141–150 of 157 posts
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Destabilizing oppressive regimens controlled by the Soviets. Arguably still oppressive after we’re done but better than before.
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So yeah, better than the Soviet system.
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The next ~30 years are going to be pretty interesting if EV and Green tech scales down oil requirements.
My guess is the slack in the oil supply will be taken up by other industries as the reduced demand from transport will leave large supply dropping the price for them. So I expect various chemical, plastic, pharmaceutical, pesticide, and fertilizer companies will use all of that oil.
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Torture is/was definitely part of even standard military training ie prior to Vietnam deployment for common soldiers. Electric wires on genitalia for example. I would expect that if one dictator sends their spec-ops personnel for US training, the goal is not to improve their techniques of ironing beds or polishing boots, rather more practical topics useful to that dictator. I can easily see how an additional training…
Sure, but I just cannot for the life of figure me out, how adults (the Saudi operatives) needed to go on the American course to work out that they can kill someone an chop him up with a really sharp knife. You only need to have one barbeque at your home to work that out. If training → crimes, then surely we should be more worried about training Saudi butchers and chefs? The real and IMO only reason the crime occurred…
Which if true, isn't a ringing endorsement for the quality of torture training they received.
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>Capitalism has all the murders and atrocities you can think of. It's not even close to the combination of mass purges and economic failure-driven mass starvation under the Communists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_... >It’s just not attributable to a single entity, but hidden behind ideas like „not profitable“. Ebola vaccine anyone? Tuberculosis? Cobalt exploitation? Climate change. Pea…
I am not down playing Stalin‘s and Mao‘s genocides. Nor do I advocate for „communism“. Just pointing out how capitalism isn’t exactly free of horrors, but they are hard to measure. E.g. tuberculosis claiming 1.5 million lives each year, but not in the west, so there is very little done about it. Or HIV. The thing is we are not comparing individual countries but ideologies here. And capitalism fails those deceased for…
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Destabilizing oppressive regimens controlled by the Soviets. Arguably still oppressive after we’re done but better than before.
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They're clearly not though. While the successor state isn't communist, the successor state still acts in aggressive ways. We can also find many examples of people supporting the ideology in groups online, eg reddit's r/communism. Some of them even defend Stalin.
Clearly the ideology isn't dead.
I clicked expecting to enjoy another public black eye for the School of the Americas, and instead I’m left with dread that the USA has privatized that training. Because of course you have.
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The US supporting democracy (or atleast classical liberal enlightenment values that would eventually lead to a functioning democracy) in Vietnam, Iraq, Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, and more has by far been a net negative economic interest. We've paid dearly while Europe mostly enjoyed social welfare benefits.
Right. Europe just loves dealing with the millions of refugees that the US-led destabilization and destruction of the middle east caused. Also I'm not sure what you mean by "social welfare".
Refugees that Europe deals with is mostly Syrian and Afghani. The US supplied weapons and support to Syrian rebels and weapons to anti-communist mujahideen. Now, hindsight is 20/20, but Assad was literally using chemical weapons on Syrian citizens. The Taliban was wantonly wreaking destruction across Afghanistan causing the refugee displacement. These are complex issues when it comes to human rights abuses and geopolitics. My point is that the US paid a price in attempting to be world police, regardless of the outcome. It wasn't economically beneficial as the grandparent comment stated.
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The US supporting democracy (or atleast classical liberal enlightenment values that would eventually lead to a functioning democracy) in Vietnam, Iraq, Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, and more has by far been a net negative economic interest. We've paid dearly while Europe mostly enjoyed social welfare benefits.
> classical liberal enlightenment values that would eventually lead to a functioning democracy) in Vietnam That's a strange way to talk about carpet bombing and chemical weapons. Besides, the US lost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Saigon "The Vietnamese government officially calls it the "Day of liberating the South for national reunification" (Vietnamese: Giải phóng miền Nam, thống nhất đất nước) or "Liberat…
It's widely accepted that the US made seriously grave mistakes.
> Besides, the US lost
I was attempting to phrase it as the US supporting values or institutions that would eventually lead to democracy, not that US support means it will win.
> I don't think the Vietnamese democratic government thanks you for it.
They don't obviously and we ended up with the worst of all outcomes. It would've been better for the Vietnamese people if there was never any civil war, even better if the US hadn't supported the South. But, best of all for the Vietnamese people would've been if the South had won. One look at the GDP difference between Vietnam and Korea would create some serious introspection on that scenario. To save you some time, it's $47,000 to $12,000 PPP.
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One thing we Americans really need to learn is that Capitalism does not necessarily bring Democracy. It's very possible to have a capitalistic economy under an authoritarian regime, with multiple historical examples. But after the Cold War ended, America/ns conflated Capitalism with Democracy, thinking they are one and the same, and that if we could bring bring the former to authoritarian nations, the latter would in…
But Democracy does solve a number of issues capitalism has. Free-markets allocate tangible and (pardon the cliché term) fungible goods quite well.
Non-tangible (e.g. intellectual property) and non-fungible (e.g. environment) goods are not managed well in a purely capitalist system. Some sort of a majority vote and public goods solution work much better and in fact create the necessary infrastructure (safe streets, reliable electricity, clean water) for capitalism to function.
So Capitalism ≠> Democracy, but Democracy => Capitalism is more true than not.
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Right. Europe just loves dealing with the millions of refugees that the US-led destabilization and destruction of the middle east caused. Also I'm not sure what you mean by "social welfare".
Social welfare as in funds for safety nets and public spending, like free healthcare, education, and improved disability, unemployment, and welfare benefits. US chose to spend trillions militarily that otherwise generally could've been allocated to those types of public spending within the US as well. Refugees that Europe deals with is mostly Syrian and Afghani. The US supplied weapons and support to Syrian rebels an…
People in US are free to vote any party that they wanted. They supported the people that spends trillions in the army instead to vote for other options.
If you have presidents that despised healthcare, expressed publicly their preference for the uneducated ones, and loathed the poor, the disabled and the non-white, well... this is what you asked for. Deal with it.
If you have presidents that spend trillions in the army and you don't want it, choose presidents with other priorities.
I'm really sorry, but please don't blame Europe for that.