skells @skells@qoto.org

a civilised society that doesn't have seating by the front door to perform shoe related operations is undeserving of the name

The new Bush Doctrine of pre-emption was not well received by legal scholars and international relations specialists. As William Galston, at the time a professor of public policy for the University of Maryland, observed in an article published on Sept. 3, 2002,

“A global strategy based on the new Bush doctrine of preemption means the end of the system of international institutions, laws, and norms that we have worked to build for more than half a century. What is at stake is nothing less than a fundamental shift in America’s place in the world. Rather than continuing to serve as first among equals in the postwar international system, the United States would act as a law unto itself, creating new rules of international engagement without the consent of other nations.”

Galston’s words were echoed by then U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who shortly after the NSS was published declared that the notion of pre-emptive self-defense would lead to a breakdown in international order. For any military action against Iraq to have legitimacy under the U.N. Charter, Annan believed, there needed to be a new Security Council resolution which specifically authorized a military response.

- https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/29/russia-ukraine-the-law-of-war-crime-of-aggression/

Having failed to implement a viable doctrine of military deterrence when dealing with Iraq’s unfulfilled obligations under Security Council resolutions, the U.S. crafted a new approach for resolving the Iraqi problem once and for all—the doctrine of pre-emption.

This doctrine was first articulated by President Bush in his June 2002 address to West Point, where he declared that while “in some cases deterrence still applied, new threats required new thinking … if we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.”

On Aug. 26, 2002 Vice President Dick Cheney specifically linked Bush’s embryonic doctrine of pre-emption to Iraq, declaring at a convention for the Veterans of Foreign Wars that:

“What we must not do in the face of a mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or willful blindness…deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terror network or murderous dictator or the two working together constitutes as grave a threat as can be imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the risks of action.”

- https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/29/russia-ukraine-the-law-of-war-crime-of-aggression/

@crunklord420 into the glowing crucible of information destruction

@CedarHammock unliked so i could like again

@academicalnerd depends on the wire

@Jagahati stupidity weaponised by evil

unironic free covid tests with your fourth booster

@cjd @wolf480pl

https://gbt.org/text/sayers.html

Great old essay on the Trivium, based on how the ancients used to do it

very much "anti-Prussian" education before Prussian education was a thing.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html

2019 report from the RAND corporation detailing, amongst other points:

"Providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability. But any increase in U.S. military arms and advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to increase the costs to Russia of sustaining its existing commitment without provoking a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of proximity, would have significant advantages."

@adam @Johncdvorak