You mean things like the My Lay Massacre was the US Army acting restrained? I didnt realize you recruited straight out of the Waffen SS. Maybe the leash thing was a good idea then, that’s what I’d put on my dog, if it was half-crazy, and if I was having a semblance of responsibility.
Are you kidding ? Check your history books. Check how much of Haiphong was left unbombed. Look up how much of Huê city was left standing after the Americans were done liberating it. Liberated the hell out of it, really.
No, you can argue that the war was a limited war in terms of scale, number of men sent and whatnot. And you can argue that “hey, no nukes were uncorked !”. But that the fighting itself was restrained ? Sorry, that’s not supported by the facts. Air assets alone dropped 10 tons of bombs per inhabitant of Viet-Nam. If that’s restrained, I shudder at the thought of what you’d consider going all in.
The Vietnam war was lost in 74-75 when Congress refused to resupply the South Vietnamese Army. During the North Vietnamese Invasion, a lot of the ARVN was immobilized for simple lack of fuel.
If and probably when America stops being #1 in any military or economic sense our legacy is still going to win out, the Arab Spring is sort of bearing that out. Although there’s probably still a lot of nasty revolutionary business to sort itself out over there, it doesn’t look like authoritarian governments are going to be around over there too much longer… except maybe the Saudis, who we really really don’t want to crumble.
That said, I think history will look back on America as another Ancient Rome or Greece in terms of the ideals and precedents we spread.
Of course we used Agent Orange to "defoliate " the jungles. It killed 400,000 people and there were a half million birth defects after. Boy if we didn’t have our hands tied, what we could have done.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/VNchemical.htm Poisonous chemicals in the name of freedom. If we were doing them a favor, I wonder why they didn’t love this stuff.
If you are going to have a leash, expect to lose. If you want to act responsibly, don’t go in the first place.
Say what? We’ve pushed authoritarianism all over the world. If authoritarian governments aren’t going to be around as much, that’s a repudiation of the American legacy, not a continuance of it.
No, it is people wanting to emulate the idealized version of democracy and society that America represents. A local Yemeni sees American TV and wonders why the character, an average fellow in the US, can have a nice house and car while he doesn’t have a pot to piss in. Yet he sees his leaders driving around in Mercedes and living in big walled off mansions. He wants what his leaders have and is tired of the story that it is someone else’s fault that he doesn’t have it. That more than America’s military might is what will democratize the world, at least imho.
I don’t see much evidence that it’s idealized that way anywhere outside of America. That sounds more like America’s own myths about itself than the way anyone else looks at it.
Then I’d suggest you have limited experience outside of America. Now you can find all sorts of people (especially Canadians, Europeans, and the theocrats and autocrats in the third world) who will disagree with what I said, but it isn’t the Germans or the French that the average Achmed bases his aspirations on.
This is interesting. Is the “average Achmed” inspired by the American example? And if so, is this inspiration the driving force behind the Arab Spring, as Uzi seems to suggest? Or are other factors (economic desperation, sectarian conflict, etc.) more important?
I lean towards the latter interpretation, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
I haven’t said that mine is the only possibility nor that the world is that black and white. A combination of factors including economic and other issues drive motivations. Yet when the average person is trying to improve their place in the world what do you think his goal is? From my own experience in the middle east it is a nice Land Cruiser in every garage in a home they can call their own. That isn’t the Soviet model they are working towards.
It’s probably not to get an American bomb dropped on him, or to be stuck living under an American-backed dictator. Which is going to be the kind of American behavior that “the average Achmed” is familiar with.
I think he is realizing that American backed or not, it is his dictator to deal with.
Funny, considering the number of Achmeds in both France and Germany.
BTW, what you described sounds like the American version of the Potemkin villages.
The US isn’t doing so great from a global perspective, there. Everyone has been watching your economy crash and your politicians bicker over debt and holding the global economy hostage, and foreclosures happening all over the country, and your unemployment and jobless rates climbing and climbing. I can promise you that the US isn’t looking very ideal at the moment to your average Achmed or Aisha.
:rolleyes: Ah, the old “foreign (especially foreign brown people) people aren’t really human” routine. A real person - like an American - does care if some third party does something like, say, sponsors a terrorist attack. But poor little Achmed isn’t bright enough to connect American support of a dictator and his suffering under that dictator. We can make his and his ancestor’s lives misery for generations and he isn’t smart enough to blame us for it.
And there’s what passes for a health care system, which I’ve noticed tends to get horrified responses from foreigners.
WE don’t make his ‘dictator’ treat his people in any fashion at all. Achmed is realizing that this is true and wants his government to take responsibility for their actions rather than blaming some outside agency for what they may or may not do. Do you think the Syrian people believe that their government is a US puppet? Is the US forcing the Syrian government to be assholes to their people? Or the Libyan government? Or do you really believe that the white devils in the US are the only ones capable of evil?
You’re the one who thinks that these people are stupid. You’re the one who makes the assumption that they aren’t capable of recognizing who actually is causing their problems.
Of course we do. He does what we say or we cut him off, and likely the reason he’s there at all is because of us. The Third World is full of dictators and death squads and torturers we’ve trained, equipped, funded and encouraged. We’ve encouraged brutality and tyranny for decades.
Naturally you just happen to pick two that are long term enemies of the US.
False dichotomy. The choice is not a simple one between “America is responsible for everything” and “America is responsible for nothing”.
Of course I did. Why wouldn’t I? They had every opportunity to stick it to the US and go full out democracy with their people. They didn’t. They treat their citizens exactly like the ‘puppets’. Could it be that dictators do things because that is what dictators do regardless of who supports them? Add Iran to that list if you want. No one forced a theocracy on them. They did it all themselves. No one is making it stay a theocracy. Again, they are doing it all themselves.
You just said it is. Dictators are only assholes because the US makes them. You ignored evidence that dictators can be assholes all on their own.