dajo9 said:
Cal88 said:
Trump run on an non-interventionist platform, but so far he has not kept his promises.
What sycasey said is 100% correct, so I'll just add that most of us with a Cal degree are not surprised at all that Trump lied. The guy has been a known pathological liar for decades. Somehow, you seemed to not realize that and are now talking about promises not kept. I guess the jokes on you.
OK, ok, ok. I'm going to add something else to counter Cal88's stupidity. Obama / Clinton had nothing to do with the start of wars in Libya and Syria. The people of those countries started those wars. I know Cal88 always wants to blame America first, but he is wrong to do so. Obama initiated a bombing campaign to prevent a massacre in Libya. Obama resisted serious efforts, particularly from Republicans, to increase our involvement in Syria. Obama increased bombing in Afghanistan and Pakistan while REDUCING troop levels.
Cal88 hates America and actively supports increasing tension levels within America. I don't talk that way about anybody else who I debate with on this site. I would never say that about wiaf, Odonto, GoldenOne, or even iwantwinners. Cal88 is a special kind of blame America for everything bad. There's a good reason why he and Putin support Trump.
Forgetting about Call88,
I just want to add a little perspective, which I think is meaningful in terms of all our concern about how to deal with some of the monsters that social media has unleashed:
It is maybe fair to say that what really started the debacles in Libya and Syria was, more than anything else, the biggest example of unintended consequences within my memory at least: the combination of:
(a) Obama's Arab Spring Speech, made in an Arab country with a less than democratic government, and which could have been seen as a rallying cry, and
(b) the rise of social media which put theretofore unimaginable organizing power into the hands of pro-democracy elements within the region, which:
In the case of Egypt, failed to have enough real political support compared to the previously organized fundamentalist muslims - Egypt being the original home of that philosophical reaction to the modern world,
In the case of Libya, ran into the absolute lacuna of political organization in the whole country, leaving it open to whatever violent faction could be more violent, and,
In the case of Syria, a situation so dangerous to Shia Nationalism in that majority Sunni country that its Shia minority government (with the support of its military, which I assume had been set up with that in mind), plus the big Shia in the region (Iran) seeing that threat, had no compunction but to start killing every Sunni within Syria - aided majorly by Russia coming in on the Syria side, because all of its own internal enemies (e.g., Chechens and others in the 'Stans who got their independence) were Sunnis, led to the major slaughter and diaspora that only the U.S. had the power to prevent. But nobody in the U.S. had a clue about how to go about doing that.