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0 pointsavgcorrection2y ago0 comments

> [edit: Something that we've unfortunately over-promised and failed to deliver on too many times, e.g. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Kurdistan, Hmong people, any war where the Pentagon seizes on a "third way"]

It’s like there is no need to even compose a reply. This philosophy is absurd on its face.

But I’ll just say that the US has supported dictatorial “regimes” (instead of overthrowing them, or fomenting a popular uprising).

(What if the US was in fact a capable superpower and not a bumbling, idiotic giant who whoopsies all of its attempt to to good? Because the war aims had nothing to do with spreading democracy.)

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noduerme2y ago

US foreign incursions have always needed the support of the population, and therefore been scattershot and bumbling. What makes the US a relatively free country for individuals is also what makes it a lackluster great power in terms of formulating long term, coherent strategies that it's capable of carrying out. One could say it has always had a short attention span baked into it. This has been good for some places (Canada still exists after 1812, Europe isn't living under the 3rd Reich, Taiwan is... well... it is) and produced mixed results in others (our own Southern states are still a racist train wreck 130 years after reconstruction, Libya is a bunch of guys running around with scimitars, etc). The fecklessness sucks, but the overall inability to fully commit to domination is probably a good thing on the whole for the world. Consider the opposite... a US with a government and foreign policy unmoored from popular attitudes and free to prosecute any and all imperial wars without internal resistance or dissent or risk of power changing hands every 4 years.

avgcorrectionOP2y ago

> US foreign incursions have always needed the support of the population, and therefore been scattershot and bumbling.

I don’t know whether you are blaming the populace for these wars or saying that they sabotaged them enough so that they didn’t become worse.

But in any case the difference between a nominal democracy and an outright authoritarian state isn’t that. The difference is that while an authoritarian state can just say that they want the oil and the resources of another territory, a nominal democracy has to at least somewhat pretend to be different and somewhat noble. Exactly because it has a very limited form of democracy.

And so you get people who unironically, completely sincerely, present the narrative of the US as a bumbling but loveable, kind of amnesiac, tries its best to be good, Destroyer Of The Third Reich, good ally to the good guys native-killing settler-colonial Taiwanese (they make chips?), oh we tried our best in Iraq except scratch that that was just in jest because no serious person could deny that that was anything less than an aggressive and unjustified war, but all the dictators we helped actively was just because they were better than the alternatives, except Gaddafi he was a piece of shit so Libya being a shithole and objectively worse off is okay because we tried our best fuck those scimitar barbarians.

Because that kind of narrative actually matters in a (nominal) democracy.

> Consider the opposite... a US with a government and foreign policy unmoored from popular attitudes and free to prosecute any and all imperial wars without internal resistance or dissent or risk of power changing hands every 4 years.

Yeah, then Congress would probably increase the military budget for the fifteenth time in a row (unlike now). Then being at war and continuing to dig into wars would probably be a “bipartisan issue”, no matter whether the power changes hands to Pepsi or Coke every four years (unlike now). Then the US military would probably be larger than a lot of of other nations combined (unlike now). Then the US military would probably have tons of bases around the world (unlike now). Then there would not be consequences for politicians and public servants who commit war crimes (unlike now). Then Barack Obama saying “we tortured some folks” would probably just be a meme-gaffe of no consequence (unlike now). Then the laughably anti-International Community American Service-Members' Protection Act would probably become a thing (unlike now).[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

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