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I think I might disagree with Biden on expelling Putin from the G20 (1 Viewer)

Buckeyes85 said:
Do you really think Putin will be showing up anywhere outside Russia anytime in the foreseeable future? I don't.
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I don't, but I think we should open the door.
 
arresting a head of state is not war material if a nation wants to remain economically active.
 
GW had to be careful where he traveled ........
 
Razoo said:
GW had to be careful where he traveled ........
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He has, but unfortunately the chance of arrest seems low. There's a double standard.
 
Craig234 said:
Some of us would have cheered to see him tried fairly internationally. Since we didn't try him fairly here.
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Dubya and Obama are BFF's. plus BHO is a war criminal too, so.
 
Craig234 said:
Some of us would have cheered to see him tried fairly internationally. Since we didn't try him fairly here.
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You'd cheer for if all conservatives were dragged away to gulags so your comment isn't suprising.
 
multivita-man said:
I couldn't stand GWB but he wasn't a war criminal.
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I think knowingly launching an illegal war makes one a war criminal. There's a lot more similarity between the war on Iraq and the war on Ukraine than you might have appreciated so far. It's not about Iraq having a tyrant versus Ukraine being an innocent democracy, it's about invasion and suffering of the country attacked.
 
Some government or something with integrity should mail P**** a letter saying he might be a big winner in the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes.
 
Antiwar said:
Some government or something with integrity should mail P**** a letter saying he might be a big winner in the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes.
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His hundreds of billions of dollars say otherwise.
 
spud_meister said:
What has Putin done to make him a war criminal that Bush didn't?
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Mainly targeting hospitals, children and residential houses? Shutting people inside cities refusing to let the civilians out or let food and water in? Fireing at them when they try to flee at agreed ceasefire, use of vaccum bombs, forcibly relocated close to 400,000 citizens of another country to an island outside Japan (concentration camp?) ......

Juks said:
Okay here comes a long one so I’ll post it in two posts. I translated a story about a women who escaped in the column of cars that , I believe, are the only people that has escaped Mariupol........
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Binary_Digit said:
He lied us into an unprovoked war and sanctioned the torture of detainees.
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I don't think he lied; I think he was lied to. That being said, he probably wanted to believe the lies he was being told and didn't want to listen to the counter-narratives. He's certainly not scot-free innocent, either. I just don't think he's a war criminal. He certainly didn't direct deliberate bombing of civilian targets as Putin most certainly has.

Understand that I think Bush was an awful president - one of the worst in American history.
 
spud_meister said:
What has Putin done to make him a war criminal that Bush didn't?
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Putin almost certainly has prosecuted a war that incontrovertibly targets civilians. Bush, by contrast, almost certainly did not do that. I couldn't stand Bush and I opposed the *illegal* invasion of Iraq myself. I think the U.S. collectively violated international law. But it's just appallingly inaccurate to compare what Bush did to what Putin's doing now, at least on a personal level.
 
multivita-man said:
I don't think he lied; I think he was lied to.
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That's like saying trump just believed people lying to him that the election was stolen.

multivita-man said:
That being said, he probably wanted to believe the lies he was being told and didn't want to listen to the counter-narratives. He's certainly not scot-free innocent, either. I just don't think he's a war criminal. He certainly didn't direct deliberate bombing of civilian targets as Putin most certainly has.
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He ordered an illegal war.
 
Does Russia even qualify for the G20 these days?
 
Craig234 said:
That's like saying trump just believed people lying to him that the election was stolen.



He ordered an illegal war.
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strategic-errors-of-monumental-proportions/

We cannot have the slightest understanding of the likely consequences of proposed changes in our war policy without relating them to the strategic context. Here are the four major realities that define that context:

1. Confusion about war aims and US interests. The president stated three war aims clearly and repeatedly:

* the destruction of Iraqi WMD;
* the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and
* the creation of a liberal democratic Iraq.

The first war aim is moot because Iraq had no WMD.

The second was achieved by late Spring 2003. Today, people are waking up to what was obvious before the war — the third aim has no real prospects of being achieved even in ten or twenty years, much less in the short time anticipated by the war planners. Implicit in that aim was the belief that a pro-American, post-Saddam regime could be established. This too, it should now be clear, is most unlikely.

Finally, is it in the US interest to have launched a war in pursuit of any of these aims? And is it in the US interest to continue pursuing the third? Or is it time to redefine our aims? And, concomitantly, to redefine what constitutes victory?

2. The war has served primarily the interests of Iran and al-Qaeda, not American interests.

We cannot reverse this outcome by more use of military force in Iraq. To try to do so would require siding with Sunni leaders and the Ba’athist insurgents against pro-Iranian Shi’ite groups. The Ba’athist insurgents constitute the forces most strongly opposed to Iraqi cooperation with Iran. At the same time, our democratization policy has installed Shi’ite majorities and pro-Iranian groups in power in Baghdad, especially in the ministries of interior and defense.

Moreover, our counterinsurgency operations are, as unintended (but easily foreseeable) consequences, first, greater Shi’ite openness to Iranian influence and second, al-Qaeda’s entry into Iraq and rooting itself in some elements of Iraqi society.

3. On the international level, the war has effectively paralyzed the United States militarily and strategically, denying it any prospect of revising its strategy toward an attainable goal.

As long as US forces remained engaged in Iraq, not only will the military costs go up, but also the incentives will decline for other states to cooperate with Washington to find a constructive outcome. This includes not only countries contiguous to Iraq but also Russia and key American allies in Europe. In their view, we deserve the pain we are suffering for our arrogance and unilateralism.

4. Overthrowing the Iraqi regime in 2003 insured that the country would fragment into at least three groups; Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Kurds. In other words, the invasion made it inevitable that a civil war would be required to create a new central government able to control all of Iraq. Yet a civil war does not insure it. No faction may win the struggle.

A lengthy stalemate, or a permanent breakup of the country is possible. The invasion also insured that outside countries and groups would become involved. Al-Qaeda and Iran are the most conspicuous participants so far, Turkey and Syria less so. If some of the wealthy oil-producing countries on the Arabian Peninsula are not already involved, they are most likely to support with resources any force in Iraq that opposes Iranian influence.

original.antiwar.com

Strategic Errors of Monumental Proportions - Antiwar.com

Text of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 18 January 2007 Good afternoon, Senator Biden, and members of the committee. It is a - Gen. (ret.) William E. Odom for Antiwar.com
original.antiwar.com original.antiwar.com

GW held a personal grudge against Bin Laden = not a secret
 
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Razoo said:
strategic-errors-of-monumental-proportions/

original.antiwar.com

Strategic Errors of Monumental Proportions - Antiwar.com

Text of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 18 January 2007 Good afternoon, Senator Biden, and members of the committee. It is a - Gen. (ret.) William E. Odom for Antiwar.com
original.antiwar.com original.antiwar.com

GW held a personal grudge against Bin Laden = not a secret
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bin Laden unrelated to Iraq.
 
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