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Thread: Hi from newbie

  1. #41
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    CenterField's Avatar Senior Member
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    Quote Originally Posted by carolina73 View Post
    Alternatives:

    Allow Russia and China to spread Communism throughout Asia

    Allow Russia to take Afghanistan and move Communism further south.

    Who are these bad dictators of South America that you speak of that the US put in place?


    Sometimes you make the best of two choices and may not like either one of them.

    Do you want to talk about the people we were opposing and their legacies? China, Russia...
    Not to forget, a huge chunk of the European Union would be under Russian control by now. Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, etc., all European Union members that are doing (or were doing before the COVID-19 economic crisis) much better under the EU than under the umbrella or the influence of the former Soviet Union (not to forget, the former Eastern European countries that aren't European Union countries yet but at least are independent from the Russian Federation, would be anything but (Belarus, Ukraine, Serbia, etc). Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Mongolia, Taiwan, etc., would all be China by now.

    So whatever blunders the other member can see in Afghanistan or South America (yes, Pinochet was actually a bad dictator we propped up, and the ferocious dictators in Brazil and Argentina that murdered so many of their own citizens also had our tacit support), are outweighed by our good influence on the status of all the countries I have mentioned above.

    Sure, we did make some wrong strategic moves in Afghanistan that ended up backfiring on us... but the other member needs to remember that the Russians were about to gobble up that country, too. So if we hadn't act, that would be part of Russia now... So we did act but did endure some unexpected late consequences. Geopolitics are evolving forces and nobody can predict everything. Looking at Afghanistan is Monday-morning quarterbacking. At the time it seemed like it was necessary to counter Russia's push to dominate that country. Today, decades later, it seems like what we did backfired on us. We weren't successful in Vietnam either. We were unable to rescue part of the country from communism and in the push to actually help, we did commit atrocities there (war is a $#@!, it does turn bloody, duh). But at least now they are an independent country whose economy is going strong. Not particularly before or shortly after the Vietnam war, but more recently, if we weren't countering China's Southern influence, by now Vietnam would have been invaded and gobbled up by China (Vietnam and China remain very adversarial, by the way).

    Also think of Japan and Germany. We actually helped these countries reconstruct, despite them being our sworn enemies who did great damage to us and killed hundreds of thousands of our troops. They are nowadays two of the most economically strong and freest countries in the world.

    We are not always right and like you said sometimes we have some hard choices facing us, but again, I sustain that overall our influence in geopolitics over the last 75 years has been a stabilizing force rather than a destabilizing one.

    If the other member only focuses on our failures and ignores our successes, then it is easy to depict a negative picture.

    Again, I don't know the nationality of the other member. Of course he/she is entitled to his/her privacy on this. I asked, had no response, so I must respect his/her silence on this. But the reason I asked is that I'd be curious to know it, and then, to research the history of his/her country. It is likely (although not certain) that depending on what country, one might find some despicable acts in the history of that country, since most countries have engaged in disgusting behavior in the past or presence.

    I remember at one point discussing a similar situation with a Frenchman who was berating the United States. It was sufficient to remind him of France's despicable behavior towards Algeria. Not only France engaged in atrocities in the Algerian territory itself, but beat up, threw and drowned Algerians into the Seine river. An estimated 300 innocent Algerians died that day (October 17, 1961) in the hands of the French.
    Last edited by CenterField; 05-31-2020 at 12:15 PM.
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  2. #42
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