The "maybe Trump is actually better on imperialism" bit has gotten out of control, too. He tried to coup Venezuela and Bolivia (and Bolivia isn't out of the woods yet), rolled back some meaningful progress on Cuba, and went from a serious diplomatic agreement with Iran to exchanging acts of war with them. His incompetence and boredom in this area is at least offset by his willingness to pick fights with anyone and the ability of his handlers to talk him into stuff he doesn't really care about. He's also revived the careers of a ton of Bush-era war criminals who are responsible for two full-scale invasions (far more damaging than any coup) and the rapid expansion/entrenchment of U.S. assassination and torture programs. Democrats, for as shitty as they are on imperialism, haven't been responsible for a full-scale invasion since Vietnam. Over the same period Republicans have invaded Grenada, Panama, Iraq (twice), and Afghanistan. Buying the line that Democrats are the real hawks here is a straight-up chud talking point.
And that doesn't even touch climate change -- even half-assed action from a Democratic administration might mitigate some of the coming effects on the Global South. The fact that Biden is shit doesn't make Trump any less shit.
Operation Gideon was a hilariously ill-planned failure, and if you're referring to the successful (for a time) 2019 coup in Bolivia, that was mostly the fault of the OAS and the conservatives in the country. The Trump administration, from what I can gather, performed no differently with Bolivia than any other previous US leadership would. It voiced support for the findings of the OAS and denounced Morales as a dictator.
His incompetence and boredom in this area is at least offset by his willingness to pick fights with anyone and the ability of his handlers to talk him into stuff he doesn't really care about
I would disagree with that, but it's hard to prove either way conclusively. Even so, that irrationality and hostility further isolates America on the world stage, and can only hasten the decline of empire.
Democrats, for as shitty as they are on imperialism, haven't been responsible for a full-scale invasion since Vietnam. Over the same time period Republicans have invaded Grenada, Panama, Iraq (twice), and Afghanistan.
All of those invasions were carried out with varying degrees of bipartisan support, and to say that the Democrats would have acted significantly differently were they in control of the presidency is naïve. Additionally, more US troops were sent to Libya in 2011 than were sent to Grenada in 1983, so if Grenada qualifies as a "full-scale" invasion then Libya should as well.
the successful (for a time) 2019 coup in Bolivia, that was mostly the fault of the OAS and the conservatives in the country
Don't count your chickens before they hatch, the OAS is heavily influenced by the U.S., and even the most cursory reading of Latin American history should lead you to the default assumption that the U.S. is behind any right-wing coup.
that irrationality and hostility further isolates America on the world stage, and can only hasten the decline of empire.
This isn't a bad point, but I'm skeptical of it as the U.S. has the ability and willingness to act unilaterally.
to say that the Democrats would have acted significantly differently were they in control of the presidency is naïve
I don't think Democrats would have fabricated the 2003 invasion of Iraq out of thin air. Clinton had all the opportunities in the world to do that in the 1990s and didn't, and Obama never did anything of that magnitude either. And "the Democrats would have done the same thing" is speculative while "the Democrats didn't do anything similar" is historical record.
The OAS is certainly heavily influenced by the US, but that influence is bipartisan, and American intervention in Latin America is a bipartisan endeavor as well. For example, the overthrow of Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz, while executed under Eisenhower in 1954 with Operation PBSuccess, was first planned under Truman with Operation PBFortune two years earlier. I find it very unlikely based on history that the actions of the OAS would have been any different with a Democratic president.
I mean, the Democrats did do similar things with Libya, and Obama increased the amount of troops in Afghanistan by 50% less than a month into his presidency. Looking at the vote for the invasion of Iraq, over half of Democratic senators voted for it, including Schumer, Biden, Kerry, Clinton, and Feinstein. The democratic leadership was totally cool with it (save Pelosi, so points for her I guess). The idea isn't "the Democrats would have done the same thing", but rather "the Democrats have done similar things and voted to let Republicans do it when they themselves were not in power." Liberals have no problem with going gung-ho into countries that don't kneel to America, they just try to give the appearance that they do.
Democrats did do similar things with Libya, and Obama increased the amount of troops in Afghanistan by 50% less than a month into his presidency.
Libya arguably would have been better off without U.S. intervention, but that was preceded by widespread uprisings that were either a civil war or close to it. It's not really comparable to the OAS ginning up false issues with a recent election and eventually deposing the just-elected president, all directly contrary to the will of the people. Similarly, the surge in Afghanistan was an attempt to end a war we were already fighting, as just flat-out leaving could easily leave the country in a state like Libya's in today. That's also not all that comparable to engineering a coup against a popular government at peace. These events aren't carbon copies of one another.
Looking at the vote for the invasion of Iraq, over half of Democratic senators voted for it
Voting for an invasion is not the same as inventing the reason for that invasion out of thin air. Going along with it is bad, but not nearly as bad as forging a ton of intelligence, crafting a propaganda campaign to manufacture consent, and then browbeating opponents with "you hate America" just two years after 9/11.
That's good material on Biden's role in propagandizing for the Iraq War. However, this conclusion:
I think Biden will be far more aggressive than Obama on Foreign Policy.
Assumes that Biden is the same now as he was in 2003, and that the country's appetite for war is the same as it was in 2003. I think both are significantly more gun shy, at least of full-scale invasions.
And that doesn’t even touch climate change – even half-assed action from a Democratic administration might mitigate some of the coming effects on the Global South. The fact that Biden is shit doesn’t make Trump any less shit.
Key word 'might'
Might as well also throw in that they might do something about healthcare....
Yes, "might" means might. But it's counterproductive to conflate Democrats doing half-assed things with Democrats never doing anything, ever. Obamacare was a half-assed healthcare solution, but there are still millions of people who have healthcare today because of it.
We can't dunk on libs so much we fool ourselves into thinking they're worse than Republicans.
Or ww1 for that matter. Literally the anti-war candidate that dragged America into war 6 months after being elected just to make sure J.P Morgan makes his money back off of his loans to the Entente faction.
None of those were invasions on the order of Afghanistan or Iraq. Invading and occupying a country is a lot more destructive and kills a lot more people than helping one side in a civil war.
For example, take Libya. The upper range of estimates of the deaths caused by the 2011 fighting are around 25,000, and the figure for the current fighting is less than 10,000. Combine those numbers and assume they undercounted the death toll by a factor of ten. That would be 350,000 deaths, which is significantly less than the 2.4 million Iraqis we've killed.
It's also worth noting that Democrats tried to end our support for Saudi Arabia's actions in Yemen, but they didn't have the votes to override Trump's veto. Democrats do sometimes find themselves in a decent position on military action; Republicans almost never do. Democrats at least occasionally have anti-war sentiment; Republicans fall in line behind whatever imperial excursions the State Department can dream up.
The casualties of the Libyan war extend far past 2011, like wtf kind of garbage wikipedia article is that, completely arbitrary end date
And I'm not comparing the casualties of the Iraq war, in terms of the top five it's right there at number one (I never claimed otherwise), while also being a war continued and supported by democrats, I'm debunking the bizarre statement that Democrats haven't been responsible for the outright invasions of multiple countries by groups armed, funded, trained and supported by the United States military
It’s also worth noting that Democrats tried to end our support for Saudi Arabia’s actions in Yemen
Four years too late, are you really gonna give democrats points for that partisan motivated shit? The war started in 2015, you know perfectly well who was in charge at that time
And then there's the Syrian war....
The greatest imperial disasters of the 21st century are
like wtf kind of garbage wikipedia article is that, completely arbitrary end date
Note the second link, which includes events from 2014-present. I don't know why they divided the pages up the way they did, but they're not just ignoring everything post-2011.
I’m debunking the bizarre statement that Democrats haven’t been responsible for the outright invasions of multiple countries by groups armed, funded, trained and supported by the United States military
I never claimed that. I'm talking about the U.S. launching a full-scale invasion of other countries, and yes, no Democrat has come particularly close to that since LBJ half a century ago. If you want to talk about anyone the U.S. has ever sold arms to or given training to, that's a worthwhile conversation, but the U.S. is less responsible for an invasion carried out by another country than it is for an invasion carried out by the U.S. If I shoot someone, I'm directly responsible for killing them. If I sell you a gun and you shoot someone, I have some responsibility, but it's less than if I carried out the act myself.
Four years too late
Ever heard the saying "better late than never"? If Democrats do something decent four years too late, and Republicans would never do the decent thing, it's a no-brainer who's better, even if they both suck.
Democrats are responsible for 3 out of 5
While we're talking about responsibility, the conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and Libya all started with significant internal strife. Not some trumped up Juan Guaido opposition; real dissatisfaction with the government that boiled over into more serious violence than the U.S. is seeing now. In each situation the U.S. arguably made things worse (although how good of an argument that is varies by conflict), but the people of those countries are not just neutral parties the U.S. acted upon. The U.S. (and Democrats specifically) should bear some responsibility for where those countries are now, but laying the whole situation at our door isn't any more accurate than buying into the "humanitarian intervention" line.
I’m talking about the U.S. launching a full-scale invasion of other countries
Libya was a full scale invasion, Syria was a full invasion, Yemen was a full scale invasion
If I sell you a gun and you shoot someone, I have some responsibility, but it’s less than if I carried out the act myself
If I sell you guns, train you how to use it, fund you to the tune of millions to billions of dollars, and then send my special forces and air fleets to fight alongside you, that isn't partial responsibility, that's full responsibility, in fact its more responsibility since without my guns, training, money and global political support those other agents wouldn't have gotten anywhere, you're splitting hairs to find a way to defend the Democrats and their imperial strategy, I don't understand this mentality, in terms of imperialism Republicans and democrats are on equal footing, Republicans invaded Iraq while the dems killed half a million in the 90s thru sanctions, Republicans invaded or couped half of Latin American in the eighties while dems invaded and destabilized half the Middle East in the 2010s, no matter which way you slice it they're the same, there is no practical differentiation here, not for the people who suffer thru these "interventions"
Ever heard the saying “better late than never”?
There is no fucking "better late than never" in this context, a publicity stunt that was known beforehand was going to fail is not "doing the right thing" it's not "making amends" it's fake horseshit, artifice, partisan nonsense designed to placate certain naive progressive elements, in your case it appears to have worked brilliantly
While we’re talking about responsibility, the conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and Libya all started with significant internal strife
Does the concept of agency and power dynamics simply escape you, how many decades had the US tried to overthrow Gaddafi, from which direction did ISIS invade Syria in late 2013 (hint its Iraq), which US backed and funded dictator beggared Yemen on behalf of the US and Saudi Arabia for decades before he lost control of the country, you betray a profound lack knowledge about this region, you say the people of those countries aren't just neutral parties, yes your right, they're PEOPLE struggling to overcome the power of a global empire and survive the monsters it inflicts on the region, and despite all the setbacks and defeats they have more courage than any progressive larper on this site
Libya was a full scale invasion, Syria was a full invasion, Yemen was a full scale invasion
No, no, and no. You're not even close to correct.
Take Libya, for example. The 2011 U.N. resolution that was the basis for the original intervention specifies no foreign occupation of the country. None of the 2011 strikes publicly available mention a boots-on-the-ground invasion. Subsequent U.S. actions were similarly limited to air strikes. I could believe that we put some special forces guys on the ground at some point, but we sure as shit didn't undertake a full-scale invasion.
Yeah, if Russian planes flew into US airspace and started dropping bombs on the Pacific coast, that somehow wouldn't be an invasion, lol bruh you need stop playing
Lmao, yes and the established meaning agrees with my definition of the word, not your convenient pro-democrat horseshit take, get fuckin real bro, sustained bombing campaigns for months on end with special forces incursions leading to deaths of tens of thousands is classified as an invasion, sorry if that fucks up your pro-dnc sentiments
The "maybe Trump is actually better on imperialism" bit has gotten out of control, too. He tried to coup Venezuela and Bolivia (and Bolivia isn't out of the woods yet), rolled back some meaningful progress on Cuba, and went from a serious diplomatic agreement with Iran to exchanging acts of war with them. His incompetence and boredom in this area is at least offset by his willingness to pick fights with anyone and the ability of his handlers to talk him into stuff he doesn't really care about. He's also revived the careers of a ton of Bush-era war criminals who are responsible for two full-scale invasions (far more damaging than any coup) and the rapid expansion/entrenchment of U.S. assassination and torture programs. Democrats, for as shitty as they are on imperialism, haven't been responsible for a full-scale invasion since Vietnam. Over the same period Republicans have invaded Grenada, Panama, Iraq (twice), and Afghanistan. Buying the line that Democrats are the real hawks here is a straight-up chud talking point.
And that doesn't even touch climate change -- even half-assed action from a Democratic administration might mitigate some of the coming effects on the Global South. The fact that Biden is shit doesn't make Trump any less shit.
Operation Gideon was a hilariously ill-planned failure, and if you're referring to the successful (for a time) 2019 coup in Bolivia, that was mostly the fault of the OAS and the conservatives in the country. The Trump administration, from what I can gather, performed no differently with Bolivia than any other previous US leadership would. It voiced support for the findings of the OAS and denounced Morales as a dictator.
I would disagree with that, but it's hard to prove either way conclusively. Even so, that irrationality and hostility further isolates America on the world stage, and can only hasten the decline of empire.
All of those invasions were carried out with varying degrees of bipartisan support, and to say that the Democrats would have acted significantly differently were they in control of the presidency is naïve. Additionally, more US troops were sent to Libya in 2011 than were sent to Grenada in 1983, so if Grenada qualifies as a "full-scale" invasion then Libya should as well.
this, im not sure how muich america even did in bolivia, probably did at least something, but considering it failed miserably, probably not that much
Don't count your chickens before they hatch, the OAS is heavily influenced by the U.S., and even the most cursory reading of Latin American history should lead you to the default assumption that the U.S. is behind any right-wing coup.
This isn't a bad point, but I'm skeptical of it as the U.S. has the ability and willingness to act unilaterally.
I don't think Democrats would have fabricated the 2003 invasion of Iraq out of thin air. Clinton had all the opportunities in the world to do that in the 1990s and didn't, and Obama never did anything of that magnitude either. And "the Democrats would have done the same thing" is speculative while "the Democrats didn't do anything similar" is historical record.
The OAS is certainly heavily influenced by the US, but that influence is bipartisan, and American intervention in Latin America is a bipartisan endeavor as well. For example, the overthrow of Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz, while executed under Eisenhower in 1954 with Operation PBSuccess, was first planned under Truman with Operation PBFortune two years earlier. I find it very unlikely based on history that the actions of the OAS would have been any different with a Democratic president.
I mean, the Democrats did do similar things with Libya, and Obama increased the amount of troops in Afghanistan by 50% less than a month into his presidency. Looking at the vote for the invasion of Iraq, over half of Democratic senators voted for it, including Schumer, Biden, Kerry, Clinton, and Feinstein. The democratic leadership was totally cool with it (save Pelosi, so points for her I guess). The idea isn't "the Democrats would have done the same thing", but rather "the Democrats have done similar things and voted to let Republicans do it when they themselves were not in power." Liberals have no problem with going gung-ho into countries that don't kneel to America, they just try to give the appearance that they do.
Libya arguably would have been better off without U.S. intervention, but that was preceded by widespread uprisings that were either a civil war or close to it. It's not really comparable to the OAS ginning up false issues with a recent election and eventually deposing the just-elected president, all directly contrary to the will of the people. Similarly, the surge in Afghanistan was an attempt to end a war we were already fighting, as just flat-out leaving could easily leave the country in a state like Libya's in today. That's also not all that comparable to engineering a coup against a popular government at peace. These events aren't carbon copies of one another.
Voting for an invasion is not the same as inventing the reason for that invasion out of thin air. Going along with it is bad, but not nearly as bad as forging a ton of intelligence, crafting a propaganda campaign to manufacture consent, and then browbeating opponents with "you hate America" just two years after 9/11.
Yeah, of course. I thought we are all were in the same page of irony.
It's pretty tough sometimes to walk the line between the right amount of irony and the right amount of talking more honestly.
deleted by creator
That's good material on Biden's role in propagandizing for the Iraq War. However, this conclusion:
Assumes that Biden is the same now as he was in 2003, and that the country's appetite for war is the same as it was in 2003. I think both are significantly more gun shy, at least of full-scale invasions.
Key word 'might'
Might as well also throw in that they might do something about healthcare....
Yes, "might" means might. But it's counterproductive to conflate Democrats doing half-assed things with Democrats never doing anything, ever. Obamacare was a half-assed healthcare solution, but there are still millions of people who have healthcare today because of it.
We can't dunk on libs so much we fool ourselves into thinking they're worse than Republicans.
At least republicans are honest
Except they're fucking not
They’re honest about hating all minorities.
So we just gonna ignore Libya, Syria and Yemen? Literally all in the top five imperial disasters of the 21st century
Or ww1 for that matter. Literally the anti-war candidate that dragged America into war 6 months after being elected just to make sure J.P Morgan makes his money back off of his loans to the Entente faction.
None of those were invasions on the order of Afghanistan or Iraq. Invading and occupying a country is a lot more destructive and kills a lot more people than helping one side in a civil war.
For example, take Libya. The upper range of estimates of the deaths caused by the 2011 fighting are around 25,000, and the figure for the current fighting is less than 10,000. Combine those numbers and assume they undercounted the death toll by a factor of ten. That would be 350,000 deaths, which is significantly less than the 2.4 million Iraqis we've killed.
It's also worth noting that Democrats tried to end our support for Saudi Arabia's actions in Yemen, but they didn't have the votes to override Trump's veto. Democrats do sometimes find themselves in a decent position on military action; Republicans almost never do. Democrats at least occasionally have anti-war sentiment; Republicans fall in line behind whatever imperial excursions the State Department can dream up.
The casualties of the Libyan war extend far past 2011, like wtf kind of garbage wikipedia article is that, completely arbitrary end date
And I'm not comparing the casualties of the Iraq war, in terms of the top five it's right there at number one (I never claimed otherwise), while also being a war continued and supported by democrats, I'm debunking the bizarre statement that Democrats haven't been responsible for the outright invasions of multiple countries by groups armed, funded, trained and supported by the United States military
Four years too late, are you really gonna give democrats points for that partisan motivated shit? The war started in 2015, you know perfectly well who was in charge at that time
And then there's the Syrian war....
The greatest imperial disasters of the 21st century are
Iraq
The Congo wars
Syria
Yemen
Libya
Democrats are responsible for 3 out of 5
Note the second link, which includes events from 2014-present. I don't know why they divided the pages up the way they did, but they're not just ignoring everything post-2011.
I never claimed that. I'm talking about the U.S. launching a full-scale invasion of other countries, and yes, no Democrat has come particularly close to that since LBJ half a century ago. If you want to talk about anyone the U.S. has ever sold arms to or given training to, that's a worthwhile conversation, but the U.S. is less responsible for an invasion carried out by another country than it is for an invasion carried out by the U.S. If I shoot someone, I'm directly responsible for killing them. If I sell you a gun and you shoot someone, I have some responsibility, but it's less than if I carried out the act myself.
Ever heard the saying "better late than never"? If Democrats do something decent four years too late, and Republicans would never do the decent thing, it's a no-brainer who's better, even if they both suck.
While we're talking about responsibility, the conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and Libya all started with significant internal strife. Not some trumped up Juan Guaido opposition; real dissatisfaction with the government that boiled over into more serious violence than the U.S. is seeing now. In each situation the U.S. arguably made things worse (although how good of an argument that is varies by conflict), but the people of those countries are not just neutral parties the U.S. acted upon. The U.S. (and Democrats specifically) should bear some responsibility for where those countries are now, but laying the whole situation at our door isn't any more accurate than buying into the "humanitarian intervention" line.
Libya was a full scale invasion, Syria was a full invasion, Yemen was a full scale invasion
If I sell you guns, train you how to use it, fund you to the tune of millions to billions of dollars, and then send my special forces and air fleets to fight alongside you, that isn't partial responsibility, that's full responsibility, in fact its more responsibility since without my guns, training, money and global political support those other agents wouldn't have gotten anywhere, you're splitting hairs to find a way to defend the Democrats and their imperial strategy, I don't understand this mentality, in terms of imperialism Republicans and democrats are on equal footing, Republicans invaded Iraq while the dems killed half a million in the 90s thru sanctions, Republicans invaded or couped half of Latin American in the eighties while dems invaded and destabilized half the Middle East in the 2010s, no matter which way you slice it they're the same, there is no practical differentiation here, not for the people who suffer thru these "interventions"
There is no fucking "better late than never" in this context, a publicity stunt that was known beforehand was going to fail is not "doing the right thing" it's not "making amends" it's fake horseshit, artifice, partisan nonsense designed to placate certain naive progressive elements, in your case it appears to have worked brilliantly
Does the concept of agency and power dynamics simply escape you, how many decades had the US tried to overthrow Gaddafi, from which direction did ISIS invade Syria in late 2013 (hint its Iraq), which US backed and funded dictator beggared Yemen on behalf of the US and Saudi Arabia for decades before he lost control of the country, you betray a profound lack knowledge about this region, you say the people of those countries aren't just neutral parties, yes your right, they're PEOPLE struggling to overcome the power of a global empire and survive the monsters it inflicts on the region, and despite all the setbacks and defeats they have more courage than any progressive larper on this site
No, no, and no. You're not even close to correct.
Take Libya, for example. The 2011 U.N. resolution that was the basis for the original intervention specifies no foreign occupation of the country. None of the 2011 strikes publicly available mention a boots-on-the-ground invasion. Subsequent U.S. actions were similarly limited to air strikes. I could believe that we put some special forces guys on the ground at some point, but we sure as shit didn't undertake a full-scale invasion.
You don't need an occupation force to invade, bombing campaigns alone are invasions, don't rely on U.N. legalese to form an argument, give me a break
Well no, that's not an invasion at all. That's just not what the word means.
Yeah, if Russian planes flew into US airspace and started dropping bombs on the Pacific coast, that somehow wouldn't be an invasion, lol bruh you need stop playing
Lmao no, not even close, words do have established meanings you know. Was 9/11 an invasion?
Lmao, yes and the established meaning agrees with my definition of the word, not your convenient pro-democrat horseshit take, get fuckin real bro, sustained bombing campaigns for months on end with special forces incursions leading to deaths of tens of thousands is classified as an invasion, sorry if that fucks up your pro-dnc sentiments