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The Pentagon uses a secret program to wage proxy wars

theintercept.com

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Re: The Pentagon uses a secret program to wage proxy wars

#61
post #11

I recently read the book The Jakarta Method and it was extremely eye-opening. I'd previously heard a very abridged account of what happened in Indonesia in the 60s from Chomsky, but this book goes and examines how the same pattern was intentionally repeated by the US in many countries throughout the world. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say the US successfully inflicted a fourth reich on the global south over the…

> is never reported until decades later in books by academics.

Is never reported in the West until decades later. It's reported with extreme detail contemporaneously by local sources in an extremely easy to access format.

I remember after 9/11, reading accounts by cross Arab/Western people who were reporting in extreme detail, specific grievances that people across the Middle East had with American foreign policy in an attempt to explain but not justify the actions of OBL and all of it being shut down with an almost aggressive ignorance of "they just hate our freedoms" by virtually the entire intellectual spectrum in the US.

Like, you would expect pro-war hawks to simplify the issue but even anti-war bleeding heart liberals often seemed to have zero interest in engaging with criticisms from actual people who would be impacted vs the imaginary people they construct who are convenient to their argument.

Even to this day, if you ask people what was OBL's self-stated reason for 9/11, 99% of people would get it wrong despite this being a purely factual question for which the primary source is trivially available [1]. I bet you, the person reading this comment have a vague idea of what OBL said and your vague notion is pretty significantly wrong.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver

Re: The Pentagon uses a secret program to wage proxy wars

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> End all wars. Bring all troops home. Close all foreign bases. Use the budget to empower the citizens. A well regulated militia of you and I for world peace. ...let the Russian flag fly over the Baltics.

Allow women in Afghanistan to live under horrible conditions under an oppressive ultra-Islamic regime. Strange how everyone forgot about that one as soon as the yellow/blue flag became a meme.

I don't think it's forgotten, it's just not mentioned as much in the media. You may claim that "if it's not in the media, it as good as forgotten", but I don't agree with that.

In fact we keep seeing the outcomes of it still in the media.

Re: The Pentagon uses a secret program to wage proxy wars

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we forget over time and become complacent to the strong possibility that the US maintaining its economic and defense hegemony has generally resulted in fewer people doing bad things. So you go from a generation who used the military might to stop literal Nazis and effectively save the world, to more of a lull where people forget that and start calling for a removal of all foreign bases and a reduction in migh…

Let me fix this for you. > I think we forget over time and become complacent to the strong possibility that the US maintaining its economic and defense hegemony has generally resulted in fewer non-American people doing bad things. American hegemony is mostly good for the US. Let's not lie about doing 'good' elsewhere. American actions have destabilized many countries and governments to secure and advance American int…

[deleted]

Re: The Pentagon uses a secret program to wage proxy wars

#64
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> End all wars. Bring all troops home. Close all foreign bases. Use the budget to empower the citizens. A well regulated militia of you and I for world peace. ...let the Russian flag fly over the Baltics.

Conquest for land happens. California would still be part of Mexico if we hadn’t done the same thing. Why is it our job to stop to history?

I'm not an history expert, but my understanding when the US entered the WWII and pushed hard to change the tide of war, you could say the US won the war - it gave the US a place in the world stage (with it's responsibilities, but also, some perks).

Would the US be the country it is nowadays if it didn't join WWII? Probably not, it would be a very different world.

Re: The Pentagon uses a secret program to wage proxy wars

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow women in Afghanistan to live under horrible conditions under an oppressive ultra-Islamic regime. Strange how everyone forgot about that one as soon as the yellow/blue flag became a meme.

I don't think it's forgotten, it's just not mentioned as much in the media. You may claim that "if it's not in the media, it as good as forgotten", but I don't agree with that. In fact we keep seeing the outcomes of it still in the media.

Do you? Contacts in Afghanistan are sharing videos of people being whipped / beaten in the streets. And it reportedly gets much worse. I haven't seen anything about this mentioned in Western media.

This is reminiscent of how war protests in my liberal city stopped suddenly as soon as Obama was elected, and never restarted though he bolstered troop levels (initiated surges). The war was never the main point.

Re: The Pentagon uses a secret program to wage proxy wars

#67

End all wars. Bring all troops home. Close all foreign bases. Use the budget to empower the citizens. A well regulated militia of you and I for world peace.

What happens next is that history resumes and globalization ends, because it's the US that's been enforcing peaceful globalization since 1945. Borders are no longer sacrosanct, more countries fight each other, a traditional empire or two maybe get started again out of necessity, and countries dependent on imports for oil and food start having major problems.

It works out ok for the US though. We get inflation and all kinds of shortages for a while, but manufacturing moves back. We have no trouble feeding and fueling ourselves, and no worries about invasion. In a decade we dominate the world even more, because most of our peers fall apart. But it won't be much fun for a while, and for a lot of the world it'll be seriously grim.

I'm not necessarily saying it's the moral obligation of the US to police the world forever, just because it was in our strategic interest to do so for a while. Maybe we should do what you suggest. Just saying, be aware of what it really means. It doesn't mean world peace.

Re: The Pentagon uses a secret program to wage proxy wars

#68
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the term “global south” like the term “black and brown people?” A concept that lumps together huge swaths of the world’s population that have nothing to do with each other, and reduces them to subjects in a moralistic rant against Americans/Europeans/whites?

Is that a question because it seems like you've already decided what it is.

Apparently history is anti-white rhetoric.

Re: The Pentagon uses a secret program to wage proxy wars

#69
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't deny that. I just said calling it the "fourth reich" is hyperbole. Do you honestly believe, without hyperbole, that these actions are on the same level as those committed by the Nazis while they were in power. You know they were responsible for the genocide of millions at an industrial scale, yes?

Millions of people died in Indonesia, Vietnam, and elsewhere. It is absolutely on the same order of magnitude.

Also South Korea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre

Re: The Pentagon uses a secret program to wage proxy wars

#70
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conquest for land happens. California would still be part of Mexico if we hadn’t done the same thing. Why is it our job to stop to history?

I'm not an history expert, but my understanding when the US entered the WWII and pushed hard to change the tide of war, you could say the US won the war - it gave the US a place in the world stage (with it's responsibilities, but also, some perks). Would the US be the country it is nowadays if it didn't join WWII? Probably not, it would be a very different world.

Russia won the war.
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