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  • @GarbageShoot addressed everything else and debunked it, but I want to talk about this:

    I don't need to defend ever [sic] single thing the US has done wrong or what you think the US has done wrong to enjoy and understand the benefits of democracy. US is certainly not perfect [sic] but it beats living in a dictatorship that's for sure. I want the US to support and defend democracies.

    This sort of nonsense of dismissing all anti-democratic actions by the U.S. government (ex. below) by saying “I don’t need to defend everything” is absurd and ignorant.

    • the insertion of the dictator Syngman Rhee in south Korea; the support for the ROK’s government as it placed 188k people in prison for sympathizing with socialism/communism (Korea’s Place in the Sun, p. 349), put 70,000 leftists in concentration camps (Korea’s Place in the Sun, p. 223), and massacred tens of thousands in Jeju for protesting; the undemocratic and uneducated division of Korea (Patriots, Traitors and Empires, p. 73), etc.
    • inciting terrorism and supporting Nazi “stay behind” troops in countries with communist resistance movements (Italy, Greece, Germany, Turkey, etc.) with the intention of pinning this terrorism on communist movements and tricking the population into voting for the U.S.-backed parties (see Paul L. Williams’ Operation Gladio)
    • the support for the coup by dictator Pinochet against the popularly elected Allende in Chile

    “I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves” - Kissenger

    • every single action in the Cold War that subverted democratic principles (see The Jakarta Method)

    There comes a certain point when the “democracy” thesis must be questioned; in which U.S. military intervention did America “fight for democracy”? You’ve brought up Iraq and Afghanistan. What evidence is there that these were genuine pursuits for democracy? Afghanistan HAD democracy under the DRA, but the U.S. decided to undermine social reform in the country to supplant Soviet influence in the Middle East:

    “The United States’ larger interest...would be served by the demise of the Taraki regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reform in Afghanistan.... The overthrow of the DRA [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] would show the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that the Soviet’s view of the socialist course of history as being inevitable is not accurate” (US State Department memorandum reproduced in Cockburn and St. Clair’s Whiteout, pp. 262–63).

    We know that the lie of support for the Mujahideen being afforded by the U.S. merely to push back against Soviet invasion is false, since the U.S. admitted to supporting the Mujahideen at least half a year before the invasion (US Foreign Policy and the Soviet-Afghan War, Lowenstien). The volatile conditions in Afghanistan are the exact result of the U.S. fathering the Taliban for influence in the region, and the intervention in Afghanistan had no democratic results apart from furthering U.S. interests (and U.S. corporate oil interests, see Parenti’s “Afghanistan: Another Untold Story”), which were decidedly undemocratic. By the way, the U.S. is still starving people in Afghanistan.

    And Iraq, this MUST be the single democratic war fought by the U.S. right? Apart from killing more people than Saddam ever did (and this is of course excluding that the U.S. supported Saddam as he gassed Iran)., giving children birth defects and cancer from depleted Uranium, s-xually abusing and torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and so on, the effect was merely “democratizing” (giving to western corporations) Iraqi oil shares. And one of your pig-dogs already admitted to the war being an imperialist bid for oil and not “democratic”:

    “People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are. They talk about America's national interest. What the hell do you think they're talking about? We're not there for figs” - Chuck Hagel, U.S. Senator (1997-2009) and U.S. Secretary of Defense (2013-15)

    Say that bs “oh I guess they weren’t ready for democracy” nonsense again I dare you. You don’t deserve to prance around these topics and “learn” by defending horrific atrocities and seeing what responses you get.

    • You know that there are death camps in North Korea to this day right? Where as South Korea does not have any death camps.

      US went out of its way to stop the spread of the communism and destabilize socialist countries in the 20th century. I think these foreign policy decisions were a mistake. Our focus should be on a country's political structure and not its economic structure.

      Afghanistan HAD democracy under the DRA

      One party systems are not democracy. edit: spacing

      And Iraq, this MUST be the single democratic war fought by the U.S. right?

      This is a straw man. I don't agree with the war in Iraq. Read my comments if you don't believe me. Iraq gained democracy which is the only silver lining I can think of but their government has since backslid to the detriment of the Iraqi people. Hopefully they will make a course correction.

      Say that bs “oh I guess they weren’t ready for democracy” nonsense again I dare you. You don’t deserve to prance around these topics and “learn” by defending horrific atrocities and seeing what responses you get.

      Democracy cannot be forced. If people don't fight to defend it, it will be taken away. edit: grammar

      I've spent a lot of time learning about these topics because they interest me. But I'm certainly not an expert.

      • Your reply barely addresses anything lmao.

        You know that there are death camps in North Korea to this day right? Where as [sic] South Korea does not have any death camps.

        Wow! I am shocked and appalled! May I have an article to read on this startling atrocity?

        One party systems are not democracy [sic]

        Democracy is entirely empty when there is no rule by the majority (i.e. class rule, of which the U.S. is ruled by an economic minority that decides candidacy under the illusory pretext of multiparty competition). The multiparty system by itself is not a guarantee of democracy nor is it the only system of democracy. There can be competing ideas within a party (especially a mass party as the PDPA), and party rule does not negate elections to party positions and mass participation. This is much more a slogan that completely misunderstands different political realities than an actual point. Terrible response to my multitude of points on Afghanistan, although I don’t know if you’re capable of anything else. Under the PDPA, equal rights for women, land reform, and public healthcare were established (Against Empire, p. 57). The king and autocracy were overthrown, labor unions were legalized, women were allowed to read and hold government positions and began literacy programs alongside poor peasants. The U.S. undid all of this by supporting terrorists and committed atrocities in order to ensure their own interests (yay democracy!).

        This is a straw man. I don't agree with the war in Iraq. Read my comments if you don't believe me.

        When you wrote that you “think what [the U.S. government] learned from Afghanistan and Iraq is that democracy cannot be forced.” This, in my view at least, clearly implies that the U.S. government was fighting in Iraq for democracy. Feel free to give me an alternate interpretation.

        Democracy cannot be forced. If people don't fight to defend it, it will be taken away.

        This is a fine platitude, but not what I was addressing. I was specifically noting your comments I just mentioned on how these pursuits failed because “democracy cannot be forced”, i.e. the U.S. was “forcing democracy” where people were not ready for it. I categorically reject that U.S. FP is oriented towards democracy (and you’ve done nothing to prove it is), and think it is absolutely disgusting to say that this is what the U.S. needs to “learn from", that the people simply "weren't ready" for our good will and hospitality in the form of bombs and torture. It’s whitewashing nonsense.

      • I'll get around to the comment you addressed to me but:

        You know that there are death camps in North Korea to this day right?

        Death camps are camps used for killing people, usually in a semi-industrialized fashion. The DPRK has never had these. It has prison labor, but that's not the same. South Korea also has prison labor.

        Edit: Regarding your article, aside from HRW being literally purpose-built for laundering those sorts of stories and the "evidence" being an office in the UN submitting something for discussion, South Korea also has accusations against it of torturing political prisoners.

        Still no death camps in "north kora"

334 comments