151–157 of 157 posts
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Are you seriously defending the Soviet system? I mean, it was tried and didn’t even last 100 years before imploding after making millions of lives miserable and requiring many more dead just to maintain order. So yeah, better than the Soviet system.
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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…
I don't know why people are downvoting us both, since it's a fairly rational and respectful discussion, albeit about a controversial topic. Have an upvote.
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> Now authoritarianism is on the rise again as a result. Perhaps this is an indirect result of the US providing military support to totalitarian regimes, but I don't see how it accounts for a rise in totalitarian/authoritarian tendencies in Russia, China, and other countries that don't receive such aid. Nationalism and authoritarianism/totalitarianism tend to have more support when economic and other factors make peo…
>Russia, China, and other countries that don't receive such aid. Russia and China received immense amounts of US aid. After the USSR fell, the US was concerned about their nukes proliferating, and gave billions in foreign aid, financial/credit support, and technical assistance to Russia to help them rebuild their economy and maintain nuclear security. For China, we opened our markets and brought them into the WTO, wh…
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US has done "regime change" in many countries replacing elected officials with warlords/monarchs/dictators etc. Consider Mossadegh in Iran - an elected, secular politician who was replaced to put Shah - a monarch, in power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh Then, of course, all across Latin America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
Yes, but the linked story was about Saudi Arabia, not Iran or Latin America.
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Let me give a little more context. Saudi Arabia had a relationship with the US early on and it was US contractors who developed the oil there initially. This is a very old relationship, basically it is the bases of Saudi Arabia, the realized early how powerful to US was and attached themselves. The Saudi were very anti-Communist and opposed Arab nationalist (a 'socialist' type regime) in Egypt. In a period known as '…
> Unfortunately realignment in foreign policy is very difficult. With Israel and Saudi (and co) money continually buying of congress/Washington while Iran and others don't have such powerful lobbying organizations within the US. At the moment Iran and its proxies are actively threatening the US and its allies. Stopping that will be a prerequisite for any lobbying attempt.
Apparently those things are not prerequisites to do lobbying. Or SA enacting basically a genocide in Yemen. Apparently that shouldn't stop lobbying.
However Iran is not and has not been actively engaging the US since Bush Jr Iraq War.
In fact Iran saved US allies in the region form ISIS. Iran was practically an ally of the US against ISIS. No Shia militia or Iran allied force has attacked the US in any way.
I would argue AQ types are a far bigger danger to actual US people then any Iranian militia and those don't get financing form Iran and its allies.
Not to mention Israel and what they are doing to Palestinians (and not to mention they are a rough nuclear nation) but of course "Iran is 'threading'" so of course that is simply not acceptable.
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Let me give a little more context. Saudi Arabia had a relationship with the US early on and it was US contractors who developed the oil there initially. This is a very old relationship, basically it is the bases of Saudi Arabia, the realized early how powerful to US was and attached themselves. The Saudi were very anti-Communist and opposed Arab nationalist (a 'socialist' type regime) in Egypt. In a period known as '…
> Unfortunately realignment in foreign policy is very difficult. With Israel and Saudi (and co) money continually buying of congress/Washington while Iran and others don't have such powerful lobbying organizations within the US. At the moment Iran and its proxies are actively threatening the US and its allies. Stopping that will be a prerequisite for any lobbying attempt.
Let's drop the farcical argument about how the Iranian programme is a threat to US interests. Meanwhile the tiny UAE can actively buy nuclear tech from the US, while also letting the Chinese build a military base and themselves building a base in Djibouti. Or the Saudis who can easily acquire a nuclear weapon from Pakistan with far less effort than the Iranians can with their nuclear program, nuke or not (because the Saudis funded the Pakistani nuclear programme, and above was one of the conditions).
Iran is currently "threatened" by 3 potential or active nuclear US allies - Israel, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, so bad guys or not, geopolitics dictates that they too have to acquire nukes to maintain their survival. For the very reason that North Korea still exists while Ukraine has been invaded.
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Nope. Try again.
You mean Pakistan. US provided some weapons to mujahideen earlier in countering the soviets and Communism, aligning with my previous statement about "classical liberal enlightenment values." Once they had taken over Afghanistan, the US might have mistakenly thought they would be better than alternatives, but that ended quickly. Then: "During their rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban and their allies committed massacr…