It's pretty ghastly that people are willing to fabricate rationale for getting into war. I really hope that the Turks dispose of their leaders expediently and forcefully.
Yeah, like US and UK populations voted out their chief warmongers pronto, once it came out that the rationale for getting into the Iraq war was fabricated... oh wait
I'm very sorry but I really don't like that argument. That doesn't make it any less ghastly for others to be like that as well.
The argument you bring seems similar to what people say about the Crimea-Crisis (that 'the west' isn't allowed to complain because of Bosnia). Just because 'the west' interfered illegally in Bosnia, doesn't give Russia a free pass to do so as well.
I was just responding to the patronising tone of the comment above, showing how it's rarely the case that such manipulation is directly punished by the masses.
Not really. The particular concern about limiting future expansion of European colonialism at its center (inasfar as the part of it that might justify US action is concerned) hasn't really been a concern really since the early 20th Century, though the name was dusted off by some (misleadingly) in the Cold War for applications of the Kennedy Doctrine within the Western Hemisphere, and the doctrine was explicitly described as being dead by Secretary of State John Kerry last year.
> It allows for the invasion of foreign country's when the us feels threatened right?
Not as actually articulated by Monroe (in fact, if the country was in Europe, its specifically negated some justifications for involvement).
I think there's a bit of a difference between a fairly length debate about the extent to which statements about weapons of mass destruction were 'sexed up', where the government position is eventually discredited and a Youtube recording of government ministers conspiring to start a war.
There are people here who come from countries that were the target of America's equally fabricated reason to get into WWII. I would love to thank the US government for fabricating that (at the very least blowing one incident way out of proportion). My family has killed people for simply being on the wrong side of that battle, merely to make some profit selling pigs, or repairing plumming. You know what ? They were right too.
The problem with Syria is that the government is in the right. Or at least, it's less wrong. The rebels want to do religious cleansing of the country and the government wants to survive, and it's own ethnic group to survive. Of course Iran, equally being the target of the sunni muslim religious cleansing, supports their not-quite-brothers. Erdogan wants to "help" the rebels because he's on the side that wants to do ethnic and religious cleansing in Syria, and presumably because it would distract from his local problems. The problem in Iraq is the same basic thing. The good thing is that sunni muslim attacks in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan are mostly their actions out of western nations.
But please don't be so stupid as to think they're ok with the US and generally the rest of the world just because they don't want to turn a 5-front war into a 100-front one. And also don't make the mistake of assuming they don't have support in America or don't have massive support in Europe. Both from local muslims living there, and from the governments that are afraid of these mad attacks.
As for Turkey, what do you really expect the leader of a sunni muslim religious party to do, except declare himself caliph and behave like he owns the world ? What exactly do you think he means when he says that "some" parts of sharia should be introduced ? You think he means to stop at "some" ? Really ? Religious freedom ? Sadly there are hundreds of millions of people who believe doing this is the answer to all the world's problems.
Please keep in mind that before Kemal Ataturk, Turkey, then the Ottoman empire, effectively the state of sunni islam that so many muslims are trying to recreate, had waged a 1500-year long war against the Europe, Asia and Africa. Then in WWI allah's caliph was overthrown, all but declared illegal (you wouldn't believe the number of imams killed and threatened in the 1918 - today period), and the war stopped, to be replaced with the cold war. The nightmare scenario is that this original war resumes.
There's a popular conspiracy theory that Roosevelt knew Pearl Harbor was going to happen and allowed it as a pretext for entering the war. No conclusive evidence either way though.
That still makes no sense. Even if one tries and fails to destroy the US Pacific fleet (which, technically, is what happened) that's still an act of war, whether or not the President knew about it.
Ah, yes. In the U.S. we had Operation Northwoods, where not one of those psychopathic "leaders" who concocted it was disposed of, either expediently or forcefully:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
DoD proposal that "called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or other operatives, to commit acts of terrorism in US cities and elsewhere... public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts..."
Well the odds are probably against it. The re-election of Bush in 2004 is one of the most recent instances I can think of where an electorate was more concerned about stability of their country than fabrication of a war. If the majority of the Turkish people are like most western populations they will put their heads down and vote conservatively because they feel threatened by events surrounding them, even if that threat is being manipulated by their own government.
I am not so sure. Kerry was a terrible candidate, the virtual definition of a limousine liberal. Also as the BBC said, he is a serial message bungler, although Bush was not that much better. Someone like Obama could have won in 2004.
Mmm... perhaps. PR needs a simple message. But reality is never simple. You can need to get into a war for very good reasons, without having a clear, simple story to tell the press.