Administration is considering intervening in the Syrian civil war. We oppose this. There’s no vital national security involved. We are not the world’s policeman, nor its judge and jury. Our own needs in America are great, and they come first. The death of civilians is always regrettable, and civil war is regrettable, but no Americans have been attacked, and no American allies have been attacked. The British Parliament understandably has voted not to join in any attack. Notably, defense contractor Raytheon’s stock is up 20% in the last 60 days. It seems that nobody wants US intervention in Syria except the military-industrial complex. I oppose US military intervention in Syria. Join me.”
Ban-Ki-moon, United Nations Secretary-General, said this Tuesday:
“The use of force is lawful only when in exercise of self-defense in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter and/or when the Security Council approves such action. That is the firm principle of the United Nations.”
Grayson and others are right: we “are not the world’s policeman.” But our membership in the United Nations means we are a cosignatory to a document designed to ensure world law and order, and there are rules, man. . .
If we act unilaterally, or outside of our obligations to the member nations, we are acting as a rogue nation, and committing another* war crime.
It’s time to start demonstrating we can walk the walk of a nation dedicated to world peace. And that means acting in consort with the decision of United Nations, and then helping to see their legal mandates are carried out. That means ALL nations have to contribute either boots (with people wearing them), equipment, etc., or MONEY.
It’s time for abandoning the twin sophistries of sovereignty and self-determination. The nations of the world will finally begin to enjoy peace when they freely surrender their respective sovereignties into the hands of a truly global government— the sovereignty of the brotherhood of mankind. In this world state, the small nations will be as powerful as the great, even as a small state like Rhode Island has its two senator just the same as the populous state of New York or huge area of Texas.
Global sovereignty is the only sovereignty that will prevent global wars— nothing else can. Global wars will go on until the government of mankind is created. The nations of the world have not possessed real sovereignty; they never have had a sovereignty which could protect them from the ravages and devastations of world wars.
In the creation of the global government of mankind, the nations are not giving up sovereignty so much as they are actually creating a real, bona fide, and lasting world sovereignty, which will henceforth be fully able to protect them from all war. Local affairs will be handled by local governments; national affairs, by national governments; international affairs will be administered by global government.
And under a world government, the individual will enjoy far more liberty. Today, the citizens of the great powers— US— are taxed, regulated, and controlled oppressively, and much of the present interference with our individual liberties will vanish when the national governments are willing to trustee their sovereignty as regards international affairs, into the hands of a true global government.
Under global government ALL national groups will be afforded a real opportunity to realize and enjoy the personal liberties of genuine democracy. The fallacy of self-determination will be ended. With global regulation of money and trade will come a new era of world-wide peace.
There simply is no better way to world peace.
You cannot prevent nations going to war as long as they remain infected with the delusional virus of national sovereignty. Internationalism is a step in the right direction. An international police force will prevent many minor wars, but it will not be effective in preventing major wars, conflicts between the great military governments of earth.
—The Urantia Book
*Okay, we all can agree poison gas is a Weapon of Mass Destruction. But so is a hail storm of cruise missiles. It’s time to outlaw ALL war.
Misanthropic Sociopaths
Incorrect order from bored shitless to arrogant fuck Misanthropic Sociopaths: Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, Chevron CEO John Watson, Shell President Marvin Odum, Conoco-Phillips CEO Jim Mulva, BP America Chairman Lamar McKay.
MITT ME YET?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17bbM2yznI0[/youtube]
Humanity marches on;
you can fight it—
or you can fight for it.
Change will come with or without you.
Risky Business (Part One)
President Obama accused Mitt Romney of “being all over the map.” While that is metaphorically true, underscoring as it does Romney’s attempts to impose his notions of American exceptionalism on the rest of the world, it also has a literal component— geography.
ROMNEY:
“Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea.”
Er, Willard, any 7th grade geography student knows better than that. Ever heard of The Persian Gulf? The 97,000 sq miles of ocean that is the most strategically important waterway in the world?
At some 650 miles in length, Iran’s coastal exposure is about half as large as the entire West Coast of the United States (1293 miles). Additionally— we hate to break it to you— but Syria and Iran don’t currently share a border. There’s a little country called Iraq separating the two.
Maybe it’s the word “Persian” that’s throwing you. Long before Iran was known as Iran it was called— wait for it— Persia. As in The Persian Empire, which was one of the world’s largest empires, thanks in large part to— wait for it— its navy.
Xerxes, Immortals, and Persian Naval Forces at Salamis observing the Naval Battle.
Maybe you were thinking about what the map of the Middle East looked like 2500 years ago, when the Persian Empire extended to the Eastern Mediterranean and included modern day Syria. You really should trade in your old Risk game board for an updated map of the world. If you do find yourself in a position to bomb Iran, you might want to locate it on modern map first. Just sayin’.
On a related note, you decry the number of US naval vessels as being less than what we had during World War I, using that little factoid to criticize Obama as somehow being weak on defense. As President Obama was quick to point out, you seem to be unfamiliar with the concept of capability, quipping that we have less “horses and bayonets” in our arsenal as well. Would you really trade one modern warship for two or three WWI vessels?
A poster of numerous U.S. Navy vessels sailing in New York Harbor during World War I entitled
“Uncle Sam’s Big Fighting Ships.”
I’d be willing to bet that a single modern day missile cruiser, armed with over the horizon radar and enough Harpoon missiles, could destroy the entire fleet pictured above in less time than it would take your car elevator to fill up your garage.
The last thing we need is a geographically challenged, militarily ignorant Commander in Chief who thinks that Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe.” (I hear that Sarah Palin‘s contract with Fox News is up at the end of the year. Maybe you can hire her to keep an eye on the Ruskies for us.)
You know, Mitt, if for some ineffable reason, the real Powers-That-Be determine we haven’t suffered enough on this Veil of Tears, and you end up being installed as the leader of the free world, I fear that you won’t be able to distinguish the game of Risk from the real thing.
———–
To be continued. Part II will spotlight Romney’s bogus tough talk on China, featuring his personal investment in a Chinese sweat shop.
Metamorphosis Mitt
President Obama schools Metamorphosis Mitt on the nature of modern warfare
During last night’s final presidential debate, it soon became apparent that, in the arena of foreign policy, Willard Mitt Romney is playing fantasy football while President Obama is grinding out the real thing.
Obama is studying the opposition, meeting with his coaches, drawing up and revising game plans as circumstances require. He chooses the starters, putting his faith in his players whether they are in the State Department, the CIA, or the military, then sends them out to the field. He trusts in their professionalism and experience to move the ball forward, to stop the opposition, and ultimately, win the game.
Meanwhile, Romney is just making shit up as he goes along, shifting positions faster than a fantasy football fan/atic trades his virtual players. He even threw most of his foreign policy advisers under the bus, some 70% of whom are Bushie neocons, including chicken hawks like Dan Senor and Robert Kagan who’ve never seen a war they wouldn’t start or send somebody else’s kids to fight. Heck, Romney tacked so far to the left that he sounded like he was channeling John Lennon:
“…[O]ur purpose is to make sure the world is more — is peaceful. We want a peaceful planet.”
Even with plenty of advanced warning to his advisers that he was going to shake his mighty, all-forgiving etch a sketch once again, John Bolton’s head must have exploded, if even out of just one side.
On record for criticizing Obama’s decision to set a 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan? No problemo. Just inhale a heady dose of Romnesia , and voila– Romney is suddenly on the same page as Obama, despite his earlier characterization that setting a withdrawal deadline was a grievous strategic flaw that only empowered the enemy.
But it wasn’t just Obama’s Afghanistan policy that Romney suddenly found himself embracing. (A growing majority of Americans are sick to death of the longest war in US history, so that has to be counted as a no-brainer.) Add Willard’s support for the Administration’s role in the overthrow of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s Mohamar Qadaffi; the killing of Usama bin Laden, despite the violation of Pakistani sovereignty that previously had Willard’s magic underwear in such an excruciating twist; the cautious approach to the civil war in Syria; the imposition of increasingly ruinous sanctions against Iran; the handling of the Benghazi incident; and other gimmees like unconditional support for Israel and the increasing use of killer drones around the world—Obama and Romney might just as well have been kissing cousins.
The political calculation of Romney’s debate strategy is painfully obvious. While maybe a million people at any one time are exposed to a given campaign speech or a targeted media buy, alight as they are with inflammatory, hyperbolic rhetoric, the number of people tuning into any one of the four televised debates is [at least] an order of magnitude greater. A perfect venue to re-invent a candidate from a “severe conservative” into a controlled, reasonable moderate that would appeal to undecided voters, including a large swathe of the coveted female voter demographic, with whom Obama continues to enjoy a substantial lead.
Gag me with a bayonet.
[image found here.]
