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How the US has hidden its empire

theguardian.com

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Re: How the US has hidden its empire

#61

Post by maxxxxx »

newen wrote: post #59
maxxxxx wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure this will be an issue with a lot of super partisans. My neighbor still believes that Obama was not eligible for being president. I have no idea what evidence could convince these people otherwise.

Let's hope the opinion of your neighbor doesn't cause a constitutional crisis.

I think the people who are spreading these rumors are playing a very dangerous game. There seems to be a trend to spread doubts about elections, FBI investigations, CIA findings and others without providing real evidence. This is a short term benefit for the people spreading the rumors but I wonder if they are starting something that may spin out of control at some point.

Re: How the US has hidden its empire

#62

Post by jcranmer »

geofft wrote: post #35
thaumasiotes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why 2021? Did something happen?

Wildly guessing: the federal government's response to Hurricane Maria hitting Puerto Rico was wildly insufficient, so if the opposition party takes control (which seems more likely than not), especially given that the opposition party prefers to err on the side of too much government aid/intervention than too little, statehood for Puerto Rico is a reasonably obvious priority. (And a goos strategy for shifting the bal…

Except Puerto Rico has to advance a state constitution that Congress has to accept, so the Puerto Rico government itself needs to accept statehood. Except there's not a clear majority in favor of statehood in Puerto Rico; the last two referendums were effectively sabotaged.

Re: How the US has hidden its empire

#64

Post by pluma »

YUMad wrote: post #58

This is the reason why China finds it acceptable to act as they do in quite a few things, such as attempts to enlarge their EEZ. In their mind, they are just doing what USA did too, so it's a fair game. But they do not understand, refuse to understand, or simply hold irrelevant the narrative manipulation that is necessary to pull it off, and this is something US excels at. The 'spreading freedom' meme is just one exa…

Oof. As a German I cringe when I hear people cite the firebombing of Dresden.

Yes, it was one of the worst bombing raids and yes, we would consider it a war crime (or at least extremely unethical) nowadays (much like many things both sides had done throughout either World War) but it's usually invoked to play down nazi crimes and it's usually misrepresented because of very successful propaganda.

The estimated death toll was around 25-30 thousand. During and after the war various revisionists and propagandists have blown up that figure to over 100 thousand. Additionally German nazis have built an entire tradition around it, "mourning the fallen" to exploit the incident as a display of nationalism and nazi sympathies.

There's no legal basis to single out the bombing of Dresden as a war crime within the context of the Second World War. I would say that it can be argued that some of the crimes nazis were charged with after WW2 also lacked a pre-existing legal basis but there was no expectation that the winning side would apply punishments consistently, sufficiently or even fairly.

So even if there were good reasons to categorise the Dresden bombings as a war crime in the context of WW2, it'd just be one of many alleged and proven war crimes that went unchallenged -- including other crimes (and "crimes") committed by the US, the Allies in general or any other involved military.

Re: How the US has hidden its empire

#66

Post by DanBC »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #60
YUMad wrote: post #58

This is the reason why China finds it acceptable to act as they do in quite a few things, such as attempts to enlarge their EEZ. In their mind, they are just doing what USA did too, so it's a fair game. But they do not understand, refuse to understand, or simply hold irrelevant the narrative manipulation that is necessary to pull it off, and this is something US excels at. The 'spreading freedom' meme is just one exa…

Please attend to your facts: -The fire bombing of Dresden was executed jointly by the United States and United Kingdom, with the UK flying more sorties. This occurred during a war when Germany was executing strategic bombing campaigns against the UK. -The United States of America did not fire bomb Kyoto. Nobody did.

> This occurred during a war when Germany was executing strategic bombing campaigns against the UK.

The wider point is interesting though. We started the war with the attitude that killing civilians would be a war crime, and then as the war went on that principle was eroded more and more until fire-bombing several civilian populations across Germany was allowed.

There's a reason "Bombber Harris" was also known as Butcher Harris. Even Churchill disliked the area bombing tactics.

Re: How the US has hidden its empire

#67

Post by 0x262d »

pluma wrote: post #64
YUMad wrote: post #58

This is the reason why China finds it acceptable to act as they do in quite a few things, such as attempts to enlarge their EEZ. In their mind, they are just doing what USA did too, so it's a fair game. But they do not understand, refuse to understand, or simply hold irrelevant the narrative manipulation that is necessary to pull it off, and this is something US excels at. The 'spreading freedom' meme is just one exa…

Oof. As a German I cringe when I hear people cite the firebombing of Dresden. Yes, it was one of the worst bombing raids and yes, we would consider it a war crime (or at least extremely unethical) nowadays (much like many things both sides had done throughout either World War) but it's usually invoked to play down nazi crimes and it's usually misrepresented because of very successful propaganda. The estimated death t…

this seems like a valuable point: the collective misremembering of WW2 as some sort of "noble war", at least by the Allies, should probably be completely reassessed. but it is tied in very closely to the non-empire myth, and so it isn't.

Re: How the US has hidden its empire

#68

Post by [deleted] »

YUMad wrote: post #58

This is the reason why China finds it acceptable to act as they do in quite a few things, such as attempts to enlarge their EEZ. In their mind, they are just doing what USA did too, so it's a fair game. But they do not understand, refuse to understand, or simply hold irrelevant the narrative manipulation that is necessary to pull it off, and this is something US excels at. The 'spreading freedom' meme is just one exa…

[deleted]

Re: How the US has hidden its empire

#69

Post by kalleboo »

YUMad wrote: post #58

This is the reason why China finds it acceptable to act as they do in quite a few things, such as attempts to enlarge their EEZ. In their mind, they are just doing what USA did too, so it's a fair game. But they do not understand, refuse to understand, or simply hold irrelevant the narrative manipulation that is necessary to pull it off, and this is something US excels at. The 'spreading freedom' meme is just one exa…

> fire bombing of [...] Kyoto

I'd love to hear what you're referring to since common knowledge is that Kyoto was notoriously the only part of Japan spared from major bomb raids (originally due to no military significance, then because they wanted to A-bomb it and didn't want earlier strikes to mess up the damage data, but later it was spared from the A-bomb as well)

Re: How the US has hidden its empire

#70

Post by slededit »

0x262d wrote: post #67
pluma wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof. As a German I cringe when I hear people cite the firebombing of Dresden. Yes, it was one of the worst bombing raids and yes, we would consider it a war crime (or at least extremely unethical) nowadays (much like many things both sides had done throughout either World War) but it's usually invoked to play down nazi crimes and it's usually misrepresented because of very successful propaganda. The estimated death t…

this seems like a valuable point: the collective misremembering of WW2 as some sort of "noble war", at least by the Allies, should probably be completely reassessed. but it is tied in very closely to the non-empire myth, and so it isn't.

What really was different was conquering territory and then giving it back to the governments in exile.

Contrast this with the other players in the war who kept territory they acquired. Even the soviets who were on our side.

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