Morning Ed: Geopolitics {2017.11.16}

19 thoughts on “Morning Ed: Geopolitics {2017.11.16}”

1. Gp7: I think the answer is no considering the arrest of many Saudi Arabians and their currently mysterious role in possibly kidnapping Lebanon’s Prime Minister and potentially forcing him to step down.

   There might be a coup in Zimbabwe right now.Report

   1. I think there was most definitely a coup in Zimbabwe even if details might be blurry.Report

2. Gp2: Does the former Lt. Colonel honestly think that civilian prosecutors and judges are somehow immune from political influence?

   As much as there was political pressure from on high to prosecute Bergdahl, there was a lot more from the rank & file.Report

   1. I took too long to write a similar response.Report

   2. This is what I was getting at with my comment the other day. Whenever there is a serious, headline-worthy crime, there is going to be a politician making noise about it. And there will also be barroom and barrack and cell and classroom talk. This is what politics is.Report

      1. @aaron-david

         I see your point. When talking about UCI, leadership has to stay out of the trial and sentencing. But the decision to prosecute is quite open to politics, always has been.Report

3. [Gp2] I think this piece is pretty naive in claiming lack of outside influence on district attorney decisionmaking, they are elected officials, often pining for higher office, and notorious offenses create publicity with obvious dynamics that can influence decisionmaking. IIRC, Bergdahl’s notoriety came not so much from political speeches of civilians, but from people in his unit who complained about how many men died searching for him. Bergdahl is just about the worst scenario to claim that his treatment in the military justice system is a concern to all members.

   And I believe in civilian leadership of the military. I have no problem with, for example, Senator McCaskill blocking a General’s promotion because she overrode a jury verdict in a sexual offender verdict without explanation.Report

   1. And Bergdahl was UA from his post in a combat zone, there was no way the brass was not going to court martial him, if for no other reason than to remind the rank and file that such behavior is taken very seriously.Report

4. Yeah, like everyone has said, Bergdahl’s was on the Army’s s*** list pretty much the day after he disappeared. Everyone in Afghanistan at the time knew that. It was publilized that much at the time because it wasn’t helpful. It was someone’s professional malpractice to allow Susan Rice to go on TV and talk up Bergdahl*, as well as having Obama invite Bergdahl’s parents into the Rose Garden at his release. Everyone had long known that Bergdahl would be in big trouble upon his repatriation.

   The consistent push from some quarters to make Bergdahl some sort of tragic hero.

   *yeah, town hall link. She’s not being taken out of context here.

   p.s. how good was the deal in hindsight? Since now we know Obama didn’t get us the f*** out of Afghanistan.Report

   1. To kick this back to the Lt. Col., how much pressure was there from the Obama admin to not prosecute Bergdahl precisely because he was part of a controversial prisoner exchange?Report

5. [Gp0]
   better the social capitalists you know…Report

6. [Gp5] This is probably the most important snippet of the article

   That Catalan granny had never supported independence until 2010, when the constitutional court in Madrid – presided over by a political ally of Prime Minister Rajoy – struck down an expanded autonomy statute that had passed both the regional and the national parliaments.

   Bloody idiot Rajoy has blown up this issue over and over at every single crossroads since 2010.

   It’s unbelievable that, in 2017, duly elected regional leaders in an European country are imprisoned for sedition. That’s right: sedition. Same thing as in Tsarist Russia.

   I am vigorously opposed to the Independence, but there’s no way you are going to solve a political problem by turning it into a criminal oneReport

   1. “We learnt to respect the right of others to govern themselves in their own ways.”Report

7. Gp9 – This is exactly why we should have let everyone else deal with ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram, and every other piece of s*** group from West Africa to the Philipines.

   Because the only thing American involvement will ever get – is blame.Report

   1. Well the rest of the first world doesn’t want to deal with it unless we pressure them to, and no one wants Russia or China, or any part of the third world leading the way, because they will be utterly unconcerned with human rights abuses.Report

   2. The Iraq War and Afghanistan provide “an important guide for how the US has addressed issues of civilian casualties that should be the starting point for all conflicts going forward,” said Sarah Margon, the Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “There is no reason a similar system can’t be set up for Iraq, Syria, or anywhere else in the world where the US is engaged in military operations.”

      Really? Y’all didn’t like so much how the US military was doing things in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time.Report

8. Gp3: The toys are getting too expensive. Even the US is starting to learn that it is not rich enough to afford its conventional global power-projection infrastructure. No one else is even trying any more. No one except the US is interested in exporting an ideology; everyone else (who has a realistic chance) is interested in regional hegemonies, primarily economic in nature, and for variously sized regions.

   I have a standing bet with Kolohe (made 5/30/2014) that the US will no longer be a global conventional superpower in 25 years.Report

   1. I still think I’m going to win, because, as GP3 alludes to, it takes a bit more than the time frame of the bet for the decline in capability to really become manifest.

      (I do think either way we’re going to look back at the Trump presidency as the decisive period for which one of us wins)Report

      1. It’s no fun betting on a sure thing :^)

         The hardest part of the prediction business is not where a particular set of trends are heading, it’s when they get there. I’m sure that there were relatively few people in the US in 1836 who would have predicted a shooting war over slavery starting in 1861.Report

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