Idealistic nonsense. I mean, Americans don't care about history. And they really don't care about WW1. But history classes have to at least pretend to cover WW1. Even long before I was a leftist, the official story taught in schools never made sense to me. The Germans sank the Lusitania, and that made Americans mad. Okay it wasn't great of course, but seems kinda flimsy of a reason by itself. So they add the Zimmerman Telegram. It's pretty silly to take it seriously, but I guess it's taught as this is just something that made even more Americans angry at the Germans?
So the way the history is taught, you are forced to conclude that the US public eventually just got so angry with Germany that they demanded the US enter the way. The problem of course is a.) the US public still wasn't frothing at the mouth angry and I think a majority still didn't want to get involved, and b.) politicians NEVER give a single fuck what the public wants or doesn't want with respect to war. Never have, never will. The idea that US politicians just saw Americans getting angry and thus had no choice but to declare war is ludicrous.
So in steps the REAL reason: if the Allies lost, US investors were gonna lose out big on loans made to support the Allied war effort. Reading Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism, it's just so obvious that that's what was going on. After the war, there was an official hearing or something that determined that was the real cause. But all this gets buried because Americans cannot entertain either historical materialism or the notion that the US gets into wars for less than noble reasons.
Anyways, :amerikkka: , as always.
i stand by the Barbary even if i'll amend the monroe doctrine to 60-70 years. you dont get to say the western hemisphere is yankee turf with the french army in veracruz
holding north african monarchs as illegitimate for enforcing tax & seizure on trespassers as if that wasn't how all countries operated. a system of treaties with them to ensure safe passage for a country's ships is no different from ones between european countries, except historiography calls north africans "pirates"
The Jeffersonians were on better terms with the French than the Spanish. Hence the ongoing dispute over Cuba.
Oh come on. We're not seriously going to pretend the glorified troll toll to the Mediterranian set up by Morocco was about trespassing. They were doing the same shit in boats that the Europeans were doing on horseback - textbook robbery barony.
Everyone was a pirate when you were Spanish. Africans didn't have any kind of monopoly on the term.
what about the British extorting south american nations and doing their bullshit all over the gulf? were the yanks friendly with them too or did they just lack the capability to enforce a monrovian sphere of influence?
not sure ive heard anything notably positive about yankee-second empire relations either.
but with "highway robbery"---the europeans did that. on water. you'll forgive me if i dont certify privateering and merchantilist trade controls from absolute monarchies as more legitimate than the barbary lords. its still "we'll shoot you if you dont pay us" if you've got a stamp & document
Ask President Madison why he had to paint his house white.
Depends heavily on where you're standing.
Winning grants a certain degree of legitimacy.
Besides, if they'd lost, you'd be smugly dismissing the North African Empire as the illegitimate scourge tyrannizing the poor Atlantic vassal states.
Establishing a Rules Based International Order doesn't mean you're the good guys. It just means you built the dominant coalition. Which Atlantic Europeans ultimately did.
i dont think we disagree except on semantics lol
imma tap out this was fun tho i like litigating 2 century old policy