Guardsman Bass wrote:
What the fuck are you rambling about, and what does it have to do with the likelihood that Holbrooke had little influence and knowledge over AIG's policies regarding the Subprime Crisis?
Don't take the money and be a public figure and not want people to ask? Why didn't you do anything for the shareholder, much less public interest? Oh I forgot, U.S. privilege insiders have a sovereign right to take money and give Reagan-type replies when you ask what the fuck for.
What's amazing is why you can't imagine why me or the average American might feel like a sinecure piece of shit like Holbrooke sitting on the paper board for years and collecting on it owes none of the moral obligations that office-holding does for, well,
normal people.
Guardsman Bass wrote:I personally don't care much for Holbrooke, for reasons mainly of competence (he comes across as an asshole in Woodward's account of the Obama administration and the Afghan War). However, that does not make him a "Nuremburg" criminal, and if you are going to be throwing around accusations like that, expect some of them to be answered.
Please. Did he or did he not help facilitate the U.S.'s assistance and political cover for the genocide in
East Timor?
Of course my claim he is a
war criminal is based on simple facts, primarily pertaining to Indonesia. The United Nations’ Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in
East Timor found that “U.S. political and military support were fundamental to the Indonesian invasion and occupation” of
East Timor from 1975-1999 (Holbrooke was Asst. Secretary of State under Carter and visited Suharto in August 1977 to commend his human rights record, at the height of the atrocities). “The U.S. supplies weaponry was crucial to Indonesia’s capacity to intensify military operations from 1977 [Holbrooke in town] in its massive campaigns to destroy the Resistance in which aircraft supplied by the United States played a crucial role” (p. 92). (
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB176/index.htm) Furthermore, those aircraft, OV-10 Broncos, according to Benedict Anderson from Cornell University, "specially designed for counter-insurgency actions against adversaries without effective anti-aircraft weapons and wholly useless for defending Indonesia against a foreign enemy". In other words, for strafing people in the hills who can’t defend themselves. Over 1 billion in U.S. arms passed through to Indonesia (
http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arm ... oarms.html) though Holbrooke to this day saw no problem with it (
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/28/t ... on_richard).
Holbrooke was the point man in this genocide, which in its scale, at 150,000-200,000 people out of a pre-
war population of 680,000 people, approaches as far I know in the post-
war occupation record, the intensity only matched by Nazi Generalplan Ost policy in the occupied territories of the USSR and Eastern Europe from 1940-1943.
Blow me. You've never seen a liberal internationalist who performed the solemn tasks of state like arranging for the mass murder of purported "Communists," or a corporate executive who profited off corruption and not an iota of hard work, that you couldn't find something ambiguous, or shit, laudable about.
Guardsman Bass wrote:Illuminatus Primus wrote:If they have no command responsibility for what goes on in their corporation, on what even theoretical pretext should they have such enormous personal remunerations we all need to "understand" is for their "talent", and there should be limited liability for the shareholders?
Simply because the company's leadership (as approved by the share-holders) was willing to pay him that amount, and he was willing to accept it. No other justification is necessary.
Yeah, and people like you still probably wonder how come history repeats itself over and over and over again with crises and corporate habits of exactly the type in 2007. Because not only is what you describe the positive reality, but ideologues are hard at work convincing people its not only the only way to do things, but the best way! What could possibly go wrong from so distantly connecting responsibility and remuneration?
Guardsman Bass wrote:Illuminatus Primus wrote:Who is in a practical sense responsible for the consequences of these institutions' actions? Obviously this is a rhetorical question, because its obvious to all with eyes to see and ears to hear that there are zero practical responsibilities corporate and state elites ever live up to, in our ostensibly "democratic" society.
It was likely not Holbrooke, for the reason I mentioned.
Right. Yeah this exactly the kind of line the party line has on official enemies like the Soviet Union. You're right. No one ever uses this kind of reasoning, or even bothers to go to such lengths to apologize for anyone UNLESS they're powerful, well-connected, and privileged in the West. Then you just have show some rictus grin and liberals everywhere will emerge from the woodwork to pen apologia for you.
Can a liberal give me at least the theoretical standard by which a U.S. diplomat has to apologize for, lie about, facilitate, or do in general before you are allowed to uncontroversially state say he's a sack of shit who doesn't deserve to be mourned? One could be forgiven for concluding that no standard exists, because U.S. diplomats by definition are never
war criminals or sacks of shit because the U.S. is, by axiom, a normative progressive historical force. What else would Holbrooke have needed to do? Is it because they're South Asians? I realize these aren't quite as sexy or human victims as Jews, but I'm tryin' to work with you.
I'm just trying to understand. I keep hearing this Democrat line on it where ever I argue about it. I manage to get "his record is complicated" (as an aside, does anyone notice how rapidly establishment-brand Democrats adopt the lowest Republican rhetorical tactics when it comes to deflecting any criticism of the Boy Wonder, his policies, or the Democratic Party's Henry Kissinger?). What exactly is "ambiguous" about it?
If I'm strident, maybe its because every time I criticize an American, I have to post a fucking dissertation to even be controversially heard out. If I were to criticize some official enemy like Iran, Hezbollah, or (here) the Republicans, I wouldn't have to wiggle all ten fingers, and everyone knows it.