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11/21/2018 2:10 am  #1


Our Complicity in the Starvation of Yemen

This was one of my main criticisms of the last administration. The more things change … Watch CNN or Fox or MSNBC or any crappy channel. Why is no one reporting about this?!

American foreign policy is so bad I worry we could max-out our credit, Nineveh-style, Sodom & Gomorrah-style. We're not G-d's chosen nation. We weren't charged with a cosmic mission to spread democracy and American values [sic]. That's a weird and dangerous Christian conceit. And I have skeptical friends who believe something even more deranged: the US is on the Right Side of History, whatever that means. They deny the existence of objective goalposts and believe we're leading mankind toward these goalposts. Politics makes people insane. May G-d be more merciful to us than we deserve.

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Last edited by 119 (11/21/2018 2:49 am)

 

11/21/2018 6:15 am  #2


Re: Our Complicity in the Starvation of Yemen

119 wrote:

That's a weird and dangerous Christian conceit.

To be fair, the US has encouraged the worst excesses of a certain Middle Eastern nation and that state is not Christian (clue: it is the only nation on Earth aside from North Korea that possesses illegal nuclear weapons). The entire reason the States are sabre-rattling against Iran is beacuse it would terribley embarassing for them if said alley nation were to strike the first blow.

Last edited by DanielCC (11/21/2018 6:20 am)

 

11/21/2018 12:28 pm  #3


Re: Our Complicity in the Starvation of Yemen

There is no categorical imperative or law of physics committing the US to support everything Israel does. "Stability in the region" on behalf of "the only democracy" is invoked like abracadabra. The Yemen atrocities, however, seem to be part of a bigger pattern. This analysis is from 3 years ago, under a president not known for being pro-Israel:

Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the United States is primarily as a source of cash for weapons. Since October 2010 alone, the Obama administration has agreed to sell $90.4 billion in weapons to the Gulf kingdom, according to the Congressional Research Service. That President Obama would so enthusiastically endorse arming such a brutal authoritarian government is unsurprising, since the United States is by far the leading arms dealer (with 47 percent of the world total) to what an annual State Department report classifies as the world’s “least democratically governed states” CFR

Perhaps "christian conceit" isn't fair or accurate. The US seems intoxicated by the same peyote of hubris that inspired other interventions. Our self-righteousness has a religious vibe to it.

EDIT: Noam Chomsky from 2015.

***

An interesting tangent is the anti-Zionist Orthodox. I've posted links to religious Zionists like Meir Kahane; it's only fair to mention other views. The Three Oaths of the Talmud are a cental issue. 

Last edited by 119 (11/23/2018 6:42 am)

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11/23/2018 9:52 am  #4


Re: Our Complicity in the Starvation of Yemen

The rabidly anti zionist orthodox (Satmar etc) are largely  fools. They don't know how to interpret a page of Talmud. 
The conventional (and correct) view is to criticize secular Zionism and its usurpation of religion, while still supporting the state as such.
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I'll also say that while I wish war wouldn't exist, it unfortunately does and we need to partake in it. The destabilizing forces in the Islamic world need to be crushed, lest they spread to America as they have to Europe .

Last edited by Etzelnik (11/23/2018 9:55 am)


Noli turbare circulos meos.
 

11/23/2018 3:09 pm  #5


Re: Our Complicity in the Starvation of Yemen

There is no God but self-interest (wealth and power), all the rest is just a distraction!

Last edited by nojoum (11/23/2018 3:09 pm)

 

11/24/2018 1:26 pm  #6


Re: Our Complicity in the Starvation of Yemen

nojoum wrote:

There is no God but self-interest (wealth and power),

 
No, the best argument for Classical Theism "works" as well as anything in philosophy. That's the problem. The perception that there's something WRONG about the war in Yemen is more than a hardwired kinship altruism response. Our moral intuitions may have been manufactured by an evolutionary process, but they were manufactured to intuit something Objective. The foundation of morality is non-contingent because its Source is non-contingent.

Both through Reason and Revelation all humans are prohibited from shedding the blood of innocents. This is part of Noachide Law. If there's any burden of proof it rests entirely on the shoulders of those supporting any aggression. (What, it's only prohibited for individuals, not groups larger than X acting in the name of Y? Defending wars of prevention requires greater philosophical chops than I possess.)

Getting our Theology & Ontology exactly perfect isn't expected of mankind. Refraining from idolatry, blasphemy, murder, theft, adultery, and cruelty to animals is. And we're supposed to establish courts to punish violators. There is no "right" to observe false religions, curse G-d, sleep with everyone, or engage in acts of collective slaughter. 

***
The War Nerd is a national treasure, though not for the faint of heart. His multidimensional analyses are often illuminating.

Last edited by 119 (11/24/2018 2:33 pm)

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11/24/2018 5:48 pm  #7


Re: Our Complicity in the Starvation of Yemen

119 wrote:

nojoum wrote:

There is no God but self-interest (wealth and power),

 
No, the best argument for Classical Theism "works" as well as anything in philosophy. That's the problem. The perception that there's something WRONG about the war in Yemen is more than a hardwired kinship altruism response. Our moral intuitions may have been manufactured by an evolutionary process, but they were manufactured to intuit something Objective. The foundation of morality is non-contingent because its Source is non-contingent.

Both through Reason and Revelation all humans are prohibited from shedding the blood of innocents. This is part of Noachide Law. If there's any burden of proof it rests entirely on the shoulders of those supporting any aggression. (What, it's only prohibited for individuals, not groups larger than X acting in the name of Y? Defending wars of prevention requires greater philosophical chops than I possess.)

Getting our Theology & Ontology exactly perfect isn't expected of mankind. Refraining from idolatry, blasphemy, murder, theft, adultery, and cruelty to animals is. And we're supposed to establish courts to punish violators. There is no "right" to observe false religions, curse G-d, sleep with everyone, or engage in acts of collective slaughter. 

***
The War Nerd is a national treasure, though not for the faint of heart. His multidimensional analyses are often illuminating.

Well  you misunderstood my point. All I am saying that the politicians of any country hide their agenda and lust for power and wealth behind a religious mask/ humanitarian concern and etc. The rest can be also applied to media/ large companies and so on. At least Trump was honest and directly said that Saudi's give us way too much money that I can't risk losing.

Last edited by nojoum (11/24/2018 5:56 pm)

 

11/24/2018 10:22 pm  #8


Re: Our Complicity in the Starvation of Yemen

I used your point to further articulate my points.

Message boards aren't unlike jazz combos. We riff off each other.

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11/25/2018 5:54 pm  #9


Re: Our Complicity in the Starvation of Yemen

119 wrote:

American foreign policy is so bad I worry we could max-out our credit, Nineveh-style, Sodom & Gomorrah-style. We're not G-d's chosen nation. We weren't charged with a cosmic mission to spread democracy and American values [sic].

Did/does America have any credit to begin with?

When Americans discover that their country is not as good as they thought, then what? Should America get back on the godly path (as if it ever was on it)? Or is it appropriate to acknowledge that no secular nation whatsoever is God-chosen? Never was, except perhaps Israel and Judea up to Jesus' times, but that country got whipped by God just as any other, so on the outside there was little difference.

I tend to liken USA to the Roman empire. Was Roman empire a God-chosen nation? It surely built a great civilisation and spread it around as far as it could. But from the point of view of Israel and Judea, Romans were sheer colonists. And their devotion to their own state gods was sheer paganism.

Same with USA. Some aspects of "the American way of life" are contageous in themselves (particularly the decadent aspects of course), but spreading them around the world at gunpoint under the name of "democracy" and "freedoms" is sheer colonism. And the sense of religious messianism that Americans have, whenever it is seen as stemming from and protected by the Constitution - a secular document -, it is worship of the secular might of your nation, not worship of God.

Did the apostles try to put the empire on the right path, to reconcile it with God, by having the senate write a good constitution? Did they demand equal rights for Christians from the secular powers? No. They held to their own worship regardless of persecution. They had no hopes or delusions about a possible reconciliation - they in fact prophesied the opposite. The apostles accepted that martyrdom was their destiny. Insofar as your hopes depend on your nation, they are not depending on Christ.

 

11/26/2018 9:09 am  #10


Re: Our Complicity in the Starvation of Yemen

The War Nerd wrote:

There’ll be a time when the artificial famine in Yemen takes its place with other, similar horrors, like that in Ireland in the 1840s, Ukraine in the 1930s, and Bengal in the 1940s. And when revisionist scholars get around to counting the dead in this latest atrocity, they’ll note that there was a deadly silence from media outlets that should have known better—and DID know better, truth be told. Anglo-American Media Complicity in Yemen's Genocide 

An artificial famine? Wait, he forgot one. Only this one was worth it.

seigneur wrote:

I tend to liken USA to the Roman empire.

Fellini could have never made a movie this great about the US.

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