My knowledge of recent* history is spotty, at best, but I’m pretty sure the US has tampered with the internal politics of other countries a few times (usually by supporting revolutionary groups). During the Cold War, that’s how US and Russia faced off. I would be rather surprised to find we weren’t involved in the breakup of the USSR (as more than an example of what’s possible without communism).
Did we ever do anything similar to what the Russians have done to us?
*I’m talking about post WWII through late 80’s. Stuff before that was covered in history class, stuff after that by experience.
One would first have to prove karma exists before we can say it is/isn’t.
However, yes. The US fucked with many many government/regime changes that the local population has every right to be pissed about. However, I feel they should be mainly pissed at their local goverments moreso/first than the interfering country.
Yeah, I’m pissed the Russians interfered. But I’m more pissed at the assholes that went along with it.
This sort of thing is, effectively, the “war” part of the Cold War.
That said, the US was fighting Communism in the belief that Communists were often genocidal in practice, made their subjects that they didn’t kill miserable, and didn’t go in for that whole “democracy” thing - giving the people no power to affect change.
Stalin and Lenin and Mao all killed a lot more people than Hitler ever did. If you could go back into history and prevent the Nazis from being elected by providing information and funding to the less-bad faction, are you really going to say that the ends don’t justify the means? If you’re looking at bigger baddies than him, trying to actively proselytize across the globe - and who are quite willing to intervene in local politics whether you do or not - is there really a good answer not to counter?
That isn’t to say that there weren’t aspects of the Cold War that were simple power grabs or otherwise of overly questionable morality. There are numerous occasions where the excuse of fighting Communism was just that, an excuse, and I wouldn’t be opposed to admitting wrong in those instances and some form of penance. But penance should be something like monetary reparations, not saying, “Hey, feel free to come in and wreck or country and make our modern day citizens who had no part in any of that miserable!”
If Russia wants to claim that it’s all fair play for trying to get Yeltsin elected, I’d suggest that they compare Putin’s body count to Lenin’s. The man might not be a peach, but they’re still a lot happier than they would otherwise be.
Well, yeah, but none of these things were the reasons that the US intervened with a view to bringing about regime change. These characteristics attended many regimes which were aligned with the US, and they didn’t lead to the US trying to tamper with internal politics of those countries. Where the US did tamper in this way, it was purely with a view to advancing the interests and influence of the US. And pretty much the same could be said about Russian intervention in US politics today, couldn’t it?
And if the criterion is “comparing body counts” as the criterion for measuring the justification of an intervention, for all his many faults Trump’s body count is quite low, and certainly lower than many regimes installed by the US in the pursuit of its own interests. So, again, what is being done to the US here wouldn’t seem at all as bad or harmful as what has been done by the US in the past.
Yes, American hand wringing and teeth knashing over “interference in our elections” , is fucking hilarious.
It’s far less worse than anything the U.S has done in dozens of countries and on four continents. The Russians didn’t assasinate Hillary. Or support a bunch of ethnic of secretarian maniacs.
The U.S. has interfered in internal matters in other countries, including elections. I don’t blame the people in those countries for being mad at us when the interference came to light, for limiting or breaking off diplomatic relations, for punishing (in various ways) those people and parties who assisted, and for taking steps to make their internal processes less susceptible to tampering. But none of that means we should just throw up our hands and say “looks like you got us.” I don’t blame Russia for acting in Russia’s interest. But I do think the U.S. should take steps to limit and reverse the damage and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Let’s look outside of Russia, the US overtly supported the Shah, in Iran, armed and trained his special forces responsible for killing tens of thousands of Iranians in the streets, for daring to press for political reform from oppression. Only one shining example from the Mideast, but North African politics is filled with the same antics. And that doesn’t even come close to the amount of interference they did in South American politics. They outright bought elections, and put in power one evil, but pro American, tyrant after another, all across south and Central America.
You don’t have to believe in Karma to know they are laughing at America’s shock and outrage now that they’re on the receiving end.
We lost our way a bit during the war, it’s safe to say. Good in intention, bad in implementation.
I think you also need to consider that the Colonialist mindset really only started to fade away starting from the WWII era and probably didn’t fully go away until after Vietnam. Crossing the national sovereignty of all the piddling nations outside of Europe wasn’t really a line in the sand that anyone had drawn yet. One of Japan’s arguments for their part in WWII was that everyone else was being Colonialist, why couldn’t they too? Well, because a) they were just getting on board with something that everyone else was about to start abandoning, and b) they were one of those piddling non-European nations, so they didn’t have the special right to play that game.
Countries trying to influence other countries’ politics is just SOP business as usual.
The mind-boggling thing here is the percentage of the American electorate which is bang alongside this process. Normally you’d expect that being known as the patsy of a foreign regime would be the Kiss of Death for a political candidate - not this time. And watching that process is as disturbing as seeing someone looking on in vague approval as a burglar climbs out their windows with all their stuff (“Oh hey … there goes my plasma screen and my laptop … yeah, no worries…”). And I can’t work out if people don’t *believe *in the meddling or don’t care. But either shows a pretty serious disconnection from reality.
And I kind of disagree about “hand wringing” being a thing … I don’t recall seeing anyone much swooning over how terrible and evil Putin is for interfering in the US election. They’re yelling that he’s dangerous. Which is totally true. And the reason people have to yell so loud about this ought-to-be-bleeding-obvious fact is is the startling degree of obliviousness that large sections of the electorate (not to mention the political class) are showing.
No, it isn’t karma. This was visited upon the Democratic electorate with the connivance of current GOP leadership, and the current Democratic base are not to blame for the various counter-revolutionary coups and insurgencies that have taken place, many before they were even born. As far as meddling in elections by America goes, the victims of Russian meddling don’t even know about it, even if some of the instances are true, so you can’t really say they are hypocritical to oppose Russian meddling.
The one alleged instance I can think of is Ukraine, and even if true, that is more than made up for by Russians actually invading. It’s not whataboutism when the counter-example is orders of magnitude worse.
We’re learning now that the Russian tampering wasn’t one sided. Putin didn’t have any special love for Trump or for the Republicans. Russians were promoting Black Lives Matter at the same time they were promoting Trump.
Why? Because Putin hates America, and thinks ANYTHING that creates discord and division here benefits him.
Countries have interfered with each other since the dawn of time. War, trade disruption, formenting rebellion, etc ad nauseam. The level of Russian intervention was down in the noise anyway. $100K on Facebook ads vs the $400M of Clinton’s campaign.
:smack:
What the hell is it with Americans and the cult of personality? Putin is not the cause of Russia-US discord. If he croaked in 2013, the next guy would have done just the same. Putin acts this way since he is the leader of a large, powerful and technically advanced country. And the target is another such country and one which is a strategic adversary.
When people say “no permenant friends, only permenant interests” it also applies to foreign powers as well. Nations and their leaders act in a certain way because it’s in said nations interest to do so. Not because their leaders are inherently evil.
All this “lots of countries have done it” is a pretty lame justification. Lots of countries have committed gross abuses of human rights, from slavery to extrajudicial executions and many more horrible things. If Trump starts murdering Democrats, I would like to see a show of hands of how many posters here will shrug it off as, “Lots of countries have done the same thing – the worm continues to turn!”
Further, one cannot be consistent and view the American support of the Shah as a bad thing, and then fail to condemn the recent Russian actions. It just doesn’t add up.
In the end, there’s a lot of above-board ways that countries can seek to alter another country’s behavior. I don’t think messing with their elections is one of them. And it doesn’t matter which country we are talking about, whether it is the one messing with another or the one being messed with.
after nearly dying laughing
Really? What ways would that be. Who would get to define whats “above board” and what not? You going to place it in the UN Charter? "Chapter XX; Appropriate ways to interfere in others Members States Affairs. Art 112, Elections are off limits, except during Eurovision voting. Art 113; Calling Other Countries First ladies fat is ok.
Here is the thinking - 'Cause “our team” won, and “their team” lost. So you say Putin helped? Well then, Putin is now my buddy, 'cause he helped us win!
It’s really not that hard for me to understand. Putin being a monster, laws being broken, norms being shattered, all of that means nothing in the pursuit of winning.
Where did I say Putin was evil? I said only that he hates America and regards us as an enemy. Ergo, in his mind, ANYTHING that is bad for America is good for him. Anything he can do to sow discord here, he will do.
Being the preferred candidate of a foreign power would only be the kiss of death if you believe all foreigners have evil intentions for your country. Most people around the world would love to see the Kim dynasty deposed from North Korea but that does not mean those in North Korea who are against Kim are dupes of foreigners. When Bill Clinton was given a bunch of campaign money by the Chinese it did not mean that the country was stolen by the Chinese. There are plenty of good reasons to oppose and support either candidate, who Putin supports should be immaterial.
Russia’s interference was releasing authentic documents outlining the DNC’s being in the tank for Hillary during the primary, buying a few facebook ads, and pushing some fake stories. If that was all it took to sway an election there would be no unswayed elections in the world.
How hard is it to think of examples in which the elections of other counties have been tampered with by agents with the knowledge and consent of the US government? Including the outirght assassination by the CIA of candidates.
Actually, the reason I’M asking has nothing to do with morality or justification.
First reason is simply to remove the unknown. It’s no longer an unprecedented attack on America by a powerful enemy; it’s just the an iteration of the same sh*t we did to other people during the cold war. Lot less frightening now.
Also, the few times I can think of where we interfered in foreign nations (Vietnam, Cuba, Iran, Iraq*) all backfired on us pretty badly. Russia’s not likely to send over troops we can attack (using the same weapons they’ve given and tricks they’ve taught us), so it may take a while.