Political Memes

[Cavebear]

Didn't you read the papers when you were young?  

Carter is the only president in recent history to never order a shot fired in anger.

Eisenhower engaged in coups in Guatemala and Iran.  He sent troops to Lebanon and his CIA was involved in insurgencies in Tibet.

Kennedy, is famous for the Bay of Pigs, and of course damn near led to WWIII with the missile crisis after repeated attempts by the CIA to assassinate Castro.  Less well known is his manipulation of Guyana to prevent a leftist government there and the the far more heavy-handed efforts to establish a fascist government in the Dominican Republic.  Then of course...there was Vietnam, which you may have heard of?

Johnson...Vietnam, (still).

Nixon... Vietnam.....and Cambodia...and Laos... but also Chile He also began supporting the Kurds to wage war against Iraq and we know how well that worked out.

Ford:  The Mayaguez incident and subsequent military attack on Cambodia   in the aftermath of the collapse of Saigon and Cambodia.

Carter:  No gunplay.  Did try to rescue the Iranian hostages but his helicopters must have all been flown by republiKKKunts.

Reagan:  The contras.  Intervening in Afghanistan.  Lebanon.... where he got a shitload of American Marines blown to shit... Obsessed by Cuba he heroically ordered the United States to invade tiny Grenada.

Bush the Smarter:  Panama.  Kuwait.  Also Somalia.

Clinton:  Haiti.  Bosnia.  Kosovo.  Iraq.  

Bush the Dumber.  Iraq.  Afghanistan.  Also deployed troops to West Africa and  Somalia.

Obama:  Continued the Afghan war, even after finally killing bin Laden, and also continued the spread of American military force around the world.  He did adhere to the Iraq departure time table established by Bush the Dumber in 2008.

Fuckface:  Yemen.  Syria.  Somalia. Syria (again).  And then he fucked over the Kurds.  And then he thought he was setting Biden up to fail by signing the Doha agreement and reducing US troop levels to a virtually useless level.  He also sucked Putin's cock onstage in Helsinki

Biden:  Some reinforcement of US capabilities in Europe.  Called Fuckface's bluff by living up to the Doha agreement instead of dumping it like the Orange Moron figured he would do.  Jury is still out on this one.

I think the definition of "acting with warfare" and "war criminal" are different.  Sometimes nations act to protect themselves and allies.  And people die as a result.  Do you think those are "war crimes"?  That would mean providing weapons to Ukrainians would be a "war crime" and I don't think it is.

To me, a "war crime" is deliberately attacking another nation, targeting the civil population for no military reason but lowering morale, and hiding your own assault weapons in civilian locations like hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings to force the opponent to attack them in self-defense and lose reputation.

And of course targeting civilians just to kill them because you hate them  ISa war crime.  

Even among some moderately crazy fights, I think you can generally judge who is worse.  If one side bombs civilians deliberately and the other side strikes only military targets when possible, that settles things in my mind.