The Mueller investigation.

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Quantum Quack, Feb 17, 2018.

  1. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    I like this "advisorr" very much, because of the many inventions of various "Putin advisors" in Western propaganda. If you cannot quote Putin about something you want to accuse him, but some whatever patriotic guy, important enough that Putin may have heard about him or even personally met him, he becomes a "Putin advisor".
    Given its predictable results - weakening essentially any remains of US soft power - I sort of support some aspects of Trump's foreign policy. If you are unable to see any differences between Bolton and Trump, that's your failure. I see them, they are quite obvious.
    An opposition of Clinton against a NATO aggression would have made it impossible. That means Clinton is responsible for this war, 100%, and a war criminal. Simple adherence to international law, which forbids wars which are not in self-defense or approved by the UNSC, would have been sufficient to justify an opposition.
    And this is already what I name defense of a war of aggression by you. NATO started this war. That there were also some NATO-paid Albanian gangs terrorizing Serbian population and corresponding Serbian actions against those terrorists does not change the fact that such a civil war does not justify the NATO aggression.
    This is what is the standard idea about your responsibility if you are the president of the most powerful military in the world. You will be responsible for every war started during your time. If the current Reps have not yet given up such basic ideas, fine. This does not make them worse.
    What's that? As if I have blamed some Dems for starting the Iraq wars. Whatever you write about me seems to be a lie - at least it is very hard to find exceptions.

    Ok, as expected by a totalitarian propagandist. No discussion without personal attacks based on lies.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Not if you didn't start it.
    The President is not "president of the military", btw. That's not how US government is set up.
    It didn't.
    NATO did not start the Kosovo War. That is historical fact.
    Yep. You have bothsided the Iraq War, for example, consistently.
    They are worse - much worse - for the reasons posted.
    If you could see them, you would not post falsehoods about them - such as that Trump's foreign policy "changed" when he nominated his ally and advisor and ideological companion Bolton to official position.
    It did not.
    I have never used the term "Putin advisor", quoted any alleged Putin advisor, or blamed anyone other than Putin for Russian aggression and coercion and annexation - such as in the Syrian civil war, or Ukrainian self-governance. All of my posting about Putin has been based on events - stuff that happened, not stuff that somebody said.

    Why are you trying to bullshit about Putin, when faced with the Mueller investigation of your "businessman" and "nationalist" Trump? Is the connection between Putin and Trump - as presented in Mueller's report - obvious to you as well?
     
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  5. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Given that after 1942 there was not a single official declaration of war by the US, those who decide about starting wars do not care anyway about international laws and constitutions. So forget about the formal setup.

    If you become a president of a state which is a participant of an illegitimate war, and you don't stop it, you are responsible for the warcrimes committed during your time of being a president. Last but not least, you have the power to resign if you appear unable to stop the war based on your legal or whatever powers.
    It would have if it had existed. Clinton did nothing to prevent this war, even if he had the power (at least the power to resign in protest). So he is fully responsible for this war.
    No, it is a lie. Civil wars, as well as anti-terrorist operations, are interior affairs of a country, and if a foreign state starts to participate without the approval of the legal powers of the state, this is the start of the war. Orwellian newspeak naming such wars "humanitarian actions" or so do not count.
    Don't sidestep. The discussion was about who started the Iraq war. Once the Iraq war was not ended by Obama, Obama is responsible in part for the Iraq war as a whole, but this part is well-defined by the time when he was president, certainly not for starting the war.
    Learn to read. This was not a personal accusation, it was just an illustration of the meaning of "advisor" in modern propaganda wars. It means nothing.
     
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  7. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_and_the_Iraq_War

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Assistance_Mission_for_Rwanda

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide#United_Nations

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_678#Sticks_and_carrots
    there is a tone to your sentence that sounds like it is asserting a different state of process.
    the use of the word "war" in how you have used it seems problematic.

    the potential omission of inference labeling the state of not being at war, to be a sense of a negative concept of national position seems all very iron age and post industrial revolution.

    inserted to then undermine the real meaning which you have used in your opening sentence seems elusive in your precise meaning.

    part of the rub, is if there is no state of war, then there is no war crime
    so it sounds like your offering up a pre roasted meal as raw for all to cook by themselves.
    when the implied real meaning is already set up to mean something else.

    when and how would that stop a country going to war ?
    it would not.
    so your moral solution is incapable of stopping the thing that you think the moral position should control
    claytons moral authority of power ?

    i wonder if you lose your intended meaning in attempting to over simplify concepts to people who have no real ability to track the moral compass of normative national identity moral power dynamics, be that in the civilian appetite for death OR loss, in varying forms.
     
  8. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    If it wasn't for all the lies on Twitter and Facebook by Trump and his cronies, we'd be able to spot the Russian lies.

    As it is the Russians are winning the mis-information war.
    Trump is assisting them, whether he knows it or not. Not cool.
     
  9. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    The tone is quite clear. A civilized state would have to follow the rules, and part of the rules is that if one starts a war one has to declare it. UN declarations can justify a war, which would be forbidden without such a declaration, for example against Iraq to liberate Kuweit, fine. But if you attack after this Iraq without a declaration of war, it is also a violation of international law. A minor one, but for a nation which pretends to be the leader of the world even minor violations should be a no-go.
    If there is no war declaration, it does not follow that there is no war and no war crimes. Not declaring but starting a war is simply a first criminal act.
    If it doesn't, so what? Once you have resigned because you could not stop that war, you have no moral responsibility for this war. Else you have a personal moral responsibility.

    I was unable to make sense of what I have deleted without comment. If you think that classical international law is very iron age, all I can say is that this seems to be quite popular in the West today. And it is IMHO an element of the degeneration of the West. In fact, it is the iron age where no declaration of war was necessary, one could simply start attacking.
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    It was an attempt to deflect attention from the falsehood of your claims, by drawing an equivalence between the true claims you were responding to and some irrelevant falsehoods in other contexts by other people.
    Of course it "means nothing" - bs is not posted for its meaning.
    That's silly. Presidents of many countries - such as the US - do not have such dictatorial powers.
    Nobody was talking about the "formal setup". You claimed that Clinton started the Kosovo War, and extended that claim to an equally false assertion of equivalence between Dems and Reps in the starting of wars. That is all bs, and most of it simply false. There has been no Dem equivalent of the Iraq Wars started by post-Reagan Republicans, for example.
    Now Clinton is responsible for the civil war in former Yugoslavia because he didn't resign when the former Yugoslavians started it? This is getting comical.
    No, it wasn't.
    Not all civil wars are "interior affairs" of a country. The Kosovo War certainly was not - even ignoring the arms suppliers etc four or five countries were involved, armies crossing national boundaries were involved, ethnic cleansing was involved, and NATO treaties were involved - remember that international law you continually invoke when it suits you.
    And they start when they start, not when one particular foreign power first intervenes.

    And they are started by the people who first plan and act to impose military force and start them - like Trump, in Venezuela and increasingly in Mexico, who is continuing the 1981 + Republican policy of substituting military and paramilitary force for diplomacy in dealing with mining and fossil fuel regions the Republican financial base covets. (Notice that Blackwater is back in action in Iraq, another reversal of the Obama demilitarization efforts).

    That is in addition to the various other illegal and unapproved actions that constitute essentially the whole of Trump's governance so far, some of which the Mueller report documents.
     
  11. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    First of all, the moral responsibility for the war crimes of some state have all the political leaders. Then, I'm not aware of any president without the power to resign. Last but not least, the Commander in Chief of the US Army is the President.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_the_President_of_the_United_States#Commander-in-Chief
    It is only your reply which is getting comical. Clinton is responsible for the NATO aggression against Serbia. A clear case of distortion, here is what was the context:
    (That there may be, additionally, also some responsibility for supporting the terrorist UCK is another question. The responsibility would be, in this case, for supporting those terrorists, and would have nothing to do with the begin of the civil war itself.)
    There was no Serbian aggression against any NATO member, thus, the NATO treaties were not involved. There was no UNSC resolution to justify the NATO aggression against Serbia, thus, it was a case of illegal aggression. Ethnic cleansing was involved only in Western propaganda fantasies, but this is even irrelevant because the beloved R2P requires UNSC approval.

    If you want to play word games about "start of the war", replace all that I have written with "start of the NATO intervention".
     
  12. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Let's just apply the logic you invoke against Ukraine. The government of Serbia under Slob Milosevic violated both domestic and international laws and implemented an ethnic genocide against the Albanians of Kosovo, thereby delegitimizing itself under international law. Therefore Kosovo had the legal right to disregard the illegal dictats of the illegitimate Serbian national government, form its own regional government and invite NATO in to kick the crap out of Serbia's Slavic fascists and their dumbass insecure Russian supporters.
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Not equivalently.
    Partly - including limiting its nature and scope.
    Clinton did not start the Kosovo War.
    You made the false claim, you played the word games, you fix it.

    One way for you to fix things would be to quit trying to derail the topic into bs and irrelevancy: The Mueller report is about Trump's behavior, especially - its assigned primary focus - Trump's obstruction of justice.
     
  14. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    And tax evasion for taxes due on 1 billion dollars, written off as losses.
     
  15. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    Only in Western fantasies. Those fantasies are irrelevant because there is a well-defined institution which establishes such situations in international law, namely the UNSC. The NATO members, being also UN members, have accepted this superiority of the UNSC in such matters and therefore have to follow it.
    I don't care about what the legal rights of the UCK terrorists have been. According to Serbian law, they had no such rights. But in principle, I agree that every region of a country has the moral right to declare their sovereignty and to split away from the state.

    If a state is, after such a declaration of independence of some part, in a state of civil war, this does not yet change the international status of the territory of the state. Any military actions of the state against the separatists are internal police actions and not an act of aggression against other states. Supporting the separatists by open use of the military forces, as done by the NATO against Serbia, constitutes aggression.

    The situation was different in Ukraine in the following sense: The central government was overthrown by a coup, the legitimate president asked Russia for military support. There was no such coup in Serbia. The separatists had legitimate control over the regional parliaments and governments. This control was not damaged by the coup in Kiev. Thus, the governments of the regions were the highest legitimate political entities remaining intact after the coup. The UCK was simply a terrorist and criminal gang, described in such a way even by the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_Liberation_Army writes
    Clinton started (together with the war criminals ruling the other NATO members) at 24 March 1999 the NATO aggression against Serbia.

    To name this aggression "Kosovo war" is quite common, and is not playing word games at all. As long as you distribute here lies and justifications of NATO aggression, I will answer this.
     
  16. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    And what, in your opinion, does that suggest? A crime against humanity or against the US, by a US sectretary of state with the full cooperation of the rest of the western world for no justifiable reason?
    Who are you calling war criminals and why? Can a US Secretary of State make war? How so?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_of_the_NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

    Yes, half the world purposely targeted innocent civilian bystanders, just for the fun of it?
    A strategic move? Civilians pose a military threat? Is it possible those civilians were terrorists? Were you there ?

    Don't lay crap on the table without making clear what you mean. Slander and inuendo mean nothing.
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2019
  17. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    We are talking about US president Bill Clinton, which is the Commander in Chief of the US military and therefore responsible for what the US was doing under his rule, namely bombing Belgrad. That president Bill Clinton acted in cooperation with other rulers of NATO members is obvious. But such criminal cooperation in such aggression does not decrease his personal responsibility, usually greater criminal organizations are considered as even more evil, and organized crime is usually persecuted much harder.

    The justifiable reason is a very simple one, the UN Charta forbids to start wars, except based on UNSC resolutions, and there was no such resolution. Thus, the NATO bombing of Serbia was criminal, a violation of the UN Charta.
     
  18. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Was it necessary in order to protect other people or was this a minor internal political scuffle. You know that Yugoslavia was a peaceful country and no ethnic cleansing was taking place? No other innocent civilians had died before the US and NATO decided to step in?
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2019
  19. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Russia never got UNSC or Ukrainian government approval to intervene in Ukraine, so NATO doesn't need the UNSC's permission to intervene in Kosovo.

    As a party to various international conventions outlawing genocide and other related atrocities, and presumably having laws criminalizing murder and other forms of oppression and discrimination based on ethnicity, by your own logic the Serbian government violated its own laws, thereby delegitimizing itself and leaving local Kosovars as the only legitimate regional authorities.

    Ok then, open military support (admitted to by Putin on national TV) of Russian-speaking terrorists in Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea constitutes Russian aggression.

    President Yanukovych resigned his position by going AWOL and fleeing the country, and he never sought legal approval from Ukraine's elected parliament for any of his Russian machinations. He had no legal authority of any sort to authorize any Russian invasions or military support.

    As far as your support for Russian invasions and your opposition to NATO is concerned, the only difference between what happened in Ukraine and what happened in Serbia is that you're not ethnically Albanian.
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Clinton did not start the Kosovo War.
    The Kosovo intervention by NATO was trivial compared with either of the Iraq Wars.

    Meanwhile, on topic:
    The Mueller report documents evidence of Trump laundering money for the Russian mob.
    That is a violation of international law.
     
  21. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    I don't have to know it. Because the UN Charta prescribes that no war should be started by any country against another country if there is no UNSC resolution allowing this. This prescription does not care about "protecting other innocent civilians", doing such things does not justify war. Similarly, ethnic cleansing justifies a war only if in combination with a UNSC resolution which establishes this. There is none, that means, even if there would have been some ethnic cleansing in reality (not only in Western propaganda) it would not justify the war given the missing UNSC resolution.

    Russia did not need a UNSC resolution, because it did not attack the legitimate government. The legitimate president was at that time in Russia and asked Russia for military support against the fascist coup in Kiev.
    This depends on your Western propaganda assumptions which I do not share. Of course, if you apply my own logic to your fantasies, the results will be fantasies too.

    Anyway, it does not matter if the Serbian government has somehow delegitimized itself. Because this would not justify the NATO war against Serbia too.
    No, because it was legitimized by explicit requests made by the highest legitimate political entities remaining intact after the coup.
    Propaganda fantasy. There is no such possibility for resignation according to the constitution of Ukraine. There was no longer an elected parliament in Kiev after the coup, given that many of the elected members had to flee from Kiev too.
    As a German, I'm not ethnically involved in both conflicts. The German BND heavily supported the UCK terror organization, so, as a German, if this would have played a role, I would have supported the Albanians.

    Clinton started the first war after WW II in Europe, by attacking, together with NATO allies, Serbia. If you prefer to name something different "Kosovo war", your choice.
    I don't care about your US-internal quibbles who is the eviler war criminal. They are all war criminals, which is what matters.
    LOL. International law is not violated by private persons, but by states. Trump has possibly violated some US law with laundering money, but international law is irrelevant here.
     
  22. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    If International law is not violated by private persons, but states, then why do you keep ragging on Clinton at as war criminal. And a head of state cannot be a war criminal to his own people? You have a twisted sense of justice .
     
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  23. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Clinton believes in the American role, inherited after WWII, as a global force for good. Sometimes that means using the military. That's exactly the thing dictators tend to fear, which is why it was twisted into a point of propaganda. International criminals like Putin would like nothing better than to have the US become irrelevant as a global power.
     
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