Both: I wish the United States of America to maintain global hegemony and for the condition of the people of the globe to improve.
You probably think that sounds like a nice wish, but what happens when those goals conflict?
When do they not?
Curtis, I’m thinking a couple of tours as a drummer boy would broaden your perspective on US hegemony. Off duty, you could teach classes in comparative religion to the heathen.
Your grasp of political and religious issues deserves a wider audience. Hide not your light.
The might converge in Iran, at least as far as a democracy movement goes. But any kind of hegemony does not promote freedom and better quality of life.
I find your definition of ‘success on Iraq’ very puzzling.
As other posters have stated, since the US invaded there have been hundreds of thousands of casualties, many terrorist bombings and shooting by the three rival factions and the infrasturucture has been wrecked.
You sound like someone in Hiroshima on Tue Aug 7 1945 saying “Today was a successful day because far less people died than yesterday.”
It rarely does nowadays and if they do we must weigh the balance scale and carefully and rationally decide on the issue.
If for instance the US was to maintain global hegemony and prevent wars would it not improve the entire world economically and also successfully pressure tyrannies to liberalize?
From the Allied Perspective on June 1st 1945 it would be far better then one year before for instance since they’re winning. Same thing here.
I was reading this weekend that we may have wasted 53 billion dollars in fixups and rebuilding in Iraq. We have built hospitals, water treatment plants and other new infrastructures. They don’t have the ability to run them or maintain them . The educated and professional classes ran when we started blowing the place up. Now they don’t have enough talent to keep it going. We could have used that infrastructure building right here. What a mess.
That’s not much of an answer.
Pretty much by definition, hegemony is about domination, not protection. So I don’t see that preventing a lot of wars. The U.S. has been the most powerful country in the world for more than half a century, and for about 20 years it hasn’t even had a significant rival, but it hasn’t been a particularly peaceful period in many parts of the world. There’s been liberalization in some places, but I can’t chalk that up to U.S. hegemony. As I was saying earlier, where liberalization has conflicted with hegemony - Africa and Latin America during the Cold War, for example - liberalization has been kicked to the curb.
Quite frankly, one doesn’t have to know an awful lot about what’s been happening to realize that Obama has screwed up big time on a number of things, including our Afghanistan situation, and the stimulus job program…well, I’m not so sure that it’s really working, given the fact that the economy is still in the dumps, and that many people are still unemployed and/or are losing their homes to foreclosure. He also caved right into AIPAC (The Israel Lobby), and began parroting their lines right then and there, instead of pressuring Israel to allow the Palestinians to create their own independent, sovereign nation-state alongside Israel in West Bank, Gaza and East Jerualem. What’s equally disgusting is that Obama hasn’t even so much as opened his mouth about what israel’s been doing in Gaza, either. Back to the subject of Afghanistan, etc., war is far too ingrained in the American psyche for us not to be at war, and it’s backfired on us in more ways than one. Obama should get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, but I’m not sure he can be trusted to do that. Saying that he’s “forced to do the wrong thing whether he likes it or not” is not something that I buy into. Anybody who thinks that Obama is a socialist, imho, is full of baloney. He’s not even the next thing to it, imho.
Latin America has prospered under American domination after the Cold War. Indeed almost the entire world outside of Africa and parts of the Middle East are quite stable compared to the Cold War.
“After the Cold War?” Since the Cold War ended there hasn’t been much in the way of domination. Since the Cold War ended it seems to me the U.S. has been increasingly getting the finger from Latin American countries. And that’s because when there was domination, those countries did not do well. You may have noticed the crop of leftist leaders elected in that region over the last decade.
In other words, many of the places where the U.S. was involved (Africa and the Middle East) are some of the least stable places in the world. Must be a coincidence. I haven’t checked lately - how are things in Zaire?
If you bothered to do a little research you’d find that anywhere we “dominate”, the indigenous, the poor and the environment suffer while the relatively few wealthy prosper. If you equate stability with repression, I suppose you’re right.
If the Latin American communist symphatizers like Allende had triumphed in the '70s they might be Cuban allies by now and moderate socialists like Lula would be non-existant.
Correction: A lot of places where the US didn’t intervene are unstable like Somalia (we should have sent a full Marine division and slaughtered the warlords), Sudan, or Rwanda.
Oh really? Suppose the United States got taken over by a bunch of radical hippie social democrats and withdrew it’s troops from everywhere. Were that to happen someone will step into the power vacuum most likely China and/or Russia. If they dominated the world would it be a better place?
Heaven forfend Cuba, a tiny country that’s been flat broke for decades, have some allies. It’d destabilize the globe I guess.
In any case this proves what I said: Latin American democracy contradicted America’s views on its security, so the democracy had to go. That’s how it works with hegemony. You refused to deal with that earlier, and it seems like you don’t want to admit it.
That’s true. But I believe you were arguing that U.S. dominance promotes stability. The recent track record there is mixed at best, and I don’t think I need to say anything other than Iraq and Afghanistan to demonstrate it. If that’s not enough I could point out that things aren’t going very well in Pakistan - not a military intervention, but strong involvement by the U.S. Vietnam is stable, of course, but it’s stable and Communist, so I’m not sure that’s a good example for you. The Koreas are stable, but 50 years later that’s still a headache. And that’s not intended to be an argument against all international interventionism - but your take on it doesn’t come anywhere close to reality. You can’t want hegemony and what’s best for everyone else at the same time.
I’d be worried about leprechauns taking my lucky charms.
I keeping thinking that Curtis will have to come up for air at some point but, so far …
That’ll be happening about the time Wall Street and the “defense” industry grows a conscience.
Curtis, a recent OP (mine) asked the question How Did You Come By Your Political Opinions? Your input there might help a lot us to understand your grasp of the world and our place in it.
So what? It’s their country. No damn business of the USA how they govern themselves.
Communist!
They do have allies: China, and until '91 the Soviets. Also they violated the Monroe Doctrine by allowing the Soviets to place their nukes on Cuba threatening the USA.
Well if it threatens American security the US is perfectly justifying to do whatever it fits short of war crimes.
If there are instead many competing great powers like in pre-1914 Europe you have a very good recipe for a bloody war. And you’ve left off quite a few successful US interventions: Grenada, Panama, and of course Germany, Japan, and Italy after World War 2.
Well that’s what many are basically advocating.
If their governments threaten American security or will be utterly terrible under the political regime…?
Hamid Karzai ought to be concerned-witness the fate of the Diem brothers (as President Kennedy turned on them). Obama has been making noises about a “new” Aghanistan strategy-does this bode a future without Karzai?
I seethe parallels with Vietnam as striking-the CIA may well be talking to some Afghan generals as we speak, and planning a coup.
I wonder if Karzai has a villa and a cash stash in Switzerland?
Still none of your goddam business until you start operating under a less hysterical definition. I assume you extend this right to the many nations whose ‘security’ is ‘threatened’ by the USA?
As for the second part of your clause - that is simply self-serving nonsense. The USA has never had the slightest problem with the vile regimes it gets into bed with - often after turfing out perfectly palatable democratic governments.