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sebster wrote:

Albatross wrote:Hmm. Isn't that what the west's been trying to do for what, 30 years?

So... we organise a coup because we don't like that Iran voted in a democracy, and when our puppet is overthrown by a theocracy we sponsor a tyrant in the neighbouring country to invade and kill a few hundred thousand people. All that achieves nothing a more firmly entrenched religious power block. But since then it's been 25 years of soft power, and what have we got for it?!

If nothing else, we really need to realise that we keep fething up the use of hard power in the Middle East, so we really ought to stop using it.

The use of Soft Power may make people like you (for the sake of argument) feel better, but it doesn't necessarily make the people living under the Iranian regime feel better.

The stoning has been suspended, and without a bomb being dropped.

I think the jubilant scenes of celebration in Iraq when the Ba'ath Party was toppled show that the direct imposition of reform from outside CAN be accepted, and CAN work. People seemed pretty happy to see the Americans and Brits (et al.) - it al went to gak because the coalition was looking for a way 'out' as soon as they got 'in'.

No, it went to gak because basic elements of order and control were not undertaken, and because key players were not brought on board or even identified.

And your plan is lovely, but it really doesn't address what went substantially wrong in Iraq. Nothing that went wrong would have been solved by telling people they were going to be in Iraq for a long time.

There are reports she was flogged 99 times. She might already be dead. Where's that soft power again?

Phryxis wrote:It's all about signal to noise. If you scream loudly about every single thing, it diminishes the perceived significance of the things you scream about. If you're sometimes talking about important things, then you're basically serving as an excercise in diminishing important things. I view AI that way.

For example, they scream about the DPRK. Then they scream about Abu Ghraib. And while I agree that Abu Ghraib was a bad thing, it's basically trivial when compared to what happens daily in the DPRK, or virtually any other 3rd world nation.

AI holds Western democracies to a higher standard than shithole totalitarian regimes. This seems pretty sensible to me.

Yes and no. In some cases, they'll harm other inmates or guards. You can run such a tight ship that this is impossible, but that's expensive.

And if it's expensive, then you're spending money to incarcerate that guy that you could have spent taking care of somebody else, and maybe they die as a result.

Not really. Spending the right amount of money on incarceration doesn't prevent the right amount of money being spent elsewhere. Not when people are buying plasma screen tellies. If society wanted properly maintained prisons it would have them, it isn't beyond the scope of Western countries. All you guys in the US would have to do is stop giving out jail terms for pot possession and you'd free up so many resources you wouldn't know what to do with them.

All that said, yes, I was ignoring options and wasn't explaining why... So here's why: I've heard it explained statistically, that if we just executed everyone we were reasonably sure was a murderer, then fewer innocent people would be killed in the net.

I'm not saying that should be an appealing option, but it's still worth thinking through, just to have the datapoint to consider. I'm not necessarily even saying it's true, I'm just saying I heard it explained in a way that was pretty convincing, and if it's interesting enough, I'm sure I can dig it up.

That's actually the point where I start losing interest. Kill them or don't kill them, either way the victim is dead and the murder's life is wasted. I'd much rather see resources spent and political debate focussed on how the murder rate can be lowered in the first place.

Contingent to that, there would also have to be a cost savings. If it costs more in legal bills to get the execution than to just incarcerate the person, then why bother? It's not about punishment, in my opinion. I don't feel a need to "get back" at the criminal. I just don't want to deal with them anymore. I want them gone. If there was a planet where they could go, and never bother this world again, wonderful, go there. Hey, maybe Australia...

You know you guys took almost as many English prisoners as we did...

Well, the African outlook on sex is far more positive than that of the West. We're much more puritanical. Certainly there are Muslim nations in Africa, but the whole continent is living in a much more sex-positive context. It's just not as "scary" as it is for Westerners.

You think so? The number of sexual partners is not much higher in Africa than elsewhere, and corresponds pretty closely with lower socio-economic groups in the West. To the extent there's a difference that impact seems pretty miniscule compared to the empowerment of women and education.


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Frazzled wrote:There are reports she was flogged 99 times. She might already be dead. Where's that soft power again?

As I've said throughout the thread, she'll likely die. There needs to be an acceptance as to the limits of our ability to stop every bad thing happening everywhere (and now that I think of it, there needs to be a serious examination into which bad things we pick out as the completely unacceptable thing of the week and how those things relate to over-riding media narratives).


But in the meantime you should go drop some bombs on Iran. That'll totally save this poor woman. When it doesn't, you should organise another coup, see that coup overthrown by extremists, encourage a neighbour to invade and kill hundreds of thousands of people, then be shocked when the people living in that country don't like you. Then you should be shocked that a woman is being stoned, and talk about all the awesome powerful things you could do to totally explode that country.

Frazzled wrote:

sebster wrote:

Albatross wrote:Hmm. Isn't that what the west's been trying to do for what, 30 years?

So... we organise a coup because we don't like that Iran voted in a democracy, and when our puppet is overthrown by a theocracy we sponsor a tyrant in the neighbouring country to invade and kill a few hundred thousand people. All that achieves nothing a more firmly entrenched religious power block. But since then it's been 25 years of soft power, and what have we got for it?!

If nothing else, we really need to realise that we keep fething up the use of hard power in the Middle East, so we really ought to stop using it.

The use of Soft Power may make people like you (for the sake of argument) feel better, but it doesn't necessarily make the people living under the Iranian regime feel better.

The stoning has been suspended, and without a bomb being dropped.

I think the jubilant scenes of celebration in Iraq when the Ba'ath Party was toppled show that the direct imposition of reform from outside CAN be accepted, and CAN work. People seemed pretty happy to see the Americans and Brits (et al.) - it al went to gak because the coalition was looking for a way 'out' as soon as they got 'in'.

No, it went to gak because basic elements of order and control were not undertaken, and because key players were not brought on board or even identified.

And your plan is lovely, but it really doesn't address what went substantially wrong in Iraq. Nothing that went wrong would have been solved by telling people they were going to be in Iraq for a long time.

There are reports she was flogged 99 times. She might already be dead. Where's that soft power again?

Come on, Frazz. Would even you seriously threaten to bomb Iran because they were going to flog someone?

Nope. But lets admit that "soft power" doesn't work on dictatorships, pretty much ever.

dogma wrote:

Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:

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SamplesoWoopass wrote:
That, and you completely missed the point that the U.S. does indeed intentionally bomb civilians. We've done it in pretty much every major conflict that possible. That's one of the reasons the U.S. withdrew from the ICC.

The US was never a party to the ICC. Clinton signed the Rome statute, but never submitted it to the Senate for ratification; ostensibly because he reserved the right of the government to observe the court's function. Bush II, because of his neoconservative leanings, had no intention of ever submitting the statute for Senatorial review and so suspended Clinton's signature of the treaty in order to require any future President to resign the document.

Well, actually, the language used by the ICC says that the U.S Withdrew from the ICC. The Bush administration formally submitted their withdraw. And it's still because they didn't want there to be any chance of prosecution of U.S service members.


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SamplesoWoopass wrote:
One official, quoted in the Washington Post, said he had been told the bombs missed by an average of more than 100 yards (metres).

The RAF used older laser-guided bombs (which had about a 40 percent hit rate during their use in Kosovo) to hit a single target array and a Ministry of Defence spokesman in London told the BBC that they were "entirely content with their success rate". "

I don't know about you, but I believe that the Pentagon and the RAF probably know MUCH more about the bombing runs that they conducted than either you or I. Also, I think being part of the military would probably have a negative effect on how much I actually knew about the success of bombing runs. (Assuming I wasn't in a high position.)

You know that missing a target is not the same as missing a target and hitting civilians, which is what you initially claimed, right? Indeed, all you've ostensibly supported is that two separate typos of munition miss their targets the majority of the time. You still need to support the claim that the majority of all bombs miss their targets, and that at leas the majority of those misses hit civilians.

That's true, I'll give you that. But, where do you think the bombs land? You can look through here and (I started at the oldest information in the data base because that would have been where the most bombings occurred) and see for yourself that these bombs don't just miss and land out in the middle of nowhere. http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/incidents/page462 .And you have to remember, that even the ones that DO hit, even directly, could very well kill civilians and have already been noted as acceptable collateral damage. AND you have to keep in mind that the eight they list that damage the target don't necessarily hit the way they were supposed to.

Sorta like in 40k, you can miss with a blast marker and have it scatter somewhere else but still clip some of the guys you targeted. However, that doesn't stop it from having missed and potentially hit something else. Except, instead of toy soldiers it's real people.

SamplesoWoopass wrote:
I mean, to put it simply, they seem to have aimed at 25 places and only even damaged eight? Not very good odds there. I mean, that doesn't even mean eight hit on target, just that they did SOME damage to the target. Military policy was clearly outlined by Rumsfeld as "The force necessary, plus some."

Yes, because not hitting your target every time is part of warfare. For example, 40% is actually a very good accuracy rate for gravity bombs.

If that's good accuracy for that type of munition, then it shouldn't be used. Especially in this urban warfare. If 40% is GOOD, then you must agree that they knew they were going to miss and not cared about the collateral damage caused by that deplorable success rate.

Ahtman wrote: So what are things like in Narnia, or whatever imaginary land you seem to seem to be posting from where facts are just made up on the spur of the moment?

Hmmmmmm yeah, I guess I was just making up all those fire bombs and nukes we dropped on Japan, the bombs we dropped in North Korea, Kissinger's Christmas bombings and the "secret" bombings in Cambodia that helped the Khmer Rouge take power during the Vietnam War, and the bombs we dropped in Iraq. Yeah I just DREAMED all those up myself. And those aren't even all of the instances we've bombed people. Those are just the ones I see as major conflicts.

How about, instead of being a total jackass when you say my facts are off, you present some of your own? Or maybe learn a bit of history?

Frazzled wrote:Nope. But lets admit that "soft power" doesn't work on dictatorships, pretty much ever.

Well, it worked on the Soviet Union, Libya and Egypt. It can also have a positive effect on all the wavering third party countries who look at what is going on in the world.

Hard Power has much less then 100% efficiency rating too.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Nope. But lets admit that "soft power" doesn't work on dictatorships, pretty much ever.

Well, it worked on the Soviet Union, Libya and Egypt. It can also have a positive effect on all the wavering third party countries who look at what is going on in the world.

Hard Power has much less then 100% efficiency rating too.

What on earth are you talking about?
-We were in a cold war that was frequently hot with the USSR for 50 years. They collapsed only because their economy was crap and they spent themselves into oblivion on military spending.

-We bombed the out of Libya to get them to stop funding terrorists.

-Egypt? We give them billions a year and Israel beat the out of them, what 57 times?

Frazzled wrote:Nope. But lets admit that "soft power" doesn't work on dictatorships, pretty much ever.

You noted the instance of giving Egypt aid money. They're now more or less a US client state. That's soft power.

There's South Korea's move from dictatorship to democracy. US soft power was crucial.

There's Soviet Russia, who saw the power and prosperity of the West, and dismantled their state planned economy because they wanted what we had.

sebster wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Nope. But lets admit that "soft power" doesn't work on dictatorships, pretty much ever.

You noted the instance of giving Egypt aid money. They're now more or less a US client state. That's soft power.

There's South Korea's move from dictatorship to democracy. US soft power was crucial.

There's Soviet Russia, who saw the power and prosperity of the West, and dismantled their state planned economy because they wanted what we had.

ONly after they bankrupted themselves trying to keep their military machine going and we stopped them cold.

Frazzled wrote:Nope. But lets admit that "soft power" doesn't work on dictatorships, pretty much ever.

It's doing the job on Cuba isn't it ?

..admittedly for quite some time it's been more like Cuba is some bastard and partially disowned relative than an actual out and out enemy of THE AMERICAN WAY, but the soft approach has had much more success than any of the innumerable wacky CIA attempted assassinations etc etc.

... ..and we still get to keep it as a holiday destination too. win =win there !

reds8n wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Nope. But lets admit that "soft power" doesn't work on dictatorships, pretty much ever.

It's doing the job on Cuba isn't it ?

..admittedly for quite some time it's been more like Cuba is some bastard and partially disowned relative than an actual out and out enemy of THE AMERICAN WAY, but the soft approach has had much more success than any of the innumerable wacky CIA attempted assassinations etc etc.

... ..and we still get to keep it as a holiday destination too. win =win there !

If it worked Cuba wouldn't have remained communist now would it?

..I don't really think you can say that Cuba is a fully communist state, it's already undergone significant changes and, realistically, once you-know-who finally shuffles off to the cigar shack in the sky I can't seem them doing anything but moving further towards political, at least, alignment with your good ( or bad ) selves.

At the very least you've contained them quite nicely, I'm unaware of many Americans trying to defect to Cuba, but I do hear most odd stories about visitors flying out there wearing mutliple layers of clothing to give to friends/family etc etc.

I am confident that the Cubans on the island today are far happier than they would have been if you went over there and bombed/shelled/watsuied the bejeezus out of them.

Not that I'd imagine that'd take long to do, hell the amount of guns you lot have got one of your scout troops and some determined soccer "Moms" could probably take over the place.

reds8n wrote:..I don't really think you can say that Cuba is a fully communist state, it's already undergone significant changes and, realistically, once you-know-who finally shuffles off to the cigar shack in the sky I can't seem them doing anything but moving further towards political, at least, alignment with your good ( or bad ) selves.

At the very least you've contained them quite nicely, I'm unaware of many Americans trying to defect to Cuba, but I do hear most odd stories about visitors flying out there wearing mutliple layers of clothing to give to friends/family etc etc.

I am confident that the Cubans on the island today are far happier than they would have been if you went over there and bombed/shelled/watsuied the bejeezus out of them.

Not that I'd imagine that'd take long to do, hell the amount of guns you lot have got one of your scout troops and some determined soccer "Moms" could probably take over the place.

Dadman's wing was on standby to support the invasion or attack Soviet naval ships. He figured they'd get the word then about an hour later nukes would be flying and everyone would be dead.

....yes, there's been the odd mention of those times here and there. My old Theology tutor told us about when the deadline approached there was suddenly a roar and some jets flew past overhead and he and everyone else in the room looked at each other and thought...uh oh...

..or equivalent.

But, thankfully, it didn't all kick off and the world is, generally a better place for not having been plunged into a nuclear holocaust.

..With the clear and obvious exception of you-know-where-starts -with-an-L-andnearlybeatScotlandatfootballlastnight.

reds8n wrote:....yes, there's been the odd mention of those times here and there. My old Theology tutor told us about when the deadline approached there was suddenly a roar and some jets flew past overhead and he and everyone else in the room looked at each other and thought...uh oh...

..or equivalent.

But, thankfully, it didn't all kick off and the world is, generally a better place for not having been plunged into a nuclear holocaust.

..With the clear and obvious exception of you-know-where-starts -with-an-L-andnearlybeatScotlandatfootballlastnight.

I have faith. For ten score generations the Weiner Legions have been preparing for the day of Liberation, the day Leichtenstein gets stuffed. With their alliance with Cthulu cuttlefish and new treaty with Awesome Spider, almost all the pieces have been put into place. Soon the world will be freed from Leichtensteinian tyranny!

sebster wrote:

Albatross wrote:Hmm. Isn't that what the west's been trying to do for what, 30 years?

So... we organise a coup because we don't like that Iran voted in a democracy, and when our puppet is overthrown by a theocracy we sponsor a tyrant in the neighbouring country to invade and kill a few hundred thousand people. All that achieves nothing a more firmly entrenched religious power block. But since then it's been 25 years of soft power, and what have we got for it?!

If nothing else, we really need to realise that we keep fething up the use of hard power in the Middle East, so we really ought to stop using it.

Or use it properly by actually building nations instead of just expecting them to appear out of thin air because we really, really, really want them to.

The use of Soft Power may make people like you (for the sake of argument) feel better, but it doesn't necessarily make the people living under the Iranian regime feel better.

The stoning has been suspended, and without a bomb being dropped.

Frazzled wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Nope. But lets admit that "soft power" doesn't work on dictatorships, pretty much ever.

Well, it worked on the Soviet Union, Libya and Egypt. It can also have a positive effect on all the wavering third party countries who look at what is going on in the world.

Hard Power has much less then 100% efficiency rating too.

What on earth are you talking about?
-We were in a cold war that was frequently hot with the USSR for 50 years. They collapsed only because their economy was crap and they spent themselves into oblivion on military spending.

You never once fought the SU.

Economy is soft power.

Frazzled wrote:
-We bombed the out of Libya to get them to stop funding terrorists.

That didn't work, but the application of soft power afterwards did. It was applied more by the UK though.

Frazzled wrote:
-Egypt? We give them billions a year

Giving money isn't soft power?

How well did hard power work in Korea and Vietnam, eh?

Boy you and Frazzled are really going at it.

Wanna make a debate thread to the death?

We hate users more than each other.

You never once fought the SU.

*****Actually we had multiple scrapes with them. Additionally Soviet pilots and US pilots were killing each other over Korea for nearly 3 years.
Proxy wars between the two sides. Lots of proxy wars. Angola, Latin America, indochina, Korea, Afghanistan.


That didn't work, but the application of soft power afterwards did. It was applied more by the UK though.
****Actually it worked quite well. They stopped after Khaddafy buried his kid. Payback is a bitch.

Giving money isn't soft power?
****Its not especially productive.

How well did hard power work in Korea and Vietnam, eh?
***Worked pretty damn well for North Vietnam and stopped the North Koreans and Chinese cold.



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Kilkrazy wrote:We hate users more than each other.

Exactly. Plus he has opposable thumbs and the weiners aren't always around to open the rum bottle for me.

Kilkrazy wrote:We hate users more than each other.

Frazzled wrote:ONly after they bankrupted themselves trying to keep their military machine going and we stopped them cold.

This has always been a weird one for you Republicans. You oppose the Soviets, quite rightly, because state planned economies are wasteful and lead to economic stagnation... but the Soviets themselves realised this and began to dismantle their system you started pretending it wasn't the inherent failings of a state planned economy but a drive to spend themselves into the ground to compete with US spending.

It is, of course, a nonsense. Soviet military spending was always high, and throughout the final years of the USSR it was no higher than it had been throughout. With the Russian economy stagnant in comparison to the growth in the West, the Soviets simply pretended to have a far greater level of strength than they could actually handle. When Reagan set about really increasing US defence spending, the Soviets responded by really pretending to spend money.

And you didn't even respond to the positive use of soft power in South Korea...


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Albatross wrote:Or use it properly by actually building nations instead of just expecting them to appear out of thin air because we really, really, really want them to.

But building a nation is not something you can simply choose to do. It takes a whole lot of treasure and a whole lot of blood, which is something nations aren't willing to give up. Even if they are willing, there's no guarantee they'll actually get it right.

Why do you think I care about this particular Iranian (actually, I think she's Azeri) woman? She's a drop in the ocean, sadly.

It's what the thread is about, it's why we're talking about how to stop Iran doing bad things.

Yes, dismantling the Iraqi armed forces and police were a bad idea. I thought that went without saying. I'm talking about the broader long-term strategy, or lack thereof.

Do you think if the best possible plan could have been employed from the start, the death toll wouldn't have still been in the tens of thousands? The dollar cost wouldn't have been in the hundreds of thousands?

Really? You think installing a puppet government then announcing that you'll be leaving in a few years was a more effective way of stabilising the country than assuming formal control of the country for the long term?
Well, we've tried it your way and it didn't work.

You think anything that's happened has been my way?

Not really. Spending the right amount of money on incarceration doesn't prevent the right amount of money being spent elsewhere.

Have you seen the American debt? Money has never been such a finite resource.

All you guys in the US would have to do is stop giving out jail terms for pot possession and you'd free up so many resources you wouldn't know what to do with them.

Agree there, BIG TIME.

You think so?

I dunno, I'm not an African scholar, it's just something I've heard repeated a lot by people who seemed to think they were.

And it's still because they didn't want there to be any chance of prosecution of U.S service members.

This is not really accurate. The US can actually destroy the ICC by signing on, this is the concern. If the ICC says "person X is guilty" and the US doesn't agree, guess what happens? Person X doesn't get punished, and the ICC is revealed as a joke.

The ICC is actually better off not being revealed as secondary to the decisions of US courts or US policymakers.

I guess I was just making up all those fire bombs and nukes we dropped on Japan

Yeah, ok, and in the Jurassic period, people didn't even LIVE in the US.

I guess I could also point that you routinely crap and piss in your own pants, as well? Oh, sure, I mean, you did when you were 6 months old, but I'M STILL RIGHT!!!! READ SOME HISTORY DUH!

Dude, current American policy is to avoid civilian casualties. We're more focused on it than any military power in history.

In 1940 it was an accepted military tactic to attack civilian centers. Just how war was done. In fact, during the Battle of Britain, when Hitler turned the Luftwaffe on the cities, rather than military assets, the Brits breathed a sigh of relief, thanked him for his ignorance, and won the battle. It wasn't just an accepted tactic, it was an accepted tactic that didn't always work.

Phryxis wrote:

Not really. Spending the right amount of money on incarceration doesn't prevent the right amount of money being spent elsewhere.

Have you seen the American debt? Money has never been such a finite resource.

All you guys in the US would have to do is stop giving out jail terms for pot possession and you'd free up so many resources you wouldn't know what to do with them.

Agree there, BIG TIME.

You think so?

I dunno, I'm not an African scholar, it's just something I've heard repeated a lot by people who seemed to think they were.

And it's still because they didn't want there to be any chance of prosecution of U.S service members.

This is not really accurate. The US can actually destroy the ICC by signing on, this is the concern. If the ICC says "person X is guilty" and the US doesn't agree, guess what happens? Person X doesn't get punished, and the ICC is revealed as a joke.

Well, that's the reason that ya know... the PEOPLE WHO WITHDREW gave.

The ICC is actually better off not being revealed as secondary to the decisions of US courts or US policymakers.

I guess I was just making up all those fire bombs and nukes we dropped on Japan

Yeah, ok, and in the Jurassic period, people didn't even LIVE in the US.

I guess I could also point that you routinely crap and piss in your own pants, as well? Oh, sure, I mean, you did when you were 6 months old, but I'M STILL RIGHT!!!! READ SOME HISTORY DUH!

Dude, current American policy is to avoid civilian casualties. We're more focused on it than any military power in history.

In 1940 (and 50's and 60's and 70's and now) it was an accepted military tactic to attack civilian centers. Just how war was done. In fact, during the Battle of Britain, when Hitler turned the Luftwaffe on the cities, rather than military assets, the Brits breathed a sigh of relief, thanked him for his ignorance, and won the battle. It wasn't just an accepted tactic, it was an accepted tactic that didn't always work.

You must not have read what I said in the post prior, because I explicitly said in major conflicts where it was possible. Obviously discounting conflicts before the U.S. had a strong enough air force to actually conduct air strikes. You're just being a fool and trying to completely circumvent the actual point made with some asinine bs that you think takes away its validity because "omahgaz, that aren't possible cuz the U.S couldn't have dropped bombs in dem major conflicts bcuz the U.S didn't exist."

And they don't REALLY avoid civilian casualties, or they wouldn't drop inaccurate and useless bombs in highly populated cities... you know... like Baghdad. Or, you know, wouldn't invade countries for oil so often.

Still, no one has been able to show anything contrary to my position that the U.S. intentionally bombs civilians. I'm also surprised that all of this arose from me saying that bombing the Iranian people wouldn't be helping them.

Frazzled wrote:
You never once fought the SU.

*****Actually we had multiple scrapes with them. Additionally Soviet pilots and US pilots were killing each other over Korea for nearly 3 years.
Proxy wars between the two sides. Lots of proxy wars. Angola, Latin America, indochina, Korea, Afghanistan.

But did you actually fight them? I mean more than espionage, spy planes getting shot down and the like.

That didn't work, but the application of soft power afterwards did. It was applied more by the UK though.
****Actually it worked quite well. They stopped after Khaddafy buried his kid. Payback is a bitch.

???

Giving money isn't soft power?
****Its not especially productive.

??????

How well did hard power work in Korea and Vietnam, eh?
***Worked pretty damn well for North Vietnam and stopped the North Koreans and Chinese cold.

Oh good Lord. See these pretty pictures?
First one is the inital Korean invasion, followed by the UN (American mostly) retaliation.


This one is the Chinese intervention.


Exactly who is stopping who cold here?

Frazzled wrote:Nope. But lets admit that "soft power" doesn't work on dictatorships, pretty much ever.

Iran isn't a dictatorship. You could call it an autocracy state of any sort except dictatorship. They would need to have a dictator for that to follow. The argument that you want to make is that soft power doesn't work on autocracies. Its a nonsense argument, because its based on conventional realism which is also nonsense, but its at least a terminologically correct argument. Anyway, there are quite a few examples of autocratic states responding to soft power, which is basically anything that isn't economically or militarily coercive.

Recently there was prisoner transfer between the United Kingdom, and Libya. This may have involved economic coercion on the part of Libya, but for the UK it was most certainly a soft power transaction which permitted them to obtain oil rights off the Libyan coast. That's one successful use of soft power against a dictatorship.

China went out of its way to improve its humanitarian conditions in the lead up to the Olympics; according to most analysts this was an express response to soft power coercion.

The United States made great use of public diplomacy throughout the Cold War, and in Iraq. In both instances it was effective in reducing the degree of opposition faced by American diplomats and soldiers. Notably, there is a proven correlation between the broadcast of American radio in Iraqi neighborhoods and their positive, or neutral, response to American soldiers. Its unlikely that this correlation indicates that the broadcasts made at the time rendered the Iraqis sympathetic to US soldiers. However it does show that they likely had some exposure to it in the past, which is consistent with the US broadcasts into Iraq prior to the war.

And, perhaps the most significant example, any attempt by any autocracy to control the influx of information to their nation implies that they fear, at least to some extent, soft power.

Frazzled wrote:
Actually it worked quite well. They stopped after Khaddafy buried his kid. Payback is a bitch.

No, they didn't. I understand that you only care about how certain ideas make you feel inside, but please make at least some attempt to make factual claims.

Libya wasn't removed from the US list of terrorism sponsors until 2006, and it wasn't until just before that point that they stopped supporting terrorists.

And hey, that Lockerbie bombing? That was 2 years after Reagan's military strikes, which only managed to kill his adopted daughter. Real effective, huh?

So does anyone know for sure if this poor woman was whipped and stoned to death, or if they called it off in the name of humanitarian outrages from the world community?

The U.S. major news networks haven't TOUCHED this at all. Perhaps this is so as not to cause a "we hate Iran" mob mentality at a time when we really want some kind of peace over there.

dogma wrote:[
No, they didn't. I understand that you only care about how certain ideas make you feel inside, but please make at least some attempt to make factual claims.

Good to see your level of debate is at its usual high level.


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Guitardian wrote:So does anyone know for sure if this poor woman was whipped and stoned to death, or if they called it off in the name of humanitarian outrages from the world community?

The U.S. major news networks haven't TOUCHED this at all. Perhaps this is so as not to cause a "we hate Iran" mob mentality at a time when we really want some kind of peace over there.

Its not PC to discuss the fact that many coutnries in the ME have aspects of their cultures that rats would fine repellant.

Frazzled wrote:

dogma wrote:[
No, they didn't. I understand that you only care about how certain ideas make you feel inside, but please make at least some attempt to make factual claims.

Good to see your level of debate is at its usual high level.

I see you are as well, by just quoting the cheeky response but not the part that followed that was the actual rebuttal. It is almost like you want to make it seem as if he just said something snarky without also being useful. It was both useful and snarky.

The stoning has been set aside due to international pressure.

soft power does work. not all the time. but it does have an effect. the alternatives are to do nothing or to bomb and/or invade. the 1st is worse than soft power, and the 2nd is often worse than either of them because it costs too much money. I wish republican chicken hawks could get their heads around how expensive war is. AF