The US Democrats and their apologists in the media are in an uproar about Trump’s comments about the Muslim Khizr Khan, whose son died in the Iraq war. This spat between Trump and Khan is ongoing.
Maybe the Democrats would like to revisit the history of their elder stateswoman Madeleine Albright in this comment from 1996?:
It doesn’t even matter whether the excess deaths caused by the US sanctions on Iraq were about 50,000, 100,000, 200,000 or 500,000.
The very notion that a Democratic US policy-maker, who is now trotted out to scream abuse at Trump, could say such a thing – that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children is a price worth paying just to contain a tin-pot Third World dictator whose country was destroyed even by the first Gulf war – illustrates the level of moral bankruptcy of the US Democratic elite. How much hatred against the West and radicalisation in the Middle East did this f*cking vile comment cause? You tell me.
A serious question also comes to mind. What is more hateful?: (1) Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration or (2) Madeleine Albright’s genocidal, callous disregard for Muslim children?
I’m on Twitter:
Lord Keynes @Lord_Keynes2
https://twitter.com/Lord_Keynes2
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Liberals don't rank the lives of the children on par with the freedoms of US Muslims because they value the latter higher than the former. The latter are 'real people' whom they interact with while the former are not. That is the simplest explanation for the discrepancy and the one that best describes the reality.
ReplyDeleteSome more sophisticated liberals will say that the Trump plans are constitutional violations and that upholding the constitution is more important than discussions as to the moral validity of the consequences of foreign policy. This is not an unreasonable argument but few people would make it. Most are motivated by what I laid out in my first comment.
Not to defend MA, but are we confident there was no fiddling in the editing? From watching the clip I am not. Had there been a follow up etc it might be possible to tell. I always worry when there is a clear cut between question and answer, as there was here.
ReplyDeleteThere is no malicious editing or misrepresentation. How much hatred against the West and radicalisation in the Middle East did this f*cking vile comment cause, Kenny boy?
DeleteI don't know how you know that? There is a cut betwixt question and answer. Could the answer have been to a different question? I don't know, but I don't see how you can either.
DeleteIf it's answer to 500,000 dead kids it's awful, but perhaps she eleaborated and disavowed that, or perhaps this is a deceptive edit. 22 seconds is just not sufficient to tell.
lol.. this clip is infamous and well known and I imagine the full interview probably available if you searched for it.
DeleteAnalysis:
http://fair.org/extra/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/
That you can't even say that such a statement probably caused really severe hostility to the US and the West in Middle east is f*cking vile. Shame on you.
In fact, we see here how - on this issue -- you're displaying the same type of irrationality and intellectually dishonesty as Kevin has displayed above on other issues
DeleteHorseshit. I wrote "Not to defend MA," MA obviously being Albright, and I stipulated it's awful if it's legit. I don't uncritically swallow every piece of evidence. Lies and doctored stuff abounds.
DeleteYou aopparently think we should abandon our scepticism when something "too good to check:" comes along; shame on *you* .
For what it's worth, Ken B, Albright and her defenders claimed that it was a loaded question to begin with.
DeleteSHN
DeleteYes, I googled. Apparently LK disapproves of googling to substantiate his claims but I risked his displeasure and did it. She apologized for that answer, saying she should have rejected the premise, and was answering the question with the premise mentally rejected. In that case presenting this clip as her real answer is at best dodgy. It speaks to her lack of professional competence perhaps, in not making plain her answer was predicated upon a rejection of those claimed deaths. But she did later explicitly reject it. To pretend she *meant* to include the 500K in the "worth it" is really not honest.
LK is probably right about the propaganda value of the clip, but that's not what he's disputing with me.
I could go back on Murphy's blog, and find a place where LK made a mistake, missed a premise, and had to correct. Rather that treating that as a good thing -- admit an error -- I could just do what LK is doping here and repeat the screw up as if it were the last word.
(1) "She apologized for that answer, saying she should have rejected the premise,"
DeleteYes, she apologised *after* she or probably Clinton officials realised this was a public relations catastrophe, and they had to discredit the claim that their brutal sanctions regime caused so many deaths.
But the very fact that an American Secretary of State could say such a thing on TV without a second thought is the issue here.
(2) "To pretend she *meant* to include the 500K in the "worth it" is really not honest."
She clearly meant it *at the time she said it in her interview.* Your attempt to deny this is really f*cking vile, and speaks volumes about the extent of your willingness to make apologetics for genocidal statements when it suits your default political positions.
Imagine if in some alternative universe US sanctions had been imposed on the state of Israel and claims where made that the severity of the sanctions had caused the excess deaths of 500,000 Jewish Israeli children.
DeleteKen B would say:
(1) FFS, she apologised for it later!! What's the big deal?
(2) she didn't really mean it (even though this looks laughable), just because she later said (as a desperate apologetics) that she mentally rejected the premise and it was all a big mistake. Of course, says Ken B, we need to accept everything a self-serving politician says to cover their ass 100%! How dare you suggest any thing otherwise?
You continue to live down to your reputation on Free Advice. I did not defend MA. I had n ever seen that clip before. It is on its face so outrageous I questioned if we could rely on it. That, you fool, is how honest people fight their own tendency to confirmation bias, or being gulled by activists. Ands what I found is that it is not really quite legit. It actually happened but it at least arguably represents an *error* not a smoking gun.
DeleteYour Israel analogy is silly because if MA had said "Your dead children number is fantasy, we think there were fewer dead children as a result of acting rather than not acting, so our actions saved lives" there would be no issue right? So whether she accepts the number is *crucial* for deciding what her comment actually represents. And you did not present all the facts on that even after I questioned you. You suppressed the facts that undercut your position, and only facts that undercut you. There are words for that; "honest" is not among them.
Are you under the impression my political position was support for Bill Clinton? You really are grasping. I supported his impeachment and removal.
DeleteYou have nothing but a naïve belief in the later apologetics of Albright and the Clinton administration for your idea that she actually meant to say: "oh, we don't believe any excess deaths of children happened. And whatever else has happened to Iraqi civilians, well, we believe the price is worth it."
Delete"is far less abhorrent to your average leftist"
ReplyDeleteDepends on the "leftist." Democratic party partisans are not anything like a principled left wing (to quote Phil Ochs, "ten degrees to the left of center in the good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally"). On the other hand, genuine left anti-imperialist voices are typically shouted down or outright ignored in mainstream media, but they've been consistently skeptical of the shift in international politics away from sovereignty and self-determination, and the rise of the doctrine of so-called "humanitarian intervention."
I think one ought to be mindful of the fact that once you start using Religion in one small example to discriminate, you open the door for lots of other opportunities to discriminate even more blatantly. A little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough.
ReplyDeleteTell me something, Kevin, would you let in 50 million ultra Christian fundamentalists into your country, who want to stone gays, stone women for adultery, hate Jews, drive women into the home, establish a Christian state with Christian law, and teach Creation science?
ReplyDeleteIs it bigotry or discrimination to say: no, dudes, you're not coming here. No way.
Genuine leftist anti-imperialists can often be expected to fall into line with the mainstream Democratic view when push comes to shove. Chomsky for example recommends voting for Clinton, which strikes me as strange, given Clinton is barely distinguishable from neocons. I doubt Chomsky is atypical here.
ReplyDeleteI ask Canadians if they want Fred Phelps, Westboro Baptists, or Branch Davidians in the country. The answer is always no. There was even strong opposition to letting Phelps *speak* at an engagement.
ReplyDeleteTell me something, Kevin, would you let in 50 million ultra Christian fundamentalists into your country, who want to stone gays, stone women for adultery, hate Jews, drive women into the home, establish a Christian state with Christian law, and teach Creation science
ReplyDeleteWith the exception of the 1st 2 things you mentioned - which I'm pretty sure doesn't exist among Christians - everything else is kinda personal choice. We allow the Amish to carry on with all of those things you mention right now!
An exception might be the establishment of a "Christian State." Pretty certain Democracy took care of that problem already in due time.
No, I asked whether, as a hypothetical, would you let in 50 million ultra Christian fundamentalists like that?
ReplyDeleteAnswer the question. If not, we know you're being a dishonest coward.
Here:
ReplyDeletehttp://freebeacon.com/issues/huge-increase-girls-victimized-genital-mutilation-u-s/
The Democratic party moved to the right to try to box in the Republicans.To cut them off from the center. Clinton the male was the result of this movement, a so-called blue dog Democrat.
ReplyDeleteThis strategy was destructive to both parties. Instead of limiting the Republicans to a smaller portion of the electorate, it pushed the party ever further to right. To the complete detachment of the Tea Parties and the proto-fascism of Trump. Instead of increasing the numbers for the Democrats the movement to the right validated the insane policies of the Republicans that the blue dogs adopted.
@Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree. I know it is just an anecdote but I know a few Sanders supporters who hate Hillary Clinton but will be voting for her because they are afraid that Trump is a fascist and a hardcore racist.
The media has done a good job painting Trump as a lunatic, and to be fair Trump has helped them with some of his immoderate comments. Trump should bring up the hypocrisy of liberals on this issue, though. Clinton has a record of supporting warmongering abroad. Do the lives of Muslims abroad mean anything to these liberals? Or is it more important to engage in virtue signalling over the much less important Khan issue?
Completely irrelevant to your the current post, but I was wondering what your response would be to http://conza.tumblr.com/post/9445472874/empiricism-self-contradictory
ReplyDeleteI've read pretty much your entire library of critiques of misesian epistemology, or at least I thought I had, and I don't recall you refuting this statement. I think it refutes your most common argument which holds that either analytic a priori statements contain no useful knowledge, or synthetic a priori statements do not exist. I'm not as eloquent in my writing as a reflection of my thinking as you lifers, but you've yet to convince me.
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2016/08/hoppes-ridiculous-attack-on.html
DeleteAnswer the question. If not, we know you're being a dishonest coward
ReplyDeleteI think it's so cute that you think you've thrown me a curve. The ONLY reason anyone should be denied entrance into the US is if they have a known criminal record. Otherwise, you open the door for the state deciding whose beliefs are or are not acceptable.
You wouldn't take your kid to the Doctor, but to a Faith Healer? You murderer!
You want to teach your children about the existence of a "Sky-Daddy?" Brainwashing cultist!
You're against abortion? Violence against women!
That last one is especially egregious, because any time they hype up damselling women, you can bet there's a pretext for war and for an assault on basic civil liberties and promotion of the surveillance state.
Inb4 "Conspiracy theories!" Just look at what Rudy Giuliani starts up about every time a terrorist act happens somewhere on the planet.
I ask Canadians if they want Fred Phelps, Westboro Baptists, or Branch Davidians in the country. The answer is always no. There was even strong opposition to letting Phelps *speak* at an engagement
ReplyDeleteCanada I believe, also tried to outlaw handing out Christian tracts that said Homosexuality is a sin. That's quite the Feminist/PC country you're talking about there.
But glad to know Ken, that you're down with "Safe Spaces" and not allowing a speaker to come in on campuses that cause the little darlings consternation and stress. How very SJW of you.
http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6456
http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6460
http://www.thirdbasepolitics.com/oberlin-feminists-accuse-christina-hoff-sommers-of-supporting-racists