Captain Marcus, What is it with you and the 'Reds', and the need to do something, anything, as long as it's not pansy-ass diplomacy? Seriously, it's disturbing on so many levels.
Oh, well I'm a conservative. And don't get me wrong, I'm all for diplomacy, but Russia and the PRC are police states who don't care about international opinion- it's tough to make diplomatic stuff stick with them since they've the luxury of ignoring it. Heck, Russia's economy is in the tank thanks to sanctions but Putin's still sending Russian soldiers and tanks to the Ukraine. The PRC is pissing off all its neighbors but it's still going full speed ahead with Operation Fake Islands.
I turned this post into a mini-essay because there is just so much fucking wrong about romanticizing the brutal empires of the past, and be assured they were all brutal to some extent. Empires are dead and they should stay dead.
I hope you don't think I was romanticizing them.
I mean, I mentioned the Islamic State as an example of a would-be empire motivated to expand by ideology.
(edit: I'll try to respond more substantively later)
For what it's worth, I do believe that spreading (one's own obviously and eminently superior) "civilization" is a popular aim of expansion - perhaps not as much, or as pragmatically, as economic reasons, but it's something that the base can get passionately fired up about.
"Those people's way of living and doing things are backward and bad and wrong, so we're going to go over there and civilize the fuck out of them. And once we've assimilated converted them to our way of life, of course they'll be grateful, and even join us in doing the same to the next poor bunch of savages!"
most of the north american continent for most of the 1800s
I was arguing against its existence today, not two hundred years ago.
afghanistan
iraq
The democratically-elected leaders that the people of those countries voted for kicked us out. Truly shining examples of fifty-first states.
...When did the Afghans kick us out? We still have ~10k troops occupying the country and actively fighting the Taliban, in addition to another several thousand from other countries. Air strikes continue, and the government in Kabul continues to be the largest recipient of US military aid, surpassing even Israel and Egypt.
And using the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq as evidence against US imperialism is less persuasive when, three years later, the US redeployed thousands of troops in the country and started bombing the hell out it and neighboring Syria.
edit- also, referring to Ashraf Ghani as "democratically elected" is very misleading. He essentially lost the (laughably fraudulent) election, but the US and its allies pressured the guy who "won" to share power in order to maintain the stability of the fragile governing coalition.
I concede that Western settler-colonialism mostly died. That is/was one specific form of imperialism. The US's decades of wars for control of the Korean Peninsula, Indochina, Central Asia, and the Middle East are another form, as were the US's efforts to overthrow governments and fund right wing paramilitaries in Latin America up through the 1980s. If you don't think the US's modern history of using military force and political subterfuge to achieve global control/influence is an example of imperialism then I'm not sure what definition of the word you're using.
Seriously? You're arguing against Korea, when a dictatorship invaded another state which asked us for help in its defense? Not everything we did was evil, as far as the rest of the stuff goes we were trying to keep a totalitarian police state from spreading its tendrils across the world, not conquer it ourselves.
And we didn't. Yes, through our military might, we've kept the peace in our hemisphere and in most of the world, although that is changing thanks to religious zealots/Obama not being stern enough with the Reds. We've stopped genocides and have been there to rebuild after natural disasters. Hegemonic? Yes. Imperialist? No. If you want to criticize imperialists, criticize Russia and Communist China. They're the ones actively seizing land.
The South Korean government we were backing against the North was also a brutal dictatorship, and that didn't change until the 1980s. There was no good vs. evil in the Korean War, just a violent and oppressive US-backed state fighting a violent and oppressive PRC-backed state for control of a geopolitically important location. The government we failed to install in southern Vietnam was similarly authoritarian and corrupt.
I think you're operating under a highly idealized and propagandistic depiction of modern history that depicts the US as "the good guys" and most of our enemies as "the bad guys."
I get a sense that people somehow aren't really processing that Islamic State is a group that only finds success expanding into power vacuums that were created as a result of violent military attacks and other destabilizations committed not only within living memory, but within the last several years, by US imperialism. And many, such as the government of Iran, assess its rise as in fact serving US imperialist interests through weakening Iran's bloc and geographically isolating the Assad regime in Syria from its allies Iran and Iraq. Islamic State exists as a result of, and arguably serves as a tool for, US imperialism.
edit: quote by Prof. John Bellamy Foster, summarizing underlying premises:
"In the present period of global hegemonic imperialism the United States is geared above all to expanding its imperial power to whatever extent possible and subordinating the rest of the capitalist world to its interests."
The South Korean government we were backing against the North was also a brutal dictatorship, and that didn't change until the 1980s. There was no good vs. evil in the Korean War, just a violent and oppressive US-backed state fighting a violent and oppressive PRC-backed state for control of a geopolitically important location. The government we failed to install in southern Vietnam was similarly authoritarian and corrupt.
I only mildly disagree in that I would see South Korea as the worse evil during the Korean War. The atrocities committed by that regime, in collusion with the US, were very severe or fascistic, including vast massacres of civilians and totalistic bombing of civilian structures in North Korea.
I remember seeing references in the past indicating that there was general support at the time within South Korea for Kim Il-Sung's attempt at national reunification, but cannot find relevant data concerning this at this moment.
Regarding Qingu's post that Jephery already responded to, I don't know but isn't saying 'empire is not inherently bad' about the same as saying 'slavery is not inherently bad'? What is empire being defined as? (Empire is structuralized enslavement of entire communities, societies, or nations.) The idea 'It is ok for us to build an empire, because other powers did/do that also and we may be conquering territory from another power that is also an empire' seems to be the same argument conservatives make when they offer defenses of US slavery on the grounds that African societies themselves also practiced slavery.
They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.
[Prince Mohammed bin Salman] developed an early and abiding love of Japan, which remains his favorite country, a close associate said. When Prince Mohammed first married several years ago, he took his wife on a two-month honeymoon to Japan and the Maldives. (He recently married a second wife, associates said.)
His most public role was running the Prince Mohammed bin Salman Foundation. Broadly dedicated to developing Saudi youth, the foundation has held conferences on the uses of Twitter and YouTube, and it has explored producing Japanese-style “manga” cartoons to showcase Arab culture.
The second in line to the throne of Saudi Arabia is a weeaboo.
The poll found that 53 percent of Saudis named Iran as their main adversary, while 22 percent said it is the Islamic State group and only 18 percent said Israel.
Such shifts in sentiment in Saudi Arabia would be heavily influenced by regime propaganda.
The drawing on the left portrays an IS fighter as merely a pawn on a chessboard. The drawing on the right depicts the resources of Arab monarchies flowing to jihadists while needs of populations are neglected.
Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
Preliminary election results show Erdogan's Islamist party losing the majority in parliament by 16 seats.
It looks like his repressive tactics have backfired. Hopefully the coalition that would come out of this will be saner. I'm also rooting for him to lose because the nutjobs in his administration hinted about painting over the murals in the Hagia Sophia, and it's like, who does that? Who ruins World Heritage Sites?
Preliminary election results show Erdogan's Islamist party losing the majority in parliament by 16 seats.
It looks like his repressive tactics have backfired. Hopefully the coalition that would come out of this will be saner. I'm also rooting for him to lose because the nutjobs in his administration hinted about painting over the murals in the Hagia Sophia, and it's like, who does that? Who ruins World Heritage Sites?
Oh thank fuck for that since his big plan was to rewrite constitution, transferring a lot more power to the president post. Though in order to succeed with a constitutional change he needed a pretty big majority (don't remember the details from the article I read :S ).
Preliminary election results show Erdogan's Islamist party losing the majority in parliament by 16 seats.
It looks like his repressive tactics have backfired. Hopefully the coalition that would come out of this will be saner. I'm also rooting for him to lose because the nutjobs in his administration hinted about painting over the murals in the Hagia Sophia, and it's like, who does that? Who ruins World Heritage Sites?
Oh thank fuck for that since his big plan was to rewrite constitution, transferring a lot more power to the president post. Though in order to succeed with a constitutional change he needed a pretty big majority (don't remember the details from the article I read :S ).
Actually said it in there, 330 seat minimum, but he's about 72 seats short.
Looking through the article, it looks like one of the mainstream Kurdish parties also got enough votes to be awarded seats. That's probably another big kick in the crotch to Erdogan's ambitions.
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AbsalonLands of Always WinterRegistered Userregular
We can only hope the nationalists don't give him their support.
Preliminary election results show Erdogan's Islamist party losing the majority in parliament by 16 seats.
It looks like his repressive tactics have backfired. Hopefully the coalition that would come out of this will be saner. I'm also rooting for him to lose because the nutjobs in his administration hinted about painting over the murals in the Hagia Sophia, and it's like, who does that? Who ruins World Heritage Sites?
Oh thank fuck for that since his big plan was to rewrite constitution, transferring a lot more power to the president post. Though in order to succeed with a constitutional change he needed a pretty big majority (don't remember the details from the article I read :S ).
Re-writing the constitution would not necessarily be inherently bad - given that it is a product of Turkey's military coup-prone era - but, yes, if the AK party had won a decisive majority it would not have looked too good given Erdogan's Putin-esque trajectory.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Only two people would not be so important we were not discussing such a small group as billionaires who are particularly obsessed with influencing the US political process.
This is not unusual, taking into account the makeup of the billionaire class. Many of the other leading political donors influencing the US political process are also Jewish -- namely the Koch brothers, Michael Bloomberg, Paul Singer, George Soros, Tom Steyer -- but they seem less singularly-obsessed with Israel.
Only two people would not be so important we were not discussing such a small group as billionaires who are particularly obsessed with influencing the US political process.
The billionaires bankrolling Republican and Democrat US presidential candidates are 'absolutely on the same page' when it comes to Israel:
Do you understand the difference between these two ideas?
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Only two people would not be so important we were not discussing such a small group as billionaires who are particularly obsessed with influencing the US political process.
The billionaires bankrolling Republican and Democrat US presidential candidates are 'absolutely on the same page' when it comes to Israel:
Do you understand the difference between these two ideas?
There is not a difference between those two statements. 'The billionaires bankrolling Republican and Democrat US presidential candidates' meaning the single most important person who will be bankrolling Rubio (probably, or whoever), and the single most important person who will be bankrolling Clinton (seemingly inevitably). They happen to enjoy sharing stages in order to express their love for Zionist Apartheid and declare that under their influence US policy biases in support of Israel will only strengthen.
If there were a subset of billionaires who happened to fervently support the Palestinian position and also had major influence on US presidential politics toward that, there could be some distinction along the lines you're trying to assert here.
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
Only two people would not be so important we were not discussing such a small group as billionaires who are particularly obsessed with influencing the US political process.
The billionaires bankrolling Republican and Democrat US presidential candidates are 'absolutely on the same page' when it comes to Israel:
Do you understand the difference between these two ideas?
There is not a difference between those two statements. 'The billionaires bankrolling Republican and Democrat US presidential candidates' meaning the single most important person who will be bankrolling Rubio (probably, or whoever), and the single most important person who will be bankrolling Clinton (seemingly inevitably). They happen to enjoy sharing stages in order to express their love for Zionist Apartheid and declare that under their influence US policy biases in support of Israel will only strengthen.
If there were a subset of billionaires who happened to fervently support the Palestinian position and also had major influence on US presidential politics toward that, there could be some distinction along the lines you're trying to assert here.
Two billionaires is not a sufficiently large portion of all billionaires (or even just all billionaires bankrolling political campaigns) to generalize like that.
Only two people would not be so important we were not discussing such a small group as billionaires who are particularly obsessed with influencing the US political process.
The billionaires bankrolling Republican and Democrat US presidential candidates are 'absolutely on the same page' when it comes to Israel:
Do you understand the difference between these two ideas?
There is not a difference between those two statements. 'The billionaires bankrolling Republican and Democrat US presidential candidates' meaning the single most important person who will be bankrolling Rubio (probably, or whoever), and the single most important person who will be bankrolling Clinton (seemingly inevitably). They happen to enjoy sharing stages in order to express their love for Zionist Apartheid and declare that under their influence US policy biases in support of Israel will only strengthen.
If there were a subset of billionaires who happened to fervently support the Palestinian position and also had major influence on US presidential politics toward that, there could be some distinction along the lines you're trying to assert here.
Two billionaires is not a sufficiently large portion of all billionaires (or even just all billionaires bankrolling political campaigns) to generalize like that.
Ok, I will apologize for my apparently confusing use of language, and I should have have been much more clear and stated something more along the lines of, "The billionaires who are the leading bankrollers of Republican and Democratic US presidential candidates"
Edit: I was not in any sense 'generalizing' beyond what the article I linked to described (what would be the point?), and now I think the 'clarified' sentence I just posted actually reads almost identically to the initial sentence, and I'm honestly surprised people were confused by the meaning in context, which seemed obvious, however I will attempt most exact clarity of writing possible with a message board audience in mind. But I am honestly surprised my meaning was not immediately pretty clear (or maybe it was; Kana has a habit of falsely accusing me of errors). Think 'newspaper headline speak' (which a brief incomplete sentence posted before an article link would resemble in style and purpose) -- did anyone at all think the Bloomberg article's headline stating 'US billionaire political rivals' was 'generalizing', or intending to dishonestly imply that all US billionaires who are political rivals were joining forces on this issue, and that the headline was inappropriate or incorrect? If not -- How was my usage any different??
Anyway, hijacking/diverting a thread for 8 posts for no plausible purpose other than to nitpick someone's grammar seems very impolite (to everyone, not just to me). In the future, if my writing confuses you, you can send me a direct message indicating this and I will edit to clarify, which is more appropriate than distracting from the subject of the thread in this way, thank you. This thread should be about the Middle East, not about A. Sokolov's writing style imperfections.
Preliminary election results show Erdogan's Islamist party losing the majority in parliament by 16 seats.
It looks like his repressive tactics have backfired. Hopefully the coalition that would come out of this will be saner. I'm also rooting for him to lose because the nutjobs in his administration hinted about painting over the murals in the Hagia Sophia, and it's like, who does that? Who ruins World Heritage Sites?
Oh thank fuck for that since his big plan was to rewrite constitution, transferring a lot more power to the president post. Though in order to succeed with a constitutional change he needed a pretty big majority (don't remember the details from the article I read :S ).
Re-writing the constitution would not necessarily be inherently bad - given that it is a product of Turkey's military coup-prone era - but, yes, if the AK party had won a decisive majority it would not have looked too good given Erdogan's Putin-esque trajectory.
A minority AK Party causes a lot of problems for Erdogan, because there are government boards that are controlled by parliament proportionally. With AK not having a majority, it is much more difficult for them to leverage the government as a pro-AKP force. This includes the board that governs radio and television. The various AKP scandals can now be investigated more freely without fear of a governmental oversight, because the other three parties would hold the majority.
I'm also interested to see if the other parties can force Erdogan to abandon his newly built fancy presidential palace. That would be a nice kick in the nuts.
Here's an interesting Middle East Eye article on the IS takeover of Harawa. Apparently much of the surrounding region, which is home to much of Libya's oil, is not controlled by Tripoli or Tobruk:
The oil ports of Sidra and Ras Lanuf are not under the control of either of Libya’s feuding governments. For almost two years they have been controlled by self-appointed federalist leader Ibrahim Jadhran. Then heading the country’s oil protection forces, he gained control of facilities by leading workers in an industrial action that kept four ports closed and cost Libya millions of dollars in lost oil revenue.
...
“Jadhran is a mystery even to us. We have not yet understood what he really is, apart from an oil thief,” said Misrata Military Council head Ibrahim Beitemal. “We have attempted to open dialogue with him but he does not like to collaborate because he doesn’t agree with the east or the west.”
IS's takeover of Harawa, which was reportedly the result of a deal made with tribal leaders, most likely presages an assault on this oil-rich territory. Given the lack of forces from Tripoli or Tobruk in the area, they might find it a softer target than other areas in Libya.
Human rights campaigners are urging Britain to stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia; Saudi Arabia is largest customer for British weapons (also the largest customer for French weapons, and on a particular year might be the largest customer for American weapons); Saudi Arabia's military budget has recently soared to 4th largest in the world, and they plan to increase that by another 27% in the next 5 years. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/08/britain-arms-trade-saudi-arabia-blogger-weapons-raif-badawi-sentence-lashes
Clinton foundation != Hillary. Unless you intend to allege some form of altruistic corruption, or really convoluted kickbacks, just don't post any if that crap. This is like the tenth time some group has tried to paint her as corrupt because a charity she founded gets international donations. At least one of these cases involved donations years before she became secretary.
Your posts are normally worth reading for being well sourced, but the Clinton Foundation stuff is basically Benghazi 2.0
Clinton foundation != Hillary. Unless you intend to allege some form of altruistic corruption, or really convoluted kickbacks, just don't post any if that crap. This is like the tenth time some group has tried to paint her as corrupt because a charity she founded gets international donations. At least one of these cases involved donations years before she became secretary.
Your posts are normally worth reading for being well sourced, but the Clinton Foundation stuff is basically Benghazi 2.0
I say this as someone who will most likely end up voting for Hillary, but I really can't wrap my head around this defense. It's really popular in these parts, but I'm not sure how you can insulate the Clinton family foundation - founded by Bill and currently run by Chelsea - from the Hillary Clinton campaign. It seems like one of those things the Republicans like to do - draw a circle around a problematic issue, declare it out of bounds and then stamp your feet whenever someone brings it up.
Like, there's a massive issue in American culture in general around donor culture . It's probably unfair to single out the Clintons as a special example, but there are issues about what it means to take money from people and institutions whose behavior seems at odds with your organization's stated mission.
Human rights campaigners are urging Britain to stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia; Saudi Arabia is largest customer for British weapons (also the largest customer for French weapons, and on a particular year might be the largest customer for American weapons); Saudi Arabia's military budget has recently soared to 4th largest in the world, and they plan to increase that by another 27% in the next 5 years. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/08/britain-arms-trade-saudi-arabia-blogger-weapons-raif-badawi-sentence-lashes
The more I read about Saudi Arabia' military, the more I think the issue is less how horrible the Saudis are human rights wise and more concerns about which rebel group is going to end up getting their hands on these weapons when the Pakistani/Indonesian mercenaries that the Saudis rely on flee en masse in the first battle.
Human rights campaigners are urging Britain to stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia; Saudi Arabia is largest customer for British weapons (also the largest customer for French weapons, and on a particular year might be the largest customer for American weapons); Saudi Arabia's military budget has recently soared to 4th largest in the world, and they plan to increase that by another 27% in the next 5 years. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/08/britain-arms-trade-saudi-arabia-blogger-weapons-raif-badawi-sentence-lashes
If I were a government in the Middle East, upgrading my military would be pretty high on my priority list.
Even though there is nominally some alignment between the Saudi government / royal family and ISIS, if I were a pragmatic Saudi I would want my military a bit more prepared and capable than the Iraqi military.
The Saudis donated that $10 million over a number of years and before Clinton was Secretary of State. Boeing donated $900,000 out of their ~$200,000,000 annual charitable donations.
The Clinton Foundation is one of the premier charitable foundations in the world. It would be an anomaly for the Saudi royal family and Boeing not to donate money to the Clinton Foundation. If the Saudis / Boeing were trying to bribe Hillary, that's about the most convoluted bribery method ever.
Good or bad, it's been the US's stated policy goal to sell the F35 to virtually anyone who wants to buy it. The Saudis / Boeing didn't have to grease any palms - certainly not Hillary's - to make that deal happen.
Human rights campaigners are urging Britain to stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia; Saudi Arabia is largest customer for British weapons (also the largest customer for French weapons, and on a particular year might be the largest customer for American weapons); Saudi Arabia's military budget has recently soared to 4th largest in the world, and they plan to increase that by another 27% in the next 5 years. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/08/britain-arms-trade-saudi-arabia-blogger-weapons-raif-badawi-sentence-lashes
The more I read about Saudi Arabia' military, the more I think the issue is less how horrible the Saudis are human rights wise and more concerns about which rebel group is going to end up getting their hands on these weapons when the Pakistani/Indonesian mercenaries that the Saudis rely on flee en masse in the first battle.
I'd rather see those mercs with those weapons rather than an actual Saudi military force.
Dropping their weapons and fleeing is preferable to just joining up. Which is what I'm pretty sure we'll see.
Also, mercs tend to do fairly well overall, especially compared to the piss-poor levels of training and discipline you see in most of the ME militaries. There is at least a respectable military culture and outright incentive to fight and maintain discipline instead of just running away. Money is a pretty strong motivator.
Human rights campaigners are urging Britain to stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia; Saudi Arabia is largest customer for British weapons (also the largest customer for French weapons, and on a particular year might be the largest customer for American weapons); Saudi Arabia's military budget has recently soared to 4th largest in the world, and they plan to increase that by another 27% in the next 5 years. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/08/britain-arms-trade-saudi-arabia-blogger-weapons-raif-badawi-sentence-lashes
If I were a government in the Middle East, upgrading my military would be pretty high on my priority list.
Even though there is nominally some alignment between the Saudi government / royal family and ISIS, if I were a pragmatic Saudi I would want my military a bit more prepared and capable than the Iraqi military.
The Saudis donated that $10 million over a number of years and before Clinton was Secretary of State. Boeing donated $900,000 out of their ~$200,000,000 annual charitable donations.
The Clinton Foundation is one of the premier charitable foundations in the world. It would be an anomaly for the Saudi royal family and Boeing not to donate money to the Clinton Foundation. If the Saudis / Boeing were trying to bribe Hillary, that's about the most convoluted bribery method ever.
Good or bad, it's been the US's stated policy goal to sell the F35 to virtually anyone who wants to buy it. The Saudis / Boeing didn't have to grease any palms - certainly not Hillary's - to make that deal happen.
Human rights campaigners are urging Britain to stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia; Saudi Arabia is largest customer for British weapons (also the largest customer for French weapons, and on a particular year might be the largest customer for American weapons); Saudi Arabia's military budget has recently soared to 4th largest in the world, and they plan to increase that by another 27% in the next 5 years. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/08/britain-arms-trade-saudi-arabia-blogger-weapons-raif-badawi-sentence-lashes
The more I read about Saudi Arabia' military, the more I think the issue is less how horrible the Saudis are human rights wise and more concerns about which rebel group is going to end up getting their hands on these weapons when the Pakistani/Indonesian mercenaries that the Saudis rely on flee en masse in the first battle.
I'd rather see those mercs with those weapons rather than an actual Saudi military force.
Dropping their weapons and fleeing is preferable to just joining up. Which is what I'm pretty sure we'll see.
Also, mercs tend to do fairly well overall, especially compared to the piss-poor levels of training and discipline you see in most of the ME militaries. There is at least a respectable military culture and outright incentive to fight and maintain discipline instead of just running away. Money is a pretty strong motivator.
From what I've read, we aren't really talking about mercenaries in the usual sense. We're talking about low-level foreign conscripts who have their passports confiscated and are treated like shit by their officers. It's basically the Saudis using the same labor practices as the other Gulf States use to build their football stadiums, just this time the poorly treated immigrant workers have guns and the job of defending the borders.
Clinton foundation != Hillary. Unless you intend to allege some form of altruistic corruption, or really convoluted kickbacks, just don't post any if that crap. This is like the tenth time some group has tried to paint her as corrupt because a charity she founded gets international donations. At least one of these cases involved donations years before she became secretary.
Your posts are normally worth reading for being well sourced, but the Clinton Foundation stuff is basically Benghazi 2.0
I disagree; I respect David Sirota as a journalist and I usually agree with his political views. The IBT article I posted seems pretty substantive and consistent with other credible media reports on similar dealings. Hillary Clinton at least appears to be the most corrupt presidential candidate in US history that I'm aware of. The corruption doesn't look terribly 'convoluted'. The idea that 'philanthropy' is very often a front for types of corruption or aggrandizement, especially when politics come into play, should among the most ordinary complaints one can possibly make about US society. On H. Clinton, I've not really seen a case in which the appearance of corruption was more blatant. I'm surprised at how often here the most mundane statements, which credible sources appear to not dispute, are somehow regarded as 'conspiracy theories'. In this case, I'm not even sure where that 'conspiracy' angle is coming from, given that these claims are usually being taken seriously by serious media.
My overall opposition to H. Clinton predates these stories and is primarily due to her neoconservative orientation on foreign policy.
I'm not sure what 'Benghazi 2.0' would refer to -- different things are different. The particular narrative hyped almost exclusively by conservative media regarding Benghazi was actually basically incoherent; whatever 'scandal' they were trying to create about an intelligence failure, if any individual should have been primary focus of blame on that it really should have been David Petraeus, who formulated the intelligence assessment that was repeated by others in the Obama administration. But Petraeus is generally idolized by types like Glenn Beck who primarily attacked Clinton on this. The Clinton Foundation corruption stories have, on the contrary, involved substantive accusations and received very wide coverage from media outlets that are generally seen as favoring the Democrats, especially the New York Times (and Washington Post, Newsweek, Politico, among many other sources). This really seems very different than whatever the Benghazi pseudo-scandal was.
Referring to all of this coverage as a 'conspiracy theory' seems dense, or reflexively and unthinkingly partisan. And it's actually basically itself a conspiracy theory, through implying that vast numbers of generally liberal journalists are conspiring to smear Clinton with a false scandal. A leading source of criticism of the Clinton Foundation is the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, which has issued many complaints against both Republicans and Democrats.
sorry for being tl;dr, but it's frustrating when professional journalists and basically all campaign finance watchdog organizations are accused of pathological paranoia for raising such blatantly-fucking-obvious points.
edit: I could post 30 articles here which seem to show appearance of corruption, but one could just argue it's a 'conspiracy theory' because there is 'no smoking gun' establishing Clinton determined or changed policy, from stances she previously held, as a result of contributions. This one, also featuring Sirota as an author, seems more clear in terms of causation regarding changing her position to support a 'free trade' deal with Colombia; she also repeatedly issued certifications that Colombia was meeting human rights requirements necessary for that country to receive US military aid. http://www.ibtimes.com/colombian-oil-money-flowed-clintons-state-department-took-no-action-prevent-labor-1874464
Note that increasing US military aid to Colombia, seemingly in violation of US law (this facilitated by Clinton during her time as SecState), correlates directly with worsening human rights abuses, including mass-murder of civilians, committed by the Colombian military (this report warns that similar patterns could occur in Afghanistan and Pakistan if US law barring military aid to human rights abusers is not respected): http://forusa.org/content/report-military-assistance-human-rights-colombia-us-accountability-global-implications
It would seem that there at least was a conflict of interest with the clinton foundation and arms sales. They seem to have taken steps to prevent it from happening again though.
@Jephery, about empires and stuff, I promised you a more substantive response to your thoughtful post.
First of all, I would distinguish between (1) the existence of an empire (i.e. a polity which has control over multiple national/cultural groups), and (2) the act of conquest and/or a pro-conquest ideology ("imperialism"). I would almost always be against the latter; but I am not opposed to the existence of empires, or the maintenance of an empire's territorial status quo, as a matter of course. Sometimes independence from an imperial power would be better, sometimes not. It would depend on the nature of the empire and the independence movement, who would benefit the most, and the harmfulness of the ensuing security vacuum.
You asked, incredulously, what people in history would have wanted to be conquered by an empire. First of all, for most of history, you probably already lived in an empire, so the question isn't "do I want to pay tribute to a conquering empire" but rather "which empire would I rather pay tribute to." Secondly, I think you are anthropomorphizing "peoples" and treating diverse cultures as monoliths. Many sub-groups within native cultures have actively cooperated with an invading empire—in fact I am having trouble thinking of any imperial conquest that didn't depend on some significant local support. The Mesopotamians welcomed the Medes in the conquering Neo-Babylonian alliance because many of them hated the Assyrians. Same story with the Persians, who conquered the Babylonians. Many Jews cooperated with Greece and Rome. Many Mesopotamians Persians preferred the rule of their Muslim conquerers (possibly because they could convert to Islam and thus gain social status); Jews preferred Islamic rule to Christian rule because it was less oppressive. During the Mongol invasions, non-Muslims cooperated with the Mongol conquerers. In the Americas, the bloodthirsty conquistadors enjoyed support from people who detested their local imperial rulers, the Aztec and Inca. America's invasion of Afghanistan was supported by the Hazara and local warlords who fought against the Taliban. The Islamic State enjoys local support from Sunnis in areas it conquers. And so on.
I'm sure the "pro-conquering empire" camp has rarely (if ever) been close to a majority—not enough to ever warrant the assumption that a conquering empire will be welcome as liberators. And in many cases the local cooperators tend to be wildly corrupt (Herod the Great being the archetypal example, with Ahmed Chalibi being an interesting modern parallel). At the same time, I reject the notion that preferring a foreign empire's rule to that of your own "people" is some kind of immoral betrayal of principle, which seems to underlie a lot of discourse and is kind of my Big Thing.
I always look at this issue through the lens of the Roman-Jewish conflict. Jews still celebrate their resistance to Roman conquest: the fort at Masada is famous for its garrison's suicidal last stand, where they all killed themselves rather than surrender. Except—the Jews were fighting to establish the late-antiquity Jewish equivalent of the Islamic State. Roman society was horrible, to be sure, but it was more cosmopolitan, literate, and technologically-advanced than the isolated, theocratic society ruled by Judean zealots; you kind of sneered at the prospect of assimilation, but many Jews chose to surrender and assimilate into the culture of their Roman conquerers and not without reason. One of these Jews was Josephus, a Jewish general who surrendered to the Romans rather than commit suicide; he became a slave to Vespasian, defected fully to the Romans, eventually became a citizen, and went on to write one of the most important historical works of the era. My Jewish grandfather once called Josephus a "traitor," but the world is far richer for Josephus's defection to his Roman conquerers, and I think he made the right decision to "betray" his own people in their hopeless struggle and join the Romans. If I were facing many of the imperial conquests I mentioned above, I would have made the same decision as well.
Which gets back to my earliest point—it all depends on the nature of the empire, and the nature of the alternative. This is why I can't really bring myself to care much about Russia's "imperialism" in Crimea and the Ukraine in terms of priority of outrage. I don't support Putin's actions, and it's absolutely tragic what's happening, but Russia is not actually an evil empire, and many people in those places seem to prefer Russian rule to Western suzerainty. America's imperialist conquest of Iraq, on the other hand, was not just tragic but unprovoked and predictably destructive, and thus immoral. Americans who want to conquer the Middle East and spread democracy are delusional and dangerous—but not as delusional and dangerous as, for example, the Islamic State, who are fighting to establish a society and rule of law based on ancient, barbaric mythology.
You said you're glad that empires are dead, but I don't think they're dead at all. Putin's Russia, warhawk Americans, and the Islamic State all want to strengthen or expand their empires. The fact that they're advocating conquest is indeed alarming, but it's not the whole story, it doesn't reduce to economics/resources, and I dislike the rah-rah notion embedded in popular culture that "fighting against the empire" is automatically worthy.
Posts
I mean, I mentioned the Islamic State as an example of a would-be empire motivated to expand by ideology.
(edit: I'll try to respond more substantively later)
"Those people's way of living and doing things are backward and bad and wrong, so we're going to go over there and civilize the fuck out of them. And once we've assimilated converted them to our way of life, of course they'll be grateful, and even join us in doing the same to the next poor bunch of savages!"
And using the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq as evidence against US imperialism is less persuasive when, three years later, the US redeployed thousands of troops in the country and started bombing the hell out it and neighboring Syria.
edit- also, referring to Ashraf Ghani as "democratically elected" is very misleading. He essentially lost the (laughably fraudulent) election, but the US and its allies pressured the guy who "won" to share power in order to maintain the stability of the fragile governing coalition.
The South Korean government we were backing against the North was also a brutal dictatorship, and that didn't change until the 1980s. There was no good vs. evil in the Korean War, just a violent and oppressive US-backed state fighting a violent and oppressive PRC-backed state for control of a geopolitically important location. The government we failed to install in southern Vietnam was similarly authoritarian and corrupt.
I think you're operating under a highly idealized and propagandistic depiction of modern history that depicts the US as "the good guys" and most of our enemies as "the bad guys."
And as a Marxist, I would say the Neo-McCarthyist paranoia regarding 'reds' seems kind of lol.
http://www.theonion.com/article/communists-now-least-threatening-group-in-us-3191
edit: quote by Prof. John Bellamy Foster, summarizing underlying premises:
"In the present period of global hegemonic imperialism the United States is geared above all to expanding its imperial power to whatever extent possible and subordinating the rest of the capitalist world to its interests."
edit again:
I only mildly disagree in that I would see South Korea as the worse evil during the Korean War. The atrocities committed by that regime, in collusion with the US, were very severe or fascistic, including vast massacres of civilians and totalistic bombing of civilian structures in North Korea.
This included murdering over 100,000 civilians accused of leftist sympathies:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/4015742/More-than-100000-massacred-by-allies-during-Korean-War.html
Mass-murder of civilians through aerial bombing: an American tradition exemplified by the Korean War effort:
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/67717
Analysis of US and South Korean mass-murder of civilians during the Korean War:
http://history.ucsc.edu/undergraduate/undergraduate-research/electronic-journal/journal-pdfs/2013_Kurtz.pdf
South Korean regime soldiers also were later deployed to Vietnam to assist the US and committed massacres against civilians there as well:
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-korea-vietnam-20150516-story.html
Michel Pablo, a major 20th century Trotskyist thinker not prone to sympathize with Stalinists, assessed the Korean War in these terms:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/pablo/1950/09/korea.htm
I remember seeing references in the past indicating that there was general support at the time within South Korea for Kim Il-Sung's attempt at national reunification, but cannot find relevant data concerning this at this moment.
edit:
http://harpers.org/blog/2007/11/tacitus-on-the-costs-of-war/
and lol at the US withdrawing troops from occupied countries as an example for how it isn't imperialistic.
The second in line to the throne of Saudi Arabia is a weeaboo.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/05/israel-gcc-alliance-shall-named/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/survey-saudis-consider-iran-their-top-enemy-not-israel/2015/06/04/997fec94-0add-11e5-951e-8e15090d64ae_story.html
Such shifts in sentiment in Saudi Arabia would be heavily influenced by regime propaganda.
Meanwhile, through bombing and blockade, Saudi strategy against Yemen appears to be treating it as a gigantic Gaza Strip:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/05/saudi-led-naval-blockade-worsens-yemen-humanitarian-disaster
In Libya, Islamic State has reportedly seized Harawa, a town east of Sirte:
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKBN0OM08A20150606
Since we like to discuss cartoon contests here, also note that Iran has recently held a contest highlighting critical depictions of IS:
http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-iran-cartoonists-20150607-story.html
The drawing on the left portrays an IS fighter as merely a pawn on a chessboard. The drawing on the right depicts the resources of Arab monarchies flowing to jihadists while needs of populations are neglected.
It looks like his repressive tactics have backfired. Hopefully the coalition that would come out of this will be saner. I'm also rooting for him to lose because the nutjobs in his administration hinted about painting over the murals in the Hagia Sophia, and it's like, who does that? Who ruins World Heritage Sites?
The Taliban
Saudi royal family
Actually said it in there, 330 seat minimum, but he's about 72 seats short.
Looking through the article, it looks like one of the mainstream Kurdish parties also got enough votes to be awarded seats. That's probably another big kick in the crotch to Erdogan's ambitions.
Re-writing the constitution would not necessarily be inherently bad - given that it is a product of Turkey's military coup-prone era - but, yes, if the AK party had won a decisive majority it would not have looked too good given Erdogan's Putin-esque trajectory.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-07/u-s-billionaire-political-foes-unite-to-fight-israel-boycotts
By which you mean "two billionaires"
Both of whom are jews.
Only two people would not be so important we were not discussing such a small group as billionaires who are particularly obsessed with influencing the US political process.
One of them was the single most important donor to Republican presidential ambitions in 2012 (first backing Gingrich, then Romney):
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/12/03/sheldon-adelson-ended-up-spending-150-million
The other is the single most important donor to the Clintons, in various capacities over time:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Haim_Saban
Money comes with strings attached of course:
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/04/everything-clinton-republicans
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/239091-saban-hints-clinton-opposes-the-iran-deal
Saban and Adelson have shown a united front on this issue before. This is what American democracy looks like:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/billionaires-adelson-and-saban-at-odds-in-campaigns-unite-on-israel-and-hit-obama/2014/11/09/92a40f68-6835-11e4-b053-65cea7903f2e_story.html
This is not unusual, taking into account the makeup of the billionaire class. Many of the other leading political donors influencing the US political process are also Jewish -- namely the Koch brothers, Michael Bloomberg, Paul Singer, George Soros, Tom Steyer -- but they seem less singularly-obsessed with Israel.
Do you understand the difference between these two ideas?
There is not a difference between those two statements. 'The billionaires bankrolling Republican and Democrat US presidential candidates' meaning the single most important person who will be bankrolling Rubio (probably, or whoever), and the single most important person who will be bankrolling Clinton (seemingly inevitably). They happen to enjoy sharing stages in order to express their love for Zionist Apartheid and declare that under their influence US policy biases in support of Israel will only strengthen.
If there were a subset of billionaires who happened to fervently support the Palestinian position and also had major influence on US presidential politics toward that, there could be some distinction along the lines you're trying to assert here.
Two billionaires is not a sufficiently large portion of all billionaires (or even just all billionaires bankrolling political campaigns) to generalize like that.
Ok, I will apologize for my apparently confusing use of language, and I should have have been much more clear and stated something more along the lines of, "The billionaires who are the leading bankrollers of Republican and Democratic US presidential candidates"
Edit: I was not in any sense 'generalizing' beyond what the article I linked to described (what would be the point?), and now I think the 'clarified' sentence I just posted actually reads almost identically to the initial sentence, and I'm honestly surprised people were confused by the meaning in context, which seemed obvious, however I will attempt most exact clarity of writing possible with a message board audience in mind. But I am honestly surprised my meaning was not immediately pretty clear (or maybe it was; Kana has a habit of falsely accusing me of errors). Think 'newspaper headline speak' (which a brief incomplete sentence posted before an article link would resemble in style and purpose) -- did anyone at all think the Bloomberg article's headline stating 'US billionaire political rivals' was 'generalizing', or intending to dishonestly imply that all US billionaires who are political rivals were joining forces on this issue, and that the headline was inappropriate or incorrect? If not -- How was my usage any different??
Anyway, hijacking/diverting a thread for 8 posts for no plausible purpose other than to nitpick someone's grammar seems very impolite (to everyone, not just to me). In the future, if my writing confuses you, you can send me a direct message indicating this and I will edit to clarify, which is more appropriate than distracting from the subject of the thread in this way, thank you. This thread should be about the Middle East, not about A. Sokolov's writing style imperfections.
A minority AK Party causes a lot of problems for Erdogan, because there are government boards that are controlled by parliament proportionally. With AK not having a majority, it is much more difficult for them to leverage the government as a pro-AKP force. This includes the board that governs radio and television. The various AKP scandals can now be investigated more freely without fear of a governmental oversight, because the other three parties would hold the majority.
I'm also interested to see if the other parties can force Erdogan to abandon his newly built fancy presidential palace. That would be a nice kick in the nuts.
IS's takeover of Harawa, which was reportedly the result of a deal made with tribal leaders, most likely presages an assault on this oil-rich territory. Given the lack of forces from Tripoli or Tobruk in the area, they might find it a softer target than other areas in Libya.
http://www.todayszaman.com/national_cpj-condemns-erdogan-over-threat-against-journalist-behind-syria-trucks-coverage_382425.html
A June 2013 poll showed 71% of Turks (and 32% of AKP members) disapproved of Erdogan's support for Syrian rebels.
http://www.arabnewsblog.net/2013/06/03/turkish-opinion-poll-finds-majorities-slam-erdogan-policies-on-alcohol-syria/
Erdogan interestingly had just before this election threatened to liberate Jerusalem from Israel:
http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/06/01/erdogan-calls-for-liberation-of-jerusalem-from-the-jews/
That said, I doubt they've viewed it more favorably since then. Expenses and refugees become worse over time.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/08/britain-arms-trade-saudi-arabia-blogger-weapons-raif-badawi-sentence-lashes
On the subject of US domestic politics relating to geopolitics of the Middle East, note that US weapons flowed to Saudi Arabia under the Hillary Clinton State Department, after Saudi Arabia contributed generously to the Clinton Foundation:
http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187
Saudi Arabia ironically just hosted a UN conference on human rights dedicated to religious freedom.
http://rt.com/news/265654-saudi-arabia-human-rights/
Your posts are normally worth reading for being well sourced, but the Clinton Foundation stuff is basically Benghazi 2.0
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I say this as someone who will most likely end up voting for Hillary, but I really can't wrap my head around this defense. It's really popular in these parts, but I'm not sure how you can insulate the Clinton family foundation - founded by Bill and currently run by Chelsea - from the Hillary Clinton campaign. It seems like one of those things the Republicans like to do - draw a circle around a problematic issue, declare it out of bounds and then stamp your feet whenever someone brings it up.
Like, there's a massive issue in American culture in general around donor culture . It's probably unfair to single out the Clintons as a special example, but there are issues about what it means to take money from people and institutions whose behavior seems at odds with your organization's stated mission.
The more I read about Saudi Arabia' military, the more I think the issue is less how horrible the Saudis are human rights wise and more concerns about which rebel group is going to end up getting their hands on these weapons when the Pakistani/Indonesian mercenaries that the Saudis rely on flee en masse in the first battle.
If I were a government in the Middle East, upgrading my military would be pretty high on my priority list.
Even though there is nominally some alignment between the Saudi government / royal family and ISIS, if I were a pragmatic Saudi I would want my military a bit more prepared and capable than the Iraqi military.
Ah, the Clinton Foundation conspiracy theory.
The Saudis donated that $10 million over a number of years and before Clinton was Secretary of State. Boeing donated $900,000 out of their ~$200,000,000 annual charitable donations.
The Clinton Foundation is one of the premier charitable foundations in the world. It would be an anomaly for the Saudi royal family and Boeing not to donate money to the Clinton Foundation. If the Saudis / Boeing were trying to bribe Hillary, that's about the most convoluted bribery method ever.
Good or bad, it's been the US's stated policy goal to sell the F35 to virtually anyone who wants to buy it. The Saudis / Boeing didn't have to grease any palms - certainly not Hillary's - to make that deal happen.
EDIT -
I'd rather see those mercs with those weapons rather than an actual Saudi military force.
Dropping their weapons and fleeing is preferable to just joining up. Which is what I'm pretty sure we'll see.
Also, mercs tend to do fairly well overall, especially compared to the piss-poor levels of training and discipline you see in most of the ME militaries. There is at least a respectable military culture and outright incentive to fight and maintain discipline instead of just running away. Money is a pretty strong motivator.
From what I've read, we aren't really talking about mercenaries in the usual sense. We're talking about low-level foreign conscripts who have their passports confiscated and are treated like shit by their officers. It's basically the Saudis using the same labor practices as the other Gulf States use to build their football stadiums, just this time the poorly treated immigrant workers have guns and the job of defending the borders.
I disagree; I respect David Sirota as a journalist and I usually agree with his political views. The IBT article I posted seems pretty substantive and consistent with other credible media reports on similar dealings. Hillary Clinton at least appears to be the most corrupt presidential candidate in US history that I'm aware of. The corruption doesn't look terribly 'convoluted'. The idea that 'philanthropy' is very often a front for types of corruption or aggrandizement, especially when politics come into play, should among the most ordinary complaints one can possibly make about US society. On H. Clinton, I've not really seen a case in which the appearance of corruption was more blatant. I'm surprised at how often here the most mundane statements, which credible sources appear to not dispute, are somehow regarded as 'conspiracy theories'. In this case, I'm not even sure where that 'conspiracy' angle is coming from, given that these claims are usually being taken seriously by serious media.
My overall opposition to H. Clinton predates these stories and is primarily due to her neoconservative orientation on foreign policy.
I'm not sure what 'Benghazi 2.0' would refer to -- different things are different. The particular narrative hyped almost exclusively by conservative media regarding Benghazi was actually basically incoherent; whatever 'scandal' they were trying to create about an intelligence failure, if any individual should have been primary focus of blame on that it really should have been David Petraeus, who formulated the intelligence assessment that was repeated by others in the Obama administration. But Petraeus is generally idolized by types like Glenn Beck who primarily attacked Clinton on this. The Clinton Foundation corruption stories have, on the contrary, involved substantive accusations and received very wide coverage from media outlets that are generally seen as favoring the Democrats, especially the New York Times (and Washington Post, Newsweek, Politico, among many other sources). This really seems very different than whatever the Benghazi pseudo-scandal was.
Referring to all of this coverage as a 'conspiracy theory' seems dense, or reflexively and unthinkingly partisan. And it's actually basically itself a conspiracy theory, through implying that vast numbers of generally liberal journalists are conspiring to smear Clinton with a false scandal. A leading source of criticism of the Clinton Foundation is the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, which has issued many complaints against both Republicans and Democrats.
edit: Concerned sources even include Common Cause, a liberal advocacy group headed by Robert Reich, who was a cabinet member during the Clinton administration.
http://www.commoncause.org/press/press-releases/common-cause-urges-independent-audit-clinton-foundation.html
sorry for being tl;dr, but it's frustrating when professional journalists and basically all campaign finance watchdog organizations are accused of pathological paranoia for raising such blatantly-fucking-obvious points.
edit: I could post 30 articles here which seem to show appearance of corruption, but one could just argue it's a 'conspiracy theory' because there is 'no smoking gun' establishing Clinton determined or changed policy, from stances she previously held, as a result of contributions. This one, also featuring Sirota as an author, seems more clear in terms of causation regarding changing her position to support a 'free trade' deal with Colombia; she also repeatedly issued certifications that Colombia was meeting human rights requirements necessary for that country to receive US military aid.
http://www.ibtimes.com/colombian-oil-money-flowed-clintons-state-department-took-no-action-prevent-labor-1874464
Note that increasing US military aid to Colombia, seemingly in violation of US law (this facilitated by Clinton during her time as SecState), correlates directly with worsening human rights abuses, including mass-murder of civilians, committed by the Colombian military (this report warns that similar patterns could occur in Afghanistan and Pakistan if US law barring military aid to human rights abusers is not respected): http://forusa.org/content/report-military-assistance-human-rights-colombia-us-accountability-global-implications
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/clinton-foundation-limits-foreign-donations-117028.html
They have limited foreign donations to six countries Canada, Australia and the rest in Europe.
First of all, I would distinguish between (1) the existence of an empire (i.e. a polity which has control over multiple national/cultural groups), and (2) the act of conquest and/or a pro-conquest ideology ("imperialism"). I would almost always be against the latter; but I am not opposed to the existence of empires, or the maintenance of an empire's territorial status quo, as a matter of course. Sometimes independence from an imperial power would be better, sometimes not. It would depend on the nature of the empire and the independence movement, who would benefit the most, and the harmfulness of the ensuing security vacuum.
You asked, incredulously, what people in history would have wanted to be conquered by an empire. First of all, for most of history, you probably already lived in an empire, so the question isn't "do I want to pay tribute to a conquering empire" but rather "which empire would I rather pay tribute to." Secondly, I think you are anthropomorphizing "peoples" and treating diverse cultures as monoliths. Many sub-groups within native cultures have actively cooperated with an invading empire—in fact I am having trouble thinking of any imperial conquest that didn't depend on some significant local support. The Mesopotamians welcomed the Medes in the conquering Neo-Babylonian alliance because many of them hated the Assyrians. Same story with the Persians, who conquered the Babylonians. Many Jews cooperated with Greece and Rome. Many Mesopotamians Persians preferred the rule of their Muslim conquerers (possibly because they could convert to Islam and thus gain social status); Jews preferred Islamic rule to Christian rule because it was less oppressive. During the Mongol invasions, non-Muslims cooperated with the Mongol conquerers. In the Americas, the bloodthirsty conquistadors enjoyed support from people who detested their local imperial rulers, the Aztec and Inca. America's invasion of Afghanistan was supported by the Hazara and local warlords who fought against the Taliban. The Islamic State enjoys local support from Sunnis in areas it conquers. And so on.
I'm sure the "pro-conquering empire" camp has rarely (if ever) been close to a majority—not enough to ever warrant the assumption that a conquering empire will be welcome as liberators. And in many cases the local cooperators tend to be wildly corrupt (Herod the Great being the archetypal example, with Ahmed Chalibi being an interesting modern parallel). At the same time, I reject the notion that preferring a foreign empire's rule to that of your own "people" is some kind of immoral betrayal of principle, which seems to underlie a lot of discourse and is kind of my Big Thing.
I always look at this issue through the lens of the Roman-Jewish conflict. Jews still celebrate their resistance to Roman conquest: the fort at Masada is famous for its garrison's suicidal last stand, where they all killed themselves rather than surrender. Except—the Jews were fighting to establish the late-antiquity Jewish equivalent of the Islamic State. Roman society was horrible, to be sure, but it was more cosmopolitan, literate, and technologically-advanced than the isolated, theocratic society ruled by Judean zealots; you kind of sneered at the prospect of assimilation, but many Jews chose to surrender and assimilate into the culture of their Roman conquerers and not without reason. One of these Jews was Josephus, a Jewish general who surrendered to the Romans rather than commit suicide; he became a slave to Vespasian, defected fully to the Romans, eventually became a citizen, and went on to write one of the most important historical works of the era. My Jewish grandfather once called Josephus a "traitor," but the world is far richer for Josephus's defection to his Roman conquerers, and I think he made the right decision to "betray" his own people in their hopeless struggle and join the Romans. If I were facing many of the imperial conquests I mentioned above, I would have made the same decision as well.
Which gets back to my earliest point—it all depends on the nature of the empire, and the nature of the alternative. This is why I can't really bring myself to care much about Russia's "imperialism" in Crimea and the Ukraine in terms of priority of outrage. I don't support Putin's actions, and it's absolutely tragic what's happening, but Russia is not actually an evil empire, and many people in those places seem to prefer Russian rule to Western suzerainty. America's imperialist conquest of Iraq, on the other hand, was not just tragic but unprovoked and predictably destructive, and thus immoral. Americans who want to conquer the Middle East and spread democracy are delusional and dangerous—but not as delusional and dangerous as, for example, the Islamic State, who are fighting to establish a society and rule of law based on ancient, barbaric mythology.
You said you're glad that empires are dead, but I don't think they're dead at all. Putin's Russia, warhawk Americans, and the Islamic State all want to strengthen or expand their empires. The fact that they're advocating conquest is indeed alarming, but it's not the whole story, it doesn't reduce to economics/resources, and I dislike the rah-rah notion embedded in popular culture that "fighting against the empire" is automatically worthy.