License to Kill

[polly7]

SEPTEMBER 24, 2015

by LUCIANA BOHNE

An indefatigable humanitarian warmonger, Power resents Russia’s opposition to a resolution to bomb the hell out of “atrocities” in Syria, without specifying that the main “atrocity” in her government’s eyes is President Assad.

No, no—it’s her humanitarian concern over the 250,000 Syrian already dead [she means to add more by bombing in their names]; it’s the refugees’ flight she means to stem [by blocking their path with bombs].

Russia is preventing all this humanitarianism: “It’s a Darwinian universe here,” she tells The Guardian. “If a particular body reveals itself to be dysfunctional, then people are going to go elsewhere, and if that happened for more than Syria and Ukraine and you started to see across the board paralysis … it would certainly jeopardise the security council’s status and credibility and its function as a go-to international security arbiter. It would definitely jeopardise that over time.”

Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s UN Ambassador, responded to Power’s allegations by pointing out the obvious:

Some countries were trying to involve the Security Council in regime change operations in Syria and we were telling them that it’s not the business of the Security Council to go into regime change mode. This is a fundamental difference and it’s not the fault of the Security Council that this difference is there.

It certainly isn’t. The task of the United Nations, as per its Charter, is “to prevent the scourge of war”; the task of the Security Council is to resolve disputes, authorizing war only after all other options for peace fail. This awesome responsibility is subject to veto. The veto is a restraining mechanism for members too fond of wars. Besides, nowhere in the Charter does it say that a single member should take it upon itself to go on humanitarian crusades for unilaterally perceived and selectively declared atrocities or genocides, but this option is what the US is beginning to argue for—an option that would permit the removal of the veto in cases of Right to Protect (R2P), the US policy which materialized out of the NATO assault on Yugoslavia. You kill a nation in order to protect it. And Russia is crazy enough to oppose this humanitarian medicine. Legalistic perverts.

Full article: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/24/license-to-kill-2/

[Nitram]

1. Oh Polly, Polly, Polly.

Wanna cracker after your mandatory parroting of Mother Russia's Putin propaganda? You've earned it!

[polly7]

2. Oh, Nitram.

Wanna teeny little medal for your red baiting bullshit? You've earned it.

[Nitram]

3. Thanks, I'll add it to my extensive collection.

But doesn't red-baiting refer to anti-communist propaganda? Is Russia communist again?

[polly7]

4. Russophobia bigotry then.

That works. Bigotry would work just as well, I suppose. And fear-mongering. Just like the Bush years in preparation for Iraq - that shit spread like wild-fire for the weak-minded.

[Chan790]

5. Recognition of the truth...

that Vladimir Putin and his regime is the biggest collection of imperialist assclowns since Dubya Bush isn't russophobia, it's being sane and realistic. Likewise recognizing that the Russian regime under Putin is so criminalistic that it makes Dick Cheney look like Dudley Do-Right isn't russophobic either. Say what you will about Cheney and Bush, they never wink-wink, nudge-nudge gloated about assassinating their journalistic critics. Nor did they use the military to violently crush domestic protests, sentence activists to hard-labor in the tundra, use the police to attempt to round-up and prison-camp homosexuals, or engage in political violence domestically against business rivals of their cronies to enrich their supporters.

Putin is probably the despotic leader Russia has had since the fall of the Czars exceeding even Stalin in every aspect but body-count (I don't think it exceeds his ambition to do so however); his allies, defenders and supporters should have no place at DU. If it were up to me, I'd blanket ban the whole lot of them...they're no better than fascists. Actual fascists, not the play-timey allegations fascism that get flung around here against dipshit conservatives because most people here have never seen actual fascism. It looks a lot like this guy:

[yurbud]

6. even if all of that is true, it's not why our government opposes him

our ally Saudi is worse in just about every way.

Putin wants to control certain ports, military bases, and pipeline routes for economic reasons (good or bad), and our government wants a unipolar world without countries that set their own course or defy our banks and corporations.

If you believe anything else, you need to read some history like THE PRIZE by Daniel Yergin (which won a Pulitzer), OVERTHROW by Steven Kinzer that details the how and why of every foreign government we've violently overthrown, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE by Naomi Klein, and CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HITMAN by John Perkins.

And for good measure, throw in WAR IS A RACKET by two time Medal of Honor winner Smedley Butler.

Wars are about money, resources, and access to markets or cheap labor. The same is true for all countries. The only difference is what color lipstick we put on the pig.

[Chan790]

7. I generally hope the Saudis get their comeupance too.

I actually believe in humanitarian intervention and use of force to effect a better world that neocons give lip service to. I'm well aware of the reasons we actually fight wars and it makes me ill but I still believe that we have need to act as a force for good, whether we have been or not recently.

Edit: you may not have noticed but I generally hold a view that pacifists and isolationists are bad people whose motivations are generally no more benign that those of the neocons they oppose.