Nukes work better though. I don't care about what these enemies of mankind have to say in their defense. — Olivier5

It is YOU that is the enemy of mankind. You are trying to attack liberal democracies instead of dictatorships.

Anyway, we have irreconcilable views, so we will meet on the battlefield. Good luck. I've got the US military on my side.

I don't think so. They mass murdered the aborigines — Olivier5

That stopped many years ago. You may as well say you want to invade China to stop foot-binding. I'm interested in current violations of human rights, not past ones. I have no interest in invading Japan either. CURRENTLY, it is a democracy with freedom of speech. Again, best technology we know of.

and gave rise a world-class disinformation enterprise leading the world right into the wall of climate change. They must be dealt with, one way or another.

If you believe Australia's information about climate change is inaccurate, you are free to challenge that in the free marketplace of ideas. Again, best technology we know of.

Indeed, we should start with Australia, where he’s based and started his malevolent empire. Invading them shouldn’t be too hard. Then dismantle said empire and move on to the US and UK. — Olivier5

Australia also has the "best technology" we know of - democracy and freedom of speech. So does the UK. No need for a military intervention in any of the 3 countries you mentioned. There is a need in Thailand though. You need to be able to distinguish between countries that have the best technology we know of, and countries that don't.

Formally yes but in fact, Murdock rules them. — Olivier5

Murdoch has freedom of speech like everyone else in America. If you wish to counter his message you are free to do so in the free marketplace of ideas. That's the "best technology" we have. You are already using that technology now to try to influence American readers of this forum to not listen to Murdoch and to listen to you instead. There's nothing to be done here, ie no need for a military intervention in America.

Most Americans say horrible things of their regime in Washington. They all want it to get fixed, and that's where I come in. I haven't decided yet it's better to kill only the fascists, which would imply a lot of work, or just nuke the whole place and start afresh. — Olivier5

Start afresh to create what exactly? They already have democracy and freedom of speech. You'll end up where you started. I'm all for a realistic plan to fix America, but they already have the "best technology" we know of, which is democracy and freedom of speech. They need to use those tools to muddle through life. I see nothing for a military intervention to actually DO. Quite apart from the fact that the US is completely impregnable anyway, so we should be looking elsewhere for a softer target.

Hey Paul, nobody here will stop you if you do undertake to liberate Thailand. So go right ahead. I have to get busy liberating Washington DC myself. All American citizens secretly wish for my intervention.

This is in fact the world we live in. Communists will attempt to "liberate" capitalists if they see the opportunity to do so. Our ancestors have already done the hard work defeating the Nazis and the Communists. We just need to finish our enemies off. I can see the whites of their eyes.

Note for the record that Americans, like Afghans, don't speak with one voice either.

3. Protesters have not, as far as I know, asked for outside help in the form of armed intervention.

And I hadn't heard a single Afghan call for armed intervention in 2001 either. But 87% of them secretly harbored such a desire.

I noticed that your first topic on this forum invoked the responsibility to protect. Is that your justification in this case? Because it doesn't apply to the curtailment of free speech:

1. It needs to be expanded to include freedom of speech and democracy.
2. It needs to be enforced by the free world instead of the UN.

Nobody has a right to intervene militarily in Thailand.

I consider that I have such a right.

Also, I don't want to indulge in whataboutism but I'm curious as to why you're ignoring China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and other regimes that curtail freedom of speech. Is it because you want to pick off what you see as the easy targets, thereby enlarging the "free world"?

Yes to both of those things. We should take easy targets (like Haiti) whenever opportunities arise. And yes, it is in the free world's interests for it to be enlarged. I'd like to see 20 easy liberations done so that the difficult liberations are seen in context. We don't have enough data on wars of liberation. Panama is probably the gold standard.

or if not asylum outside of the country — Outlander

I don't believe in evacuating the entire population of a country because of a crappy government. I believe that if the government is so crappy it should be toppled instead.

The exception is Hong Kong. I think the pro-democracy 60% of the country should be evacuated to the Anglophone countries.

Because we can't solve that problem militarily, and we basically created that problem by giving them a different identity.

a large majority is likely to be adamantly against foreign occupation — Echarmion

BTW, don't forget that 87% of Afghans supported foreign military intervention. We don't have data from a liberated Thailand.

have you considered that not all inhabitants of Thailand think the same thing, and that there may even be a majority of people who disagree with your notion of free speech? At the very least, a large majority is likely to be adamantly against foreign occupation. So what about their rights and freedoms? — Echarmion

Absolutely I have considered that. Those Thais are my enemy, who think they have the right to suppress the freedom of speech of my allies. I don't really give a shit what my enemies think (and I don't recognize such a "right"), other than taking that into account in military planning to liberate my allies.

But yes, I intend to put automatic weapons into the hands of my Thai allies and letting them set the rules in the constitution that will protect their rights, even if from an (alleged) majority. I think the Americans did something similar with their constitution.

It's time that those Thai protesters had some automatic weapons on their side. Bigger and better automatic weapons. That's a fair fight. — Paul Edwards

And any innocent deaths in that fight are the responsibility of the Thai government for refusing to surrender to our Thai allies. It will be the last crime they commit. You can add that crime to the list that includes sending our Thai allies to jail for exercising their freedom of speech.

If and when there are enough liberation-motivated Thais they will liberate themselves.

You're asking individual Thais to be willing to risk more than a decade in jail, or maybe being mowed down by automatic weapons, in order to liberate themselves.

I would not be willing to do that myself. Would you? Those Thai protesters are braver than me. The Thai protesters shouldn't have their human rights dictated by their fellow countrymen who are not as brave as them.

It's time that those Thai protesters had some automatic weapons on their side. Bigger and better automatic weapons. That's a fair fight.

Oh, and I don't want sanctions on Thailand either. I don't want the protesters to have to pointlessly suffer like everyone else. Just a quick liberation, and basically let the protesters write a constitution that guarantees their human rights, even if they are in a minority (I don't know whether they are or not).

I've read everything you wrote Paul. It's crap.

You'll need to be specific about which bit you didn't understand. I know it's good stuff because it was good enough to flip a Russian, after months of debate, and much anguish from him as his worldview was shattered.

Our liberal democracies are not ceasing to be democracies. That's a failure to distinguish cars from squirrels. We're not going to get anywhere if you can't recognize a democracy right in front of your nose.

My knowledge of war is fine too.

I took a different path through life, deriving these things from first principles, so you might be confused by the way I express things. But it's all perfectly sound. So long as you accept the axiom that women have the right to not be raped, anyway. If you insist that that is debatable then the rest of what I have derived is also debatable, and we just need to meet each other over the barrel of a gun.

OK. Hubris. Nice.

The same thing preventing you from reading my research?

Right. So you refuse to read research handed to you in a plate because...

Because you and they should be reading MY research, which concludes that the US is the greatest force for freedom in the world, even on a per-capita basis, and is one of the world's great democracies. At the same time you can learn to distinguish cars from squirrels so that you can cross the road safely.

Read the Princeton study.

Read what I wrote. It's totally accurate.

And granted the US stopped being a democracy some time ago and is already a full-blown plutocracy. Reagan was probably the nail in that coffin.

So you've gone from not being able to tell the difference between good and bad, to not being able to recognize the greatest force for freedom in the world since Pearl Harbor, even on a per-capita basis, as a democracy.

Again, I don't know how you manage to cross the road safely. "That's not a car, it's a squirrel".

I think it's more sustainable than the Pax Americana — Benkei

It would be good if people could see that it's Pax Free World rather than just an American venture. And this is already known by the name "Democratic Peace Theory" which can be found in Wikipedia. To that we need to add an aggressive campaign (preferably led by the likes of Tunisia or Iraq) to democratize the world while we are still in a strong position to topple assorted dictators.

Most of my generation have barely any hope of ever paying off a home. Two generations ago a man my age who wasn’t well on his way to that goal would have been a complete failure. I’d gladly trade some GiB of RAM for a real house of my own, one I could raise a family in.

Ok, I'm not against doing something to address such issues, but I don't know how to solve that problem.

The social experiment that’s failing the world is the concentration of capital ownership in increasing fewer hands. That destroys the freedom of the market.

Note that under capitalism, sometimes monopolies form, which requires government intervention to break up the monopoly. For some reason the US government hasn't addressed the problem of Microsoft and IBM having respective monopolies. For decades I have been trying to address that problem myself, and you can see the result here. Maybe if you have any programmer friends who also dislike capitalist monopolies you can send them my way.

America today is not better for most people than America 40 years ago. Stainism or Maoism is not the only alternative to what we’re doing now. — Pfhorrest

How many GiB of RAM did your computer have 40 years ago? We've had massive improvements in standard of living thanks to our capitalist economy. Note also that capitalism is the *natural* form of trade (no-one in charge of setting prices) so it's not surprising that that is the best system we know of to date.

Again, I'm sure you've got your pet idea which is guaranteed to work and be better than what we have now, and it's a crying shame that no-one has implemented it to date. I'm not against trying out kooky experiments just for laughs, but as I said, please try them out on a small island, or even better, a hippy farm, without human rights abuses, and without lying about the results.

As opposed to the massive social experiment that’s been failing — Pfhorrest

It hasn't been failing. It's the best system we actually know of. Any time someone tries out a different system it only ever makes things worse. Your different take on the same data is why we need to have an ideological war, an all-encompassing ideological war, in response to 9/11.

Too bad one of those things has to spoil the great civilization that the other three together would make. — Pfhorrest

Part of the comprehensive response to 9/11 is to get people like you to stop running the same absurd social experiment on multiple countries at the same time, instead of testing your theories on one small island at a time, voluntarily (like Venezuela did), and without accompanying human rights abuses and lying about the results.

Why? Are you trying to recruit me for the Australian CIA?

The CIA equivalent here is "ASIO". And no, I don't trust ASIO to respond properly to the rape of Iraqi women, or indeed to Americans jumping out of skyscrapers. I think you have brought up some very interesting points that need to be explored in the free marketplace of ideas, and I wish you would expand on them. And I'd like to see your response to my suggestions. I'd like to see Hippyhead's thoughts too.

I think China owns a fair amount of Australia, so it would be their call.

Let me know when you think Iraqi women being raped by their own government and Iraqi men having their tongues cut out is a serious issue worth addressing.

Your sentiments would make more sense if there was a global government. Without that, theres no social contract to support intervention and no taxation (on loudmouth Dutch people) to provide structure post intervention.

So let's discuss creating these things so that there is a contract in place to make everyone care about Iraqi women being raped by their own government.

The NATO coalition would be a good place to start. It requires unanimity for decision-making. It only allows secular capitalist liberal democracies in. It's reach could spread beyond the North Atlantic to allow Australia et al in.

I think it would require a new global religion.

Ok, so create one! I've made an attempt here.

Paul gets this. You don't. — Hippyhead

Hi Hippyhead. Thanks for the kind words. Like someone else said, we should start a website together. But you haven't responded to my PM.

I said before that I subscribe to NATO's ideology of "freedom", but "freedom" is quite vague. Some people think "freedom" is "communist dictator". So I'd like to give my interpretation which I believe matches NATO, in the form of a universal pledge:

"I pledge allegiance to use my brain to fight subjugation of my species - do you?"

Note that the "peace conference" currently taking place in Qatar is a debate between Muslims over what "Islam" even means, and is a very appropriate response to 9/11. There is probably not going to be any agreement and we will have Sunni Muslims fighting Sunni Muslims for the foreseeable future. But thanks to the withdrawal agreement they are verbalizing the debate instead of it just being an obscure military conflict. It is unclear if the Taliban are going to argue for a "right" to hit women with sticks. And actually being willing to die for that "right" is beyond comprehension.

Withdrawing now could have grave (and melodramatic) consequences — The Opposite

So long as the funding to the ANA is not cut, they should be able to manage with or without international boots on the ground. It would be good if the Afghan Air Force could go to somewhere like Turkey to be trained though, in the absence of foreign trainers in Afghanistan.

It will be interesting to see if the Taliban has increased difficulty getting recruits because they can no longer claim there is a non-Muslim occupier.

I hope that if something goes wrong and the ANA need external assistance again, that the coalition will come back instead of standing idly by watching the Taliban beating women with sticks.

The coalition has already done something miraculous - installed democracy by force of arms in a place that has no history of democracy. There were plenty of people who said that was physically impossible. The hard work has already been done. All that is required now is money to the Afghan government so that they can afford their huge security forces.

I'm not sure if it could be classed as a replacement. Traditional imperialism, with settler colonialism and all that, was still fundamentally tied to the nation-state, and perhaps it's the same now. In any case no, I don't think it works well.

I've been thinking about this some more, and I think that when the US acts as part of a coalition, it would seem to be a pure ideological movement. And spreading democracy is a far cry from colonialism. Again it is just spreading the ideology of freedom.

Do you have any issue with ECOWAS liberating Gambia?

Would you be more ready to liberate other places (like Iran) if it was an ECOWAS-led operation? Or Philippines-led? Or Australian-led?

Maybe we can negotiate a solution.

As for the Philippines, I'm confused as to what your point is. Its history doesn't seem to be a good advert for American interference.

It's a ridiculously light touch required to have a democracy instead of a dictatorship in the Philippines. I think it's the best intervention ever. ECOWAS in Gambia was also very good. I think interventions like this are much better than letting some thug take over and calling it an "internal matter" that we shouldn't interfere with.

but none of the attempted replacements so far seem to work very well

Well the subject of this thread is "liberal imperialism". Is that classified as an attempted replacement and do you think it works well?

What do you think of the US military putting down a coup attempt in the Philippines in 1989? It seems to me that this should be used as the basis for the world in the long term. All they needed to do was to buzz some air bases and the coup was defeated. One day it may be US air bases that are being buzzed by NATO forces operating from Canada.

"Says the person with the NATO flag avatar."

Yes, but I consider NATO to represent the *ideology* of secular capitalist liberal democracy (aka "free world") rather than being an arbitrary geographical area. That is why I fly the NATO flag even though Australia is not part of NATO. Getting Americans to see themselves as part of a wider community, and wave the NATO flag instead of the American flag, is to me part of the comprehensive response to 9/11.

The beauty of 9/11 was that it cut across nation-states forcing the US to respond to every hostile individual and every hostile idea instead of just dealing with governments.

Basically we now have ideas competing rather than nation-states competing. Well, the Cold War was also ideas competing and also cut across nation states. The heavy weaponry was held by nation-states which were sometimes taken over by the communist ideology.

or any other form of aggregation. — Paul Edwards

Correction. Ideological groupings are appropriate. E.g. anti-rapists.

He and she does know that the system sucked, but still has a lot of pride in Juri Gagarin being the first man in space. There actually is no problem in this view. — ssu

I think there is a problem with people identifying as "Russian" or "American". It makes as much sense as "Northern Hemispheran". Being proud to be a northerner. I think a comprehensive response to 9/11 will involve getting people to think of themselves as individuals rather than as a member of some race/religion/sex/nationality or any other form of aggregation.

The USA has a history of replacing popular democratically elected government with puppet government through various overt and covert approaches. Long ago, it even supported capitalist dictatorships against socialist democracy.

Or to put it a different way - the US took the lead in winning the Cold War. Something which the whole world should be thankful for. If you have any complaints about how the US acted during the Cold War you should take it up with Mr Marx.

War crimes committed during invasion of Iraq are enough to disqualify US from being a global moral authority.

No. Any war crimes committed by rogue US soldiers result in the US soldiers being charged and jailed in accordance with the US's democracy.

Frankly speaking, no one is above other in terms of moral authority and every country is sovereign.

This "moral equivalence" that some stated existed between the US and USSR is also being applied to the US and Saddam's Iraq?

How can Americans trust their government after reading the history behind foreign intervention in the interest of Democracy.

They can trust their government because it is an open democracy, usually reflecting the will of the people.

You have to consider likely outcomes. Some risks are justified.

The likely outcome was that Iraq would be converted from an enemy dictatorship to an allied democracy, which is what happened.

That just means your moral compass is way out if whack.

You talk as if you can handle having your tongue cut out, but I really do wonder how long you could really withstand torture before pressing the magic button to either end Earth or at least call in International SWAT.

What if it was instead your daughter who was about to be raped by Uday? Would you at least call International SWAT for her sake?

Yeah, I disagree. You're limiting responsibility for your action only to your intended results. But it's a fact that you don't control the exact result, so your idea of responsibility rests on a fiction.

Then you cannot call the police when you see a rape occurring outside your house. The police might hit a pedestrian when responding to the call.

I'd only want to be rescued if the rescue can be achieved without endangering even more innocent people.

Again, this precludes calling the police on a rape occurring in your street. More innocent people are endangered.

Note that if I was having my tongue cut out, and I had a button to destroy Earth, I would do so to end the injustice. Certainly International SWAT can do a much better job than destroying Earth, ie they will accidentally kill a lot fewer people.

Of course there is. Because yours is not the only SWAT team around,

Any SWAT team that wants to convert a dictatorship into a democracy is OK. Like Senegal liberating Gambia.

and all of them also shoot innocent bystanders.

So long as they don't deliberately target them, it's not immoral.

If it was you having your tongue cut out by Saddam's goons, would you want International SWAT to rescue you? Doesn't your moral code require you to look at the world from the perspective of others?