Madeleine Albright has died
axios.com
axios.com
But under Clinton the US did dramatically cut back on training/arming fascist death squads, and the 90s–2000s were a period of relative peace and prosperity for Latin America, as the US left them more or less alone (the Bush II administration was more worried about fearmongering/warring vs. Muslims, so continued benign neglect of LA). Clinton also presided during a period when the US had less military activity/conflict than pretty much any other time since WWII. Obama didn’t get to make such a choice, having inherited Middle East wars from his predecessor.
There is always a choice, and he made his. Choice to bomb and crush Libya in 2014, which became a stone-age bloodbath ever since, choice to invade and bomb Syria in 2014, choice to continue wasting lives and money in Iraq and Afghanistan. These were deliberate decisions, not something inherited from someone.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children lacked medical care and were malnourished under her crushing sanctions. Lesley Stahl from 60 Minutes asked her about this, Albright said "the price is worth it".
The "well-funded character attacks" are words out of her own mouth, compliments to her blood-soaked actions around the world.
Also, Milosevic and his cronies died in prison as war criminals that killed tens of thousand of innocent people.
> In his memoir My American Journey, Colin Powell recounts a discussion he had when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?" she asked. "I thought I would have an aneurysm," Powell write. "American G.I.'s were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board."
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=TZU1SGMOx70C&pg=PA144#v=on...
Yes, but you must be believed in that you may use your military. The current problem in Ukraine is that Putin believes (and seems to be correct) that NATO will not use its assets.
Now both are gone. RIP.
"Madeleine Albright Saying Iraqi Kids' Deaths 'Worth It' Resurfaces"
https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madeleine-albright-saying-ira...
Honestly I am too young to have remembered the oil for food program and just read some about it. I didn't know we were sanctioning Iraq like that through the 90s.
Now you guys have biden, but luckily (for us), the war is in ukraine and not here again.
Are there credible sites, books or videos that try to say there wasn't a genocide and brutal war being perpetrated primarily by the Serbs against muslims?
Anyway, thanks for the extensive sourcing, but I'll go read some books on Kosovo myself.
> Although Serb forces had long been blamed for the massacre, it was not until June 2004—following the Srebrenica commission's preliminary report—that Serb officials acknowledged that their security forces planned and carried out the mass killing. A Serb commission's final report on the 1995 Srebrenica massacre acknowledged that the mass murder of the men and boys was planned. The commission found that more than 7,800 were killed after it compiled thirty-four[citation needed] lists of victims.
> A concerted effort was made to capture all Bosniak men of military age.[114] In fact, those captured included many boys well below that age and elderly men several years above that age who remained in the enclave following the take-over of Srebrenica. These men and boys were targeted regardless of whether they chose to flee to Potočari or to join the Bosnian Muslim column. The operation to capture and detain the Bosnian Muslim men was well organised and comprehensive. The buses which transported the women and children were systematically searched for men.[114]
Sure, we can start with, oh, the Wikipedia maybe?
"there had been no evidence of genocide or ethnic cleansing"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War
and continue on to the UN as reported by BBC:
A United Nations court has ruled that Serbian troops did not carry out genocide against ethnic Albanians
[1]: https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/
Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it."
This is from a 1996 interview with this woman [1] about the Iraq invasion. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Actually in regards to the sanctions against Iraq during the Clinton admin.
> Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I’m sure we’ll hear plenty of swamp creatures lauding what a trailblazer she was over the next few days.
Which administration were the sanctions imposed under?
It seems really weird to make a partisan jab over that.
Both parties carried this out.
Looks like GHWBush after the Kuwait invasion[1]
That said, presidents have the power to adjust sanctions if they affect too many innocents.
What’s more weird is implicating partisanship where there is none.
Maybe you think of things in this frame. Not everyone else does.
-Lord Farquaad
Russia: Right now, worth it.
North Korea: Who knows if it's worth it.
Cuba: Not worth it. We're still upset that they kicked out our dictator.
Iran: Not worth it. We're still upset that they kicked out our dictator.
And what is it you are objecting to, exactly? Saddam was a sadist who gassed his own citizen. People demanded someone go in and stop him back then, like they are now asking for a no-flight-zone in Ukraine. Sometimes, there are no good choices.
At the time, embargoes were seen as effective because they had just brought down South Africa’s regime of Apartheid, and (to some degree) the Soviet Union. The alternative in US politics was not non-interventionism. It was outright invasion, something that had to wait for an administration without Clinton and Albright. The “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iraq” party came in and that likely killed an order of magnitude more people, especially if you consider that it caused the collapse in Syria, as well.
But I have to wonder what info she had that made her believe this? How many Iranians does in the 1980s in the war against Iraq? How many Kurds died to the government in Baghdad?
I have started to question whether those in power actually have perverted value systems (as is a common meme) or whether they are privy to different facts.
Not trying to apologize for this woman’s statement, just genuinely curious.
Most internet commentary and discussion on any matters of significance is hopelessly warped by an inability to understand context and scale. Some of that inability is bad faith argument, the rest is a mess of laziness, naivety, and shallow displays of superiority.
The point was to point out that epistemology works best when you make a good faith effort to understand how other people arrived at their conclusions.
I have spent a lot of time recently trying to understand why many people are convinced about things like New World Order / Global Cabal / QAnon / Soros, Stop the Steal, various vaccine/COVID topics, multiple religious beliefs, and even why Putin believed he should “protect” Ukraine (assuming good faith). It’s far easier to bridge misunderstandings if you understand their motives, intent, desires, and the chain of facts that inform their worldview.
Rather than deferring to Liz Sly from WaPo, why doesn't the U.S government submit itself and the administrations of the 90s to The Hague so this can be confirmed?
I don't think every obituary needs to be critical, but I do think political figures have opted into that by being a part of history.
This idea of honoring the good in the dead is also arbitrarily applied. An obituary of Osama Bin Laden wouldn't neglect to mention his involvement in 9/11.
I just read the Economist's Obituary someone linked above, which is good and somewhat disorienting. The last sentence is a quote of him with exact negation of what you say about cheering - (spoiler alert - it is probably better to read the whole thing before the quote) - The difference between pure Muslims and Americans, he said, was that Americans loved life, whereas Muslims loved death.
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.economist.com/obituary/2...
L. Ron Hubbard had thousands of followers, but to conflate an internal Scientology paper obituary with "any obituary published where it matter to his family and close friends" would be a mistake.
Edit, in response to OP edit: I am not sure if Hubbard is comparable, I don't know if his family and followers cared about what the NYT write about him, for example. But Bin Laden's followers don't care much for the approval of outsiders, that's pretty obvious.
That's a large part of the reason why she's disliked. It's because she advocates for genocide. If you replace "Iraqis" with "Jews" and have someone say that the deaths of half a million Jewish children is "worth it" nobody will be in this comment section trying to talk about honoring the deceased or suggesting everyone has good and bad sides.
It is worth pointing out the sanctions caused human suffering, but the result that led to that comment was retracted by the author: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
The deaths of Kuwaitis, the deaths of Kurds, the deaths of Southern Iraqis and other dissidents, and any number innocent human beings that died because of the sanctions are tragic... But consequences for crimes belone with the criminal. Hussein killed tens of thousands of Iraqis with chemical weapons over his time in power. He really was a monstrous person.
Should half a million Americans die for each US invasion? If I said it's worth it does that make it OK?
> When a dictator does an evil act, they cannot hide behind consequences to their people
A dictator, by definition, is not representative of a "people." There is no "their people" in this case.
> Also, the result that led to that comment was retracted
So the fact that she said it was worth it -- explicit support for it -- doesn't matter because the data might have been wrong? If I was told half a million Jews were killed yesterday and in my position as representative to the UN said it was "worth it" am I absolved if it turned out to be fake news?
> Hussein killed tens of thousands of Iraqis with chemical weapons over his time in power
This never actually happened. It was just about 2000 people. From what we've learned in this discussion I guess that absolves Saddam for thinking it was worth it to crush the Kurdish uprisings.
Great chatting. I won't be participating any further though.
"blaming powerless besieged people for their own suffering is a special type of reasoning that only seems to pop up whenever brown people are mentioned"
I agree with you. And Hussein was a US ally when he was fighting Iran. OBL was a US ally when he was fighting the Soviets. That can't be ignored, either. The US helped make those enemies. And the difference in public reaction to Ukrainian dead and refugees vs those who are Palestinian, Syrian, Yemeni, Ahgan ... it is shameful. It is hard to believe racism isn't a part of the disparity, certainly enormous lack of capability for empathy. That being said I think that Albright's comment is out of context and - taken at face value - is not reflective of reality, though. You can blame a lot of people in Russia, the UN, the US, in KSA, from a lot of places.. and, add Madeleine Albright to that list, for what happened to the people of Iraq in the 90s. It will feel great to righteously hate on her but it won't promote understanding what happen or prevent it from recurring. ps - I removed, "You can play that video over and over, but" because I sounded like a jerk and regretted it.
Isn't this a bit naive? According to this reasoning, Holodomor death's weren't intentional as well, while most poeple argue that, since the effect of that policy could be easily predicted, they are, for all intents and purposes, intentional. I would apply the same standard to US sanctions against Iraq.
And it is not like she was standing behind what she said - she said she fell into a trap[0]. Compare to Truman, who approved the actual Hiroshima, and "never lost any sleep over that decision.” [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright#Sanctions_a...
If Putin or Stalin believed that their actions are the right thing, meaning they have decided to act due to moral reasons, than it would be moral choice. If the moral choice is defensible or not depends on the moral reasoning - you don't have to agree with someone's moral position to see agree that it is a valid position even if you don't share it (even strongly oppose it). Saying someone's position is defensible doesn't mean he did the right thing.
It's convention that they don't speak ill of the dead. A convention that overwhelmingly benefits the legacies of people who have inflicted disproportionate amounts of misery and suffering in life.
Need to vent about something your comment is reminding me of. I saw it in Putin's speeches, and a recent RT clip -- this notion that what the US did to Iraq in 2003 justifies actions in Ukraine. As an American who was very opposed to the second Iraq war I find this false justification very disappointing. Firstly, that one bad action does not justify another. Second, the story that the US tells about itself is that we sometimes make mistakes, then our political process tries its best to correct them as time goes on. See also: slavery. Or the fact that the Iraq war is pretty unpopular in retrospect. We openly admit to not being perfect, but try to commit ourselves to continuous improvement. That's an important point.
...
> Firstly, that one bad action does not justify another.
I'm not trying to start a fight, because I agree with your overall point - learning and growing as a nation is important. That's honestly a big part of why I believe political figures obituaries should include their full context. But these two sentences seem to me to sharply contradict each-other.
In this thread i feel like some are conflating the two gulf wars and the sanctions in between. (I seem to recall there was also a Clinton air strike in the middle) Albright was really against the second war if i recall correctly.
Democrats don't get to wash their hands of that invasion. Both parties supported it.
Sanctions and sporadic bombings on critical infrastructure under Clinton was estimated to cause on the order of a million deaths, mostly children dieing of disease because the US destroyed water treatment facilities. Albright infamously defended the deaths of 800,000 children as worth the cost in a 60 minutes interview.
(Unfortunately the political lesson from that wasn't don't cause mass death, it was don't acknowledge that you've caused mass death)
It was a really ugly thing to see playing out in public and media... Policy was set arbitrarily in the executive branch and media and congress were ... Yes also responsible, and not really exercising their full power and responsibility, but also some of them bullied into it. The patriotism of anyone against the war was very harshly attacked and unfortunately it seemed pretty effective at the time.
29 (58%) of 50 Democratic senators voted for the resolution. 48 (98%) of 49 Republican senators voted for the resolution. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milit...
Don't use numbers to repaint history.
Realistically, there is zero chance the invasion would have happened without exaclty that trio of President, Sec-State & VP, plus or minus a Wolfowitz.
But the Republicans successfully goaded some Democrats into voting for it by threatening to taunt them. The US public needed some more important foreign blood to be spilled than Afghani. And that's the way the cookie crumbled...
I really don't see how you can reach that conclusion that prime mover on the Iraq invasion was the US public at large.
I thought Richard Clarke's book a few years later was pretty informative. Iirc, in his telling, they wanted to attack Iraq before 9/11 happened, and when it did happen, many in the administration didn't care at all who did it, they just wanted Iraq to pay. There was a line attributed to Rumsfeld "but Iraq has better targets".
Really? Wow, voting for a war you (allegedly) know to be wrong because you're worried about being "taunted". That's the most pathetic spineless thing I've ever heard. Worse than unashamed pro-war crowd, in some ways.
What happened to all those cowardly losers anyway? They all get voted out and replaced with people who were happy to continue those occupations and support the new wars and interventions during the Obama administration?
More generally, that would be a dereliction of duty too. The entire point of these checks and balances is so that an individual branch does not need to be trusted to make a wise choice.
In that book, a Speaker for the Dead would speak all the truth about the deceased, good and bad, warts and all.
In any case, performing literal siege against a group -- exclusively chosen for political reasons -- and then blaming powerless besieged people for their own suffering is a special type of reasoning that only seems to pop up whenever brown people are mentioned.
> The responses were, again, approved through the global legal framework [...]. None of this can be said of either terrorism or the responses [...]
Edit: I think I understand now, the first responses are the sanctions post-Kuwait invasion, the second responses are the Afghan and Iraq wars.
I don't get the sense that this conversation is locked down to the specifics of Albright, as plenty of people (and according to my understanding in the "Edit", you yourself) have made reasonable reference and analogies to events outside her time in office.
It was not approved by the UN, it was approved by the UNSC.
Your description was off by a large margin, it wasn’t just semantics.
I do agree this discussion probably isn’t going to be fruitful though, so have a nice weekend.
To be fair I don't know how much of it was her idea. But so cringy.
A history book has much more room to examine nuance & consequence, as well as more time to do thorough research and usually the benefit of hindsight and distance from the events in question.
There's plenty of room for it in both.
> Apr 24, 2000, Agence France Presse, NEW YORK, April 24 (AFP) - "US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Monday called on the United States Congress to vote in favour of China's entry into the World Trade Organisation. . . Turning to globalisation in general, Albright said the United States "must help those hurt by change; but also reaffirm our belief that an open and competitive world economy is the best route to higher standards of living for people everywhere."
Didn't work out so well for the Rust Belt...
Absolutely blame the politicians and "experts" who conspired to allow corporations to circumvent our progress on labor and environmental regulation the past 100+ years.
I think this is a little bit of blaming the jury for sentencing the criminal. Yeah, I think this is bad taste, because, wow, that's really placing an awful lot on her shoulders, that because she was involved she is thus morally responsible for the consequences, as though the UNSC had no part in it. IMO the Ba'athists themselves are entirely responsible for the consequences of the sanctions for creating the conditions that forced the sanctions.
As for the Iraq sanctions, she was asked and famously replied that it was a hard choice but the price was worth it. People may disagree.
I’ve worked in big tech companies with some of the most intelligent and capable people I’ve met in my entire life. And while they have very strong views on American politics — labeling Presidents, Senators, and other politicians corrupt, nefarious, incompetent, or some combination of all three - their views on Americas role on the world stage are more like America in a Hollywood film.
The other countries are corrupt, “shitty”, “evil”, etc and only America has the capability, will, and sort of a divine “right” to interfere and fix things, and fixing things means doing whatever we believe is right.
No one in the West batted an eye when children would be murdered in drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal region. When America and Russia fought proxy battles in Syria, there was no solidarity with the Syrian people. When our “ally” Saudi Arabia bombed the hell out of people in Yemen, again - there was no one asking questions. “We’re not targeting civilians” they’ll all say. I mean, America gave a new classification to all the “collateral damage”, simply labeling anyone they thought might be 18 years or older as being a militant, even if they’re just civilian bystanders.
> The West is writing all the history books
Sure, the ones read in the west. The history books read in the East are frequently written in the East.
Iran, Russia, and China have very old societies with long histories. They, among others, have their own written histories. There is nothing significant preventing western citizens from researching history books written elsewhere.
It’s not difficult to find common books/movies/documentaries which challenge the rose-colored-glasses narrative of the US / The West. Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone, et al are “writing the history books” which violate your assertion.
There is plenty of media content which is extremely critical of US. There are hurdles to get the US DoD to participate in projects which are strongly counter to pro-US narratives, but possible to do without their participation.
Their long histories are besides the point. How many Americans recognize Kim Kardashian? Now tell us how many could recognize where Iran is on a map.
The average American doesn’t know Noam Chomsky. The average US middle school or high school textbook gives a distorted perspective of history. The US “founding fathers” are portrayed as being all wise and noble, but I digress.
> There is plenty of media content which is extremely critical of US.
The media content is critical of the other political party. In international matters, they’ve generally presented Russia, China, and other non-European or NATO countries as corrupt, threatening, etc.
In international matters, the US media has not only supported but practically cheerlead American war efforts. During the second Iraq War, CNN, ABC news, Fox, etc had correspondents “embedded” with the US military, purposely creating this fictitious narrative that Iraqis were viewing Americans as liberators.
Meanwhile, American troops were rounding up civilians, forcing entry into their homes and searching house by house for hidden ammunitions and the so called “weapons of mass destruction”. Innocent Iraqis were murdered in cold blood for shooting at the invaders. Ya know, the same thing that Russians are doing now in Ukraine where we’re now calling them war criminals.
The average person would rather watch celebrity sleaze content and corporate outrage news than challenge their own priors by reading challenging pieces on foreign policy. Same as every place on Earth.
I’m not going to defend US foreign policy, but your false equivalence of US collateral damage and Russian purposefully attacking civilian dwellings only wdilutes any argument you might have been making.
When America murders innocent civilians or starts illegal wars, it’s simply “collateral damage”. When another country does it, it’s “purposefully attacking civilian dwellings”.
This is exactly what I wrote in my post above - the sort of God/righteous complex that Westerners and particularly Americans have about their government, the same Americans who otherwise recognize their government is corrupt, sleazy, “the swamp”, or whatever other names they’ve come up with.
It’s ironic that you responded a post later literally just confirming my claim. :)
The Russian harm to innocents is orders of magnitudes higher than the US harm to innocents. It actually appears to be a core strategy in Ukraine, Chetchnia, and Afghanistan. They are firing artillery at civilian dwellings, cutting off food/fuel supply lines, and firing at refugee lines that aim for Poland rather than Russia.
The US has a bad name from drone strikes, but those are done intentionally to minimize harm to innocents and Are avoided when the harm is too high compared to the target. There are very few cases of the US military intentionally firing on civilians.
you are talking to the wrong person if you think I have a God/righteousness complex about my country/government. I am heavily critical of my own.
But Russia’s invasion is as idiotic as most of the worst Trump/QAnon conspiracy theories.
And I agree with the bottom of your comment about the lack of empathy for Syrians, Yemenese, etc. Personally I think it’s difficult to understand the different belligerents and their incentives/intents when looking at say Pakistan or Yemen instead of the more obvious “Russia invades Ukraine” plot.
It’s worth explaining this through the lens of the Military-Entertainment Complex (movies, shows/series, books, and sports sponsorships).
See how little sense that makes? Even if I were to write an obituary that included some of the critical points I think should have been included - and were to somehow get it published instead of this one - that doesn’t change the fact that almost every other obituary (for this person, and for every other person) follows this convention.
I’m criticizing the convention and the norm, not this particular piece of writing.
I think Orson Scott Card, despite being a complete loon, raised an interesting concept in the book Speaker For The Dead. Obituaries should be spoken honestly to all. Not speaking ill of the dead is morally wrong.
Maybe just me but I feel like this misses what Speaker For the Dead does. It isn't about speaking ill or not ill of people but understanding their life experience, to give context to who they were as a person. This moves past the superficial reading of a person that just listing their actions and classifying them as good or bad.
Obituaries tend not to.
You can't defend yourself when you're dead. You can't be your own witness. Nor can you face your own accuser. Also, who would you trust to speak that truth for you?
Also, grieving family members are not the most rational people. Doing this could trigger violence in practice.
And obituaries have a legal function. As a modern society, we want to encourage the publication of obituaries as soon as someone passes away. It mitigates the risk of potential fraud.
Edit: From Zeta Reticuli of course!
https://pauleccles.co.za/wordpress/index.php/2022/01/09/chom...
Which makes me think – who is the oldest person alive who has had a non-trivial amount of impact on global politics and the current world order?
Edit: just realized Jimmy Carter is older than both of them!
Kissinger: b. May 27, 1923 (98)
Carter: b. October 1, 1924 (97)
The Queen's a youthful 95, though.
These clowns are all just the front-men though. They may have had a non-trivial hand in pushing for and profiting from war, but for every one of them there's ones we don't know about who have control over many administrations, and many countries, and who don't really give two shits about the fungible public figures in their pockets.
These people in charge of all this are obviously completely immoral, so the catch is - how can they possibly take a moral stance on anybody, including Sadam?
She was a terrible person. Rest in peace?
Now she isn't the only person guilty and not even mentioned in this documentary. Still I think it's an important watch.
Noone asked americans to come and kill people half the planet away, and you still did that, many many times in many many countries... middle east, africa, south american, even some european ones. You're the ultimate bad guys. Once i though you were atleast aware of that (from hippie movement, to micheal moore documentaries), but stayed quiet because of all the cheap oil and other resources, but i'm genuinely more and more disappointed in you, because some of you honestly think you're the good guys for killing people.
"After the initial invasion, most of the Iraqi military's former soldiers and officers offered little resistance to Coalition forces in the early days of the occupation. Many soldiers had simply gone home rather than openly fight the invading forces. This seeming acceptance of Coalition authority stemmed from the US military continuing to pay the salaries of Saddam's former soldiers, while promising senior Iraqi officers that they would have a major role to play "in building a new Iraq." [0]
Paul Bremer, head of the CPA, issued an order dissolving the entire Iraqi military, as well as most civilian employees of the old government, and pledged to build a new military and government from scratch. [0]
Thus, a decade of hell and eventually ISIS, began.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Iraq_(2003%E2%80...
Albright stopped a life genocide in the balkans with a few weeks of air strikes. That was a war so unavoidable, Germany reversed 60 years of pacifism and felt obliged to participate. The region, today, is prosperous and peaceful. It’s really the best possible example the concept of humanitarian intervention could have, apart from WW2.
They were in power when they sanctioned and starved millions of innocent iraqis after the war. You know the "silent war". Hundreds of thousands of iraqi children starved to death - something she said was worth it. Not someone people should be defending but everyone has their supporters I guess.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5717930/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/08/04...
She got asked a loaded question for a soundbite. She wrote, "I had fallen into a trap and said something I did not mean."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright#Sanctions_a...
War crimes need a war, and crimes. Albright didn't commit any crimes, and you can't even name a war.
Who was allied with said dictator and provided the chemical weapons to use on iraqis and others? I wonder. Which is more evil. Being an evil dictator or giving the evil dictator chemical weapons?
> Never mind the invasion of Kuwait, either, the monster in this story was clearly Albright. /s
I don't remember anyone praising saddam. And there is nothing preventing both saddam and albright from being monsters. Saddam and Albright are both monsters. If there is a hell, I'd imagine they are both there right now. Wouldn't you agree?
Edit: Here, with sources and all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_program