4 ms·

Not really. The Iraq war was horrible and unnecessary and I doubt you’ll find too many people here who’ll say otherwise. But it was the past and it’s settled.

Not really. The Iraq war was horrible and unnecessary and I doubt you’ll find too many people here who’ll say otherwise. But it was the past and it’s settled. China is happening now.

freeflight 5y ago
[flagged]
- Grakel 5y ago
  Radical islamic terrorism was going on way before 2001.
  - freeflight 5y ago
    I didn't write radical Islamic terrorism didn't exist before 2001, I wrote it emerged at never before seen scales. And I have plenty of data to back that statement. In Western Europe Islamic terrorism was pretty much a non-issue [0]. It only started becoming an issue after 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, when AQ conducted attacks on Madrid and London, respectively Spain and UK, both countries being part of the coalition of the "willing" that invaded Iraq. That was very much a direct response, one that previously wouldn't have been possible as AQ lacked the resources and people in Western Europe to conduct these kinds of operations. They got these resources and people when the US declared them "enemy #1" and started bombing and invading Muslim countries, displacing Muslims as refugees deep into Western Europe [1], many of them holding resentments over what happened to them and their countries as their worst fears about what an "American crusade" [2] would actually entail in reality. Over time AQ Iraq, which under Saddam wasn't even a thing, would ultimately turn into ISIS, an ISIS that parades its prisoners around in very similar uniforms [3] to those the US paraded them around, which is not a coincidence, it's a direct reference [4]. Even when you look at the global picture, this "war on terrorism" did the same as the "war on drugs" had; It didn't end terrorism, it made it thrive [5]. Anybody who looks at that and declares it "settled" does not understand the kind of impact this had on literally the whole world. [0] https://www.datagraver.com/case/people-killed-by-terrorism-per-year-in-western-europe-1970-2015 https://www.datagraver.com/case/people-killed-by-terrorism-p... [1] https://earthtime.org/stories/global_refugee_crisis_the_big_picture https://earthtime.org/stories/global_refugee_crisis_the_big_... [2] https://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0919/p12s2-woeu.html https://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0919/p12s2-woeu.html [3] https://twitter.com/syricide/status/505043264907804672 https://twitter.com/syricide/status/505043264907804672 [4] https://theintercept.com/2016/08/25/u-s-military-now-says-isis-leader-was-held-in-notorious-abu-ghraib-prison/ https://theintercept.com/2016/08/25/u-s-military-now-says-is... [5] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatalities-from-terrorism?tab=chart&time=earliest..2017&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatalities-from-terrorism...
    - beebeepka 5y ago
      Oh man, what happened to all your other posts? So much censorship on this site. I really didn't know it is that bad.
angio 5y ago
Aren't Guantanamo Bay and other torture camps (black sites as they are known now) still open?
- sgjohnson 5y ago
  They are, and it’s horrible. But they key difference is that you won’t really see anyone downplaying them or outright denying their existence.
  - angio 5y ago
    I don't know, running torture camps doesn't sound much better if you can talk about them and yet they are not closed.
    - sgjohnson 5y ago
      Could be worse, you could run a real risk of getting disappeared for talking about them. Which is obviously a non-issue in the west.
  - wiether 5y ago
    To me the key difference is in the way the propaganda is done. Pro-CCP people are posting comments on the Internet to try to convince western people. Pro-Russia people are paying celebrities of western countries to promote their culture, they are also creating news networks in the west to do the same. USA is using the global western culture (Hollywood, singers...) to promote their agenda. Since we're talking about torture, in the last two decades, the USA produced dozen of films or TV shows where torture is depicted as a necessary evil for the good guy to win over the bad guys. Just look at Jack Bauer. They don't need to go an Twitter saying "no, that's not what happens, we're the good guys, see...", because in the mind of (almost) everyone, it's already accepted, since they saw a good guy doing it in a movie. The propaganda machine from CCP is just not as evolved as the USA's, they are trying to catch up. But all in all, it's a same. It's just more obvious for the CCP guys because they haven't the right tools yet. But given how they are investing in cultural services, I'm sure they will soon be better at it and we won't have those kind of discussion anymore. It will not be "propaganda", but just people arguing against each other on topics on which their favorite state has different opinion.

Not really. The Iraq war was horrible and unnecessary and I doubt you’ll find too many people here who’ll say otherwise. But it was the past and it’s settled. China is happening now.

freeflight 5y ago

[flagged]

Grakel 5y ago
Radical islamic terrorism was going on way before 2001.
- freeflight 5y ago
  I didn't write radical Islamic terrorism didn't exist before 2001, I wrote it emerged at never before seen scales. And I have plenty of data to back that statement. In Western Europe Islamic terrorism was pretty much a non-issue [0]. It only started becoming an issue after 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, when AQ conducted attacks on Madrid and London, respectively Spain and UK, both countries being part of the coalition of the "willing" that invaded Iraq. That was very much a direct response, one that previously wouldn't have been possible as AQ lacked the resources and people in Western Europe to conduct these kinds of operations. They got these resources and people when the US declared them "enemy #1" and started bombing and invading Muslim countries, displacing Muslims as refugees deep into Western Europe [1], many of them holding resentments over what happened to them and their countries as their worst fears about what an "American crusade" [2] would actually entail in reality. Over time AQ Iraq, which under Saddam wasn't even a thing, would ultimately turn into ISIS, an ISIS that parades its prisoners around in very similar uniforms [3] to those the US paraded them around, which is not a coincidence, it's a direct reference [4]. Even when you look at the global picture, this "war on terrorism" did the same as the "war on drugs" had; It didn't end terrorism, it made it thrive [5]. Anybody who looks at that and declares it "settled" does not understand the kind of impact this had on literally the whole world. [0] https://www.datagraver.com/case/people-killed-by-terrorism-per-year-in-western-europe-1970-2015 https://www.datagraver.com/case/people-killed-by-terrorism-p... [1] https://earthtime.org/stories/global_refugee_crisis_the_big_picture https://earthtime.org/stories/global_refugee_crisis_the_big_... [2] https://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0919/p12s2-woeu.html https://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0919/p12s2-woeu.html [3] https://twitter.com/syricide/status/505043264907804672 https://twitter.com/syricide/status/505043264907804672 [4] https://theintercept.com/2016/08/25/u-s-military-now-says-isis-leader-was-held-in-notorious-abu-ghraib-prison/ https://theintercept.com/2016/08/25/u-s-military-now-says-is... [5] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatalities-from-terrorism?tab=chart&time=earliest..2017&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatalities-from-terrorism...
  - beebeepka 5y ago
    Oh man, what happened to all your other posts? So much censorship on this site. I really didn't know it is that bad.

angio 5y ago

Aren't Guantanamo Bay and other torture camps (black sites as they are known now) still open?

sgjohnson 5y ago
They are, and it’s horrible. But they key difference is that you won’t really see anyone downplaying them or outright denying their existence.
- angio 5y ago
  I don't know, running torture camps doesn't sound much better if you can talk about them and yet they are not closed.
  - sgjohnson 5y ago
    Could be worse, you could run a real risk of getting disappeared for talking about them. Which is obviously a non-issue in the west.
- wiether 5y ago
  To me the key difference is in the way the propaganda is done. Pro-CCP people are posting comments on the Internet to try to convince western people. Pro-Russia people are paying celebrities of western countries to promote their culture, they are also creating news networks in the west to do the same. USA is using the global western culture (Hollywood, singers...) to promote their agenda. Since we're talking about torture, in the last two decades, the USA produced dozen of films or TV shows where torture is depicted as a necessary evil for the good guy to win over the bad guys. Just look at Jack Bauer. They don't need to go an Twitter saying "no, that's not what happens, we're the good guys, see...", because in the mind of (almost) everyone, it's already accepted, since they saw a good guy doing it in a movie. The propaganda machine from CCP is just not as evolved as the USA's, they are trying to catch up. But all in all, it's a same. It's just more obvious for the CCP guys because they haven't the right tools yet. But given how they are investing in cultural services, I'm sure they will soon be better at it and we won't have those kind of discussion anymore. It will not be "propaganda", but just people arguing against each other on topics on which their favorite state has different opinion.