heybruce

"Shinawats should have been history by now." They might be if the 2014 election had been allowed. The Shinawatra's and their party were at a low point in popularity then. However an election would not have resulted in a government to the liking of the elites, so Thailand had another unnecessary coup instead.

How long can Russia continue? https://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-economy-is-starting-to-come-undone-431a2878

Source?

Democracy was never a perfect form of government, just one superior to all others. Do you think a culture of staging coups whenever an elite minority decides it doesn't like the current government is superior to democracy? Once again, no proof of vote buying. Repeating an unsubstantiated claim over and over doesn't make it true.

Has the Easter Bunny been proven to not exist?

Vote buying! Vote buying! I have no proof but trust me, there's massive vote buying!

Coups against a democratically elected government are a method for the minority to impose its wishes on the majority using force or the threat of force. Nothing more, nothing less. Any other excuse is BS.

You are desperately grasping at straws.

Dominion's reputation as a vendor of election machines is at stake, and without a solid reputation in that field the company is worthless. Dominion can't afford to settle. Dominion knows this, which is why Longwood's suggestion that Fox might find something in their discovery process is unlikely. Dominion wouldn't have gone this far if it weren't confident about its systems.

Unbelievable! In most of government you can be reassigned and disciplined for just the appearance of a conflict of interest. You can and probably will be charged and prosecuted for actual conflicts. How can a Supreme Court Justice get away with this?

As I posted, a lot of flailing. No President knew what to do with Afghanistan but no President wanted to be the one to pull the plug and deal with the aftermath. Even here it took a split effort between Republican and Democratic Presidents. BTW: I agree with your assessment of Bush and Rumsfeld. I don't know if there ever was hope for "fixing" Afghanistan, but if there was it was lost when the focus shifted almost exclusively to Iraq.

If you mean benevolent Western intervention following earthquakes, floods, typhoons, hurricanes, etc., I disagree. If you mean "benevolent military intervention", why limit it to the west? Can you give any example since World War II of military intervention from any power, Western or non-Western, giving beneficial results? Also, while both cases are open to debate, the first Gulf War, which got Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, and the NATO intervention in the former Yugoslavia, which prevented further atrocities, could be offered as examples of successful military interventions.

The State Department works with functioning governments. That was not considered before the war. After the government was toppled with no popular replacement, the options were to abandon the country to chaos, impose an open-ended military occupation for as long as it took (probably decades), or flail. The Bush administration chose to flail, though none of the geniuses who actually made decisions realized they made that choice. Once the flailing option was chosen the other two options remained open, but the US public had not desire to pay for indefinite military occupation. So we abandoned the country to chaos. In short, don't blame the State Department for the failure in Afghanistan, blame the Bush administration.

You do realize that it is not the purpose of government to entertain, don't you?

"The Marshall Plan was executed by the military." The military provided aid equivalent to 5% of US GDP and determined how it was to be used in Europe post-WW II? I don't think so. Got any sources to back that up? I don't know what you expected the State Department to do after the Afghan government was toppled with no plan for the aftermath. A problem compounded by all emphasis shifting to Iraq while Afghanistan was still in disarray and insecure. The State Department's job (one of them) is to prevent fires, not put them out. Once a county is secure it can get involved in reconstruction, but it doesn't secure the country. That's why Mattiss commented on the need for more ammunition if State Department funding was cut.

Admittedly decades of gerrymandering has resulted in a pathetic state government, and a long history of under-funding has resulted in sub-par public schools. Florida actually has some good public universities, but DeSantis is working hard to change that. However 49% still voted against Trump. All the DeSantis noise gives a misleading impression of the state.

Don't pin Trump on Florida, he's a product of New York.

"...the single most useless governmental agency in modern times: The State Department." That is an incredibly ignorant thing to say. Was the State Department under former Secretary of War George Marshall useless when it implemented the Marshall Plan, helping western Europe recover from World War II? Was Defense Secretary James Mattis wrong when he said "If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately,"? Have you noticed that in the 21st Century the US Military has shown that it is very good at winning wars, but not at winning the peace? Winning the peace is the hard part, in fact it's incredibly difficult and the US Military doesn't want the job. We need a competent, well funded State Department for that. Of course before committing to war it would help tremendously if the US in general and the US President in particular would insist on a credible plan for winning the war and the ensuing peace.

Don't beat around the bush: Are you saying that the Fox News pundits giving so much time to election deniers weren't lying?

It's not too complicated. I just consider it an extreme long-shot, while you post your conjecture as if it were a realistic possibility. As recent posts have indicated, the extreme long-shot seems to have become a fantasy.

I don't recall that. I recall Obama inheriting two unfinished wars and an economy in freefall. And I remember Trump inheriting a strong economy but insisting "I inherited a mess" in order to explain why he didn't keep his campaign promises. In this case, Biden genuinely inherited a mess caused by Trump's cut-and-run peace plan.

Really? You don't understand how a plan the requires a semblance of functioning government can fail if there is no such government?

It's easy to tell if a field has been burned or not, just as it's easy to tell if a forest has been burned. Withhold payment until the start of the rainy season, then pay only if the fields and forest were not burned.

Possibly. At this point his Florida base is so excited about him running for President this time they may turn on him if he doesn't. In other words, he may have maneuvered himself into a now or never situation.

It doesn't matter how well planned the withdrawal was or was not. If it depended on the Afghan government lasting more than a day after first contact with the Taliban it was doomed. As noted nobody, not even the Taliban, expected the government to collapse so suddenly.