A Problem From Hell: Why America should prevent every single possible genocide from Rwanda to Romania, from Uganda to Uzbekistan, everywhere everytime

[whitehall]

Through the years mostly democrat administrations have used the CIA as a tool in foreign political situations but the CIA has been on the wrong side in many cases. Bill Clinton decided to intervene in a thousand year old conflict in Yugoslavia with a bombing campaign that was intended to force the surrender of one man who mysteriously died in prison. The media loved it because they supported Clinton but in most respects it was a reckless failure.

 

[basquebromance]

"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare." - Muhammad Ali

 

[BackAgain]

A Problem From Hell: Why America should prevent every single possible genocide from Rwanda to Romania, from Uganda to Uzbekistan, everywhere everytime​

That thread headline and thesis is strange.

It wasn’t that many years ago that the standard liberal argument for US withdrawal from foreign conflicts (such as the Vietnam war) was simply stated:

“We aren’t the policeman for the world.”

That much was actually true. It isn’t our job. It never was our job. Who the fuck elected us to play the role of world cop?

More fundamentally, why should we have that responsibility or ethical obligation? While we might all agree that the hideous things done to “other” people in foreign lands is horrific, what is the moral or philosophical basis to say that ‘we have the obligation to sacrifice our people and resources to remedy the plight of others?’

 

[basquebromance]

"Why are you so interested in the Armenians anyway? You are a Jew, these people are Christians.... What have you to complain of? Why can't you let us do with these Christians as we please?", Talaat asked

Morgenthau replied, "You don't seem to realize that I am not here as a Jew but as the American Ambassador.... I do not appeal to you in the name of any race or religion but merely as a human being."

Talaat looked confused. "We treat the Americans all right, too," he said. "I don't see why you should complain."

"We have been reproached for making no distinction between the innocent Armenians and the guilty," Talaat later told a German reporter. "But that was utterly impossible, in view of the fact that those who were innocent today might be guilty tomorrow."

Instead of hiding his achievements, as later perpetrators would do, Talaat boasted of them. According to Morgenthau, he liked to tell friends, "I have accomplished more toward solving the Armenian problem in three months than Abdul Hamid accomplished in thirty years!" (The Turkish sultan Abdul Hamid had killed some 200,000 Armenians in 1895-1896.) Talaat once asked Morgenthau whether the United States could get the New York Life Insurance Company and Equitable Life of New York, which for years had done business with the Armenians, to send a complete list of the Armenian policyholders to the Turkish authorities. "They are practically all dead now and have left no heirs," Talaat said. "The Government is the beneficiary now."

Morgenthau was incensed at the request and stormed out of Talaat's office. He again cabled back to Washington, imploring his higher-ups to take heed:

I earnestly beg the Department to give this matter urgent and exhaustive consideration with a view to reaching a conclusion which may possibly have the effect of checking [Turkey's] Government and certainly provide opportunity for efficient relief which now is not permitted. It is difficult for me to restrain myself from doing something to stop this attempt to exterminate a race, but I realize that I am here as Ambassador and must abide by the principles of non-interference with the internal affairs of another country.

Morgenthau had to remind himself that one of the prerogatives of sovereignty was that states and statesmen could do as they pleased within their own borders. "Technically," he noted to himself, "I had no right to interfere. According to the cold-blooded legalities of the situation, the treatment of Turkish subjects by the Turkish Government was purely a domestic affair; unless it directly affected American lives and American interests, it was outside the concern of the American Government." The ambassador found this maddening.

The New York Times gave the Turkish horrors steady coverage, publishing 145 stories in 1915. It helped that Morgenthau and Times publisher Adolph Ochs were old friends. Beginning in March 1915, the paper spoke of Turkish "massacres," "slaughter," and "atrocities" against the Armenians, relaying accounts by missionaries, Red Cross officials, local religious authorities, and survivors of mass executions. "It is safe to say," a correspondent noted in July, "that unless Turkey is beaten to its knees very speedily there will soon be no more Christians in the Ottoman Empire." By July 1915 the paper's headlines had begun crying out about the danger of the Armenians' "extinction"

Viscount Bryce, former British ambassador to the United States, pleaded that the United States use its influence with Germany. "If anything can stop the destroying hand of the Turkish Government," Bryce argued, as did the missionaries who had appealed to Morgenthau, "it will be an expression of the opinion of neutral nations, chiefly the judgment of humane America." On October 7, 1915, a Times headline blared, "800,000 ARMENIANS COUNTED DESTROYED." The article reported Bryce's testimony before the House of Lords in which he urged the United States to demonstrate that there were "some crimes which, even now in the convulsion of a great war, the public opinion of the world will not tolerate." By December the paper's headline read, "MILLION ARMENIANS KILLED OR IN EXILE." The number of victims were estimates, as the bodies were impossible to count. Nevertheless, governmental and nongovernmental officials were sure that the atrocities were "unparalleled in modern times" and that the Turks had set out to achieve "nothing more or less than the annihilation of a whole people."

 

[basquebromance]

A Problem From Hell: Why America should prevent every single possible genocide from Rwanda to Romania, from Uganda to Uzbekistan, everywhere everytime​

That thread headline and thesis is strange.

It wasn’t that many years ago that the standard liberal argument for US withdrawal from foreign conflicts (such as the Vietnam war) was simply stated:

“We aren’t the policeman for the world.”

That much was actually true. It isn’t our job. It never was our job. Who the fuck elected us to play the role of world cop?

More fundamentally, why should we have that responsibility or ethical obligation? While we might all agree that the hideous things done to “other” people in foreign lands is horrific, what is the moral or philosophical basis to say that ‘we have the obligation to sacrifice our people and resources to remedy the plight of others?’

others? we are all human beings! it's the HUMAN race, not the AMERICAN race!

 

[BackAgain]

others? we are all human beings! it's the HUMAN race, not the AMERICAN race!

Oh. So your OP wasn’t arguing that Americans bear the responsibility. Cool story, brah.

If it included everyone then the very people committing atrocities would have to be part of the collective we trying to stop the thing they were doing. Hm. Interesting.

It is interesting though that YOU crafted your own thread headline which specifically referred to America. I think you confused yourself.

 

[basquebromance]

Oh. So your OP wasn’t arguing that Americans bear the responsibility. Cool story, brah.

If it included everyone then the very people committing atrocities would have to be part of the collective we trying to stop the thing they were doing. Hm. Interesting.

It is interesting though that YOU crafted your own thread headline which specifically referred to America. I think you confused yourself.

America is God, and the rest are mere mortals. God should help helpless people in their time of need. i thought America was a "Christian nation"...that's BS if it doesn't help it's fellow human beings just because they're not American..."Christian nation" or "hypocrite nation"?

 

[BackAgain]

America is God, and the rest are mere mortals. God should help helpless people in their time of need. i thought America was a "Christian nation"...that's BS if it doesn't help it's fellow human beings just because they're not American..."Christian nation" or "hypocrite nation"?

Your self-contradiction in your two consecutive posts seriously undercuts any hope you have of being taken as serious. Or as honest.

 

[basquebromance]

Armenian Genocide Article | TURKISH OFFICIAL DENIES ATROCITIES

from the NYT article:

Djelal Munif Bey, the Turkish Consul General in NY, in an official statement to THE TIMES yesterday declared the report made public a week ago last Sunday by the American Committee on Armenian Atrocities, which asserted that not in the one thousand years just ended had a people suffered such terrible outrages as are those the Turks are perpetrating upon the Armenians to be a fabrication. The report described the atrocities as being officially sanctioned from Constantinople, and it was stated that the situation was one involving an attempt to wipe out an entire race.

THE TIMES yesterday asked Djelal Bey, as the highest Turkish official in New York, if he, as the representative of the ottoman Government, had any reply to make to the charges made by the Armenian Atrocities Committee.

"The daily newspapers have lately been publishing extensive reports of wholesale massacres of Armenians in Turkey, some of them going as far as to state that 800,000 Armenians had been slaughtered in every conceivable and imaginable way.

"THE NEW YORK TIMES, in its issue of Oct. 4, published a report issued by the self-styled 'Committee on Armenian Atrocities, and which was undersigned by a few names, some of them prominent American. This report contained accusations of wholesale murder of woman and children by Turks, basing it assertions on information furnished by some newly arrived missionaries from Turkey, and other reports supposedly received from various sources in Turkey, but whose authors are not disclosed; in other words, reports that are not or could not be substantiate, even though corroborated by Lord Bryce, of atrocity reports fame.

"These wholesale accusations against the Turkish Government and nation were given out to the press without slightest effort being made toward ascertaining the extent of truth there is in them.

"Now what happened is this: When war broke out last year, even before Turkey had joined in on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, the Armenians in Turkey, who dreamed of an independent Armenian, were convinced as were many others, that Germany and her ally would be swept off the map of Europe in six week's time; as a result of this Turkey would be divided among the Allies of the Triple Entente, and an independent Armenia created on what had formerly been Turkish provinces. The Armenians already looked upon this as a foregone conclusion and gave free vent to their feelings.

A secret visit was paid by one of the Buxton brothers, President of the Balkan committees in London to the leaders of the Armenian revolutionary committees in Van, principal town of the Turkish province of that name. He had come down through Tiflis, Caucasus, where he had held conferences with the Armenian committees of Russia and discussed plans for a concerted action with those of Turkey against the Turkish Government. These revolutionary committees then became active, and armed by the Russians, helped the latter to capture Van, which is not very far from the Russian frontier.

"Immediately after, under the auspices of the Russians, an autonomous Armenian Government was established in Van and a man called 'Aram' assumed its Governorship--New York papers published some time ago an appeal sent to America for financial help under the signature of this rebel (who signed himself 'Governor of Van') and that of the Armenian Bishop of Van.

"To put it briefly, the Armenians of that section of the empire had risen with arms in hand against Turkish authority, in favor of Turkey's most bitter foe, Russia, and therefore, could not be regarded otherwise than rebels. Of course, at such a time, when it is a matter of life and death to the Turkish Empire, it cannot in good faith be expected of the Turkish troops, after the recapture of Van by them and the ejection of the Russians, that they treat these revolutionists with gloved hands, especially when they offered armed resistance. All those, who have been killed were of that rebellious element who were caught red-handed or while otherwise committing traitorous acts against the Turkish Government, and not women and children, as some of these fabricated reports would have the Americans believe.

"Furthermore, in order to prevent the leaking of valuable military information into enemy channels, the Turkish Government deemed it imperative to remove into the interior of the country those suspected elements which jeopardized the safety of the whole Empire.

"There may have been cases where inoffensive people shared the fate of the offender, and I am not among the last to deplore such unfortunate occurrences. Unfortunately, in times of war such a discrimination is utterly impossible, and it is not alone the offender who suffers the penalty of his act, but also the innocent whom he drags with him.

"However much to be deplored may be these harrowing events in the last analysis, we can but say that the Armenians have only themselves to blame.

"I do not think this moment an opportune one to discuss the underlying motives of the missionary societies which are now showing themselves so bitterly anti-Turkish and are advertising through the New York dailies a mass meeting for next Sunday to denounce the Turkish Government and people. Apparently, these same societies, whose headquarters are at 70 Fifth Avenue, are also the originators of the above mentioned report which was published in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Oct. 4. But their motives are known to us and may come to light in a not far distant future."

 

[basquebromance]

Your self-contradiction in your two consecutive posts seriously undercuts any hope you have of being taken as serious. Or as honest.

you fabricated the contradiction.

we are all human beings, but the strong of us should help the weak of us, not base our help on whether someone is from the same country as we are, that's an UNSERIOUS and DISHONEST excuse to do NOTHING for your fellow man

 

[22lcidw]

America is God, and the rest are mere mortals. God should help helpless people in their time of need. i thought America was a "Christian nation"...that's BS if it doesn't help it's fellow human beings just because they're not American..."Christian nation" or "hypocrite nation"?

The United States went off the Christian track several decades ago. The godless state now prevails. And it does not fit in the plans of that state to stop genocides at this point unless for political gain. We do spend a lot of money on helping people. Even with all of the rancor against the white race. In a couple of decades when they are top dog, the Asians will show us how they deal with policing. It will be fun.

 

[BackAgain]

you fabricated the contradiction.

Nope. Your headline said one thing. Then I called you on it and you protested like a virgin at the prom after party. It wasn’t about America you claimed. America isn’t a “race” you said. But I noted that you were talking about the American responsibility. Now suddenly you were justifying why it was about America.

You simply aren’t honest.

we are all human beings, but the strong of us should help the weak of us, not base our help on whether someone is from the same country as we are, that's an UNSERIOUS and DISHONEST excuse to do NOTHING for your fellow man.

Had you wished to make the “argument” you now seem to be attempting to cobble together, you could have said so from the outset.

Your latest quibble and nonsensical blather aside, let’s just speak plainly. Why did you focus on America in your own thread headline? Be succinct if you can.

 

[basquebromance]

Nope. Your headline said one thing. Then I called you on it and you protested like a virgin at the prom after party. It wasn’t about America you claimed. America isn’t a “race” you said. But I noted that you were talking about the American responsibility. Now suddenly you were justifying why it was about America.

You simply aren’t honest.

Had you wished to make the “argument” you now seem to be attempting to cobble together, you could have said so from the outset.

Your latest quibble and nonsensical blather aside, let’s just speak plainly. Why did you focus on America in your own thread headline? Be succinct if you can.

well obviously America is the world's superpower. that doesn't mean China and Russia shouldn't help too. but as an American patriot, my duty is to criticize America. i'm not much of an expert on China or India or other world powers, but i do know American history!

i thought we were realizing TR's dream!

 

[BackAgain]

well obviously America is the world's superpower. that doesn't mean China and Russia shouldn't help too. but as an American patriot, my duty is to criticize America. i'm not much of an expert on China or India or other world powers, but i do know American history!

So it was about America as you initially said in your thread headline (but which you later denied).

Famous question. (Don’t feel obliged to answer.)

“Were you lying then, or are you lying now?”

 

[basquebromance]

 

[basquebromance]

So it was about America as you initially said in your thread headline (but which you later denied).

Famous question. (Don’t feel obliged to answer.)

“Were you lying then, or are you lying now?”

what's the lie again? this message board is about AMERICA. if you want to talk about other countries, move to Cuba!

 

[BackAgain]

what's the lie again? this message board is about AMERICA. if you want to talk about other countries, move to Cuba!

It was indeed about America. So why you later denied it is a mystery. You dolt.

See your own post number 45. A Problem From Hell: Why America should prevent every single possible genocide from Rwanda to Romania, from Uganda to Uzbekistan, everywhere everytime

 

[basquebromance]

It was indeed about America. So why you later denied it is a mystery. You dolt.

try starting a topic in the politics section about a country other than America...see how long that lasts. we're supposed to discuss AMERICA. i play by the rules. you should try that

 

[BackAgain]

try starting a topic in the politics section about a country other than America...see how long that lasts. we're supposed to discuss AMERICA. i play by the rules. you should try that

Your Deflection is futile.

You created a thread asserting that it is America that should do something. I asked about whether America is the world’s policeman. Your reply was that you weren’t talking about America. (Post 45).

I then said of course you were talking about America.

Since then you’ve become unhitched.

You aren’t “playing by the rules” at all.

If you want to make a thread about some alleged American responsibility, you lying tool, then don’t deny it.

Speaking of which: is America the world’s policeman or not?

 

[basquebromance]

Your Deflection is futile.

You created a thread asserting that it is America that should do something. I asked about whether America is the world’s policeman. Your reply was that you weren’t talking about America. (Post 45).

I then said of course you were talking about America.

Since then you’ve become unhitched.

You aren’t “playing by the rules” at all.

If you want to make a thread about some alleged American responsibility, you lying tool, then don’t deny it.

Speaking of which: is America the world’s policeman or not?

was Jesus "the world's policeman" because he spread Christianity around the world?