[quote]Gkhan wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
You completely ignored the part about Gadaffi giving up his nuclear program, arresting and taking on terrorists like al-qaeda, which Sexmachine and I both talked about. [/quote]
Except I didn’t ignore that. [/quote]
If you did not ignore this, it’s significance was lost because you missed the whole point. If not, your logic is flawed.
But at least less people are dying in Libya now than during the civil war in 2011. At least the civil war’s not dragged on like the one in Syria.
That’s the only points you seem to continue make.[/quote]
Not much of this makes sense (your first sentence may mean something to you, but it doesn’t convey a shred of information to me). I’ve made many other points (extent of rebel gains pre-intervention, comparative strength of Libyan/Syrian military, date of presidential finding, restrictiveness of ten years of “democracy in the ME” rhetoric, etc.), though I readily admit that many of them were, of necessity, needless and simple corrections of the horseshit bandied about on your end.
But forget that. I want to briefly note something before I take my leave. This little progression I’ve quoted (your post, my post, your post) is in many ways the quintessential exchange between us. It’s representative of your illegitimate and stupid method of argument. Allow me to elaborate. These are the first – and, in a way, most important – words of each entry in our exchange:
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
You completely ignored the part about…[/quote]
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Except I didn’t ignore that…[/quote]
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
If you did not ignore this…[/quote]
This is an appalling bit of idiocy, and you do it again, and again, and again: You find something far up your own ass, retrieve it, throw it at me, and then, when it hasn’t stuck or accomplished anything, what do you do? You squint your eyes, grit your teeth, screw your courage to the sticking place and reach back up in search of more. It’s downright vulgar.
When you tell me that I ignored something, I expect you to know well and damn fucking good that I did ignore something: that…I…didn’t…address…it. I don’t expect you to be lying or fantasizing-out-loud, and I don’t expect you, if it turns out that you’ve made an error and been corrected, to open your next post with “If you did not ignore this,” going on to try something new about how, no, I didn’t ignore it, but I “missed the whole point” (which, incidentally, is nonsense). I don’t expect you to act like this is a game of whack-a-mole which I’ve agreed to play out of charity or something. You don’t get unlimited re-do’s. You don’t get your hand held.
Pay attention to this part: I am not the part of your brain responsible for making sure that what it produces is rational and correct. I am not the fact-checking arm of a newspaper you own. We are not a team that convenes at regular periods in order to figure out which of the things you’d like to say are halfway-acceptable and which are idiotic. I am not the butcher to whom you take the roadkill you find so that the useless and sickly and mangled parts can be cut away and discarded. I love debate and argument, but this is neither. This is you spraying onto the page every last delusion that comes to your mind while I pick through the mess in search of something with which to engage.[/quote]
Than answer the f****** question: Libya 1969-2010. Or 2011-2014. Which is better for the region or the world? A stable government for close to 25 years or four years of instability and anarchy?[/quote]
It isn’t a legitimate queslion, but a false dichotomy. There existed no choice between an antebellum Gaddafi and the post-Antebellum devil we did not know. Foreign policy formulation is more often than not the art of making extremely complex decisions aimed at not the best outcome, but the least bad one.
