4 ms·

this advice should have been used and adhered to for last 50 years, and the world would be truly much better place. what a dream...

ars 10y ago
Sort of. Most of the time America intervened not for the benefit of the locals, but for its own (or its allies) benefit (including as a proxy against Russia). It's harder to criticize that. It's bad for the locals, but America needs to do what's good for America. In this case though, it's entirely "for" the locals, so America should stay out of it because it's not actually helping the locals.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  It's difficult to claim that America's actions in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world have been good for America. In fact, the only war America participated in that ended up being a net good for America was World War 2, which resulted in the devastation of much of Europe and allowed American industries to expand and advance virtually unchallenged for almost 50 years. The Vietnam War however was a disaster of epic proportions. So was the Iraq War. The latter, instead of installing a friendly regime that guaranteed the uninterrupted flow of cheap oil, resulted in even more instability in the region, not to mention further radicalization of extremist forces. And things continue to go downhill. At the end of the day, it is worth understanding that America's wars benefit only a small number of people in America: higher ups in the military-industrial complex, the oil companies and the construction conglomerates. For everyone else, it's a waste.
  - blahi 10y ago
    What do you think were the objectives in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and the prolonged interference in the middle east as a whole?
    - nickik 10y ago
      Its a hard question. The original military involvement start with Carter and the Carter Doctrine, declaring the Golf as a vital US interest. From there is spiral out of control quite a bit and its to long a story for this comment. Lets jump to the 'current' wars. Afghanistan was pretty clear cut. AQ was there, the US wanted to kick them out and install a regime that would prevent further use of Afghanistan at a base, so the Taliban had to go. There is little argument about this. Iraq is the real question. I have spent quite a bit of time on this. Its really a mystery because it simply does not make sense. There were a combination of ideas that 'infected' a small group of top military and political people. Iraq was actually the just a first step of a grand policy to rework the middle east. You can say about Bush and friends what you like, but at least they had a strategy. They basically wanted to demonstrate US power and US ability to install liberal democracy. This would split the Iran-Syria-Hezebolla Axis. It would pressure Iran and be helpful to Israel. With this success in hand, they could use soft power way more effectively to 'control' weak regimes like Sudan. The idea was, join the US and if you don't you will get hammer in the ground and replaced with a democracy. This strategy was of course thrown overboard when the Republicans lost the congress, Bush dumped Rumsfeld over board with it. Since then they are back to having no strategy and a ad-hock fire brigade style of policy making.
  - jwtadvice 10y ago
    The purpose of the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and the support of the Afghanistan insurgency weren't intended to be net positives for the United States. They were intended to be net negatives for the Soviet Union. And they were. Now we have instable areas, but the US prevented the Soviet Union from continuing to expand and collapsed it by overwhelming it with military costs to stabilize its periphery. In some circles that counts as a net positive to the US.
    - nickik 10y ago
      A net negative for the Soviets is a positive for the US. That is fair enough but it does not mean that your statement is true. The War in Vietnam was far more costly and destructive then any 'damage' that was done to the Soviets. It was a absolute net lose in every way, money, lives, credibility and so on. It was a major victory for communism and all anti-imperialist colonialist struggles. You are just repeating the same failed and disproven logic that people like J.F. Dulles were advocating. They looked at everything in cold war terms, black and white. The reality however is different. Just because some countries are neutral or maybe communist does not make them automatically Soviet puppets and the countries in the same region do not automatically fall to communism because of that. Had J.F. Dulles just accepted the situation in 1953 the US would have been in a much better position during the cold war. Vietnam would not have been allied with China and Russia against the US. The idea of "world communism" is a fantasy that should not be a guid to policy. > support of the Afghanistan insurgency That was a great policy. Problem is just that even at the time people pointed out that it was unlikely (almost impossible) that the Soviets would attack threw Iran to the Golf. So there were no vital US interests at stack. The Soviet, we now know, had no plans to do so, and not the capability. In order to support the insurgency the US had to massively support Pakistan, they ignored Pakistani spread of extremism, they ignored the Pakistani nuclear program and the money flowed to the kind of insurgence that should not get money, rather then to the moderate afghani nationalists that should have gotten the money. How people defend this policy in still today is insane to me. A nuclear Pakistan and India is one of the greats dangers for nuclear war in the world right now.
      - jwtadvice 10y ago
- nickik 10y ago
  The Iraq war has been called "The worst foreign policy mistake since Vietnam" by Ambassadors, CIA directors, policy analysis's, foreign relation professors and more. The US had plans, if those plans had worked out, it would have been good for the US. These objectives failed. All expert universally agree that the US policy has many helped Iran, not the US.
mason240 10y ago
That advice is what lead to ISIS in the first place, when the US withdrew from Iraq too early before it was stable enough.
- nickik 10y ago
  You seem to live under the assumption that everything would have been better with the US there. That is a fantasy world that some right wing people live in. First of all, the US had a signed a agreement, breaking that would have been terrible (maybe read something about the history of foreign military bases that were not wanted in Iraq). Second, the US could not have sustained the force for financial reasons. Third, the US had done a horrible job of setting up the state and fixing that would have been almost impossible. "stable enough" could easily mean multiple decades or never. Britain has tried that as well. These problems were predicted by anybody who had a head on its shoulder in 2003. Invading Iraq was called the worst foreign policy failure since Vietnam by many important people form within the US government. Staying there even longer and spending even more money (long term strategic resources) on a essentially doomed nation building process. The US has already shown that they are absolutely terrible at nation building.
  - mason240 10y ago
    >First of all, the US had a signed a agreement, breaking that would have been terrible The agreement was perused because the US government wanted to withdraw. I have no idea what you are trying to argue here (aside from circular logic). If the US didn't didn't withdraw ... it wouldn't have negotiated a withdrawl. >Second, the US could not have sustained the force for financial reasons. This is false. >Third, the US had done a horrible job of setting up the state and fixing that would have been almost impossible. Also false. At any rate, it was the Iraqis that elected leaders to draft their constitution and developed their government. >Staying there even longer and spending even more money And the Syrian refugee crisis coupled with our current and future involvement in Syria is free? >The US has already shown that they are absolutely terrible at nation building. You mean aside from the successes in Europe, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and others, right?

ars 10y ago

Sort of. Most of the time America intervened not for the benefit of the locals, but for its own (or its allies) benefit (including as a proxy against Russia). It's harder to criticize that. It's bad for the locals, but America needs to do what's good for America. In this case though, it's entirely "for" the locals, so America should stay out of it because it's not actually helping the locals.

enraged_camel 10y ago
It's difficult to claim that America's actions in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world have been good for America. In fact, the only war America participated in that ended up being a net good for America was World War 2, which resulted in the devastation of much of Europe and allowed American industries to expand and advance virtually unchallenged for almost 50 years. The Vietnam War however was a disaster of epic proportions. So was the Iraq War. The latter, instead of installing a friendly regime that guaranteed the uninterrupted flow of cheap oil, resulted in even more instability in the region, not to mention further radicalization of extremist forces. And things continue to go downhill. At the end of the day, it is worth understanding that America's wars benefit only a small number of people in America: higher ups in the military-industrial complex, the oil companies and the construction conglomerates. For everyone else, it's a waste.
- blahi 10y ago
  What do you think were the objectives in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and the prolonged interference in the middle east as a whole?
  - nickik 10y ago
    Its a hard question. The original military involvement start with Carter and the Carter Doctrine, declaring the Golf as a vital US interest. From there is spiral out of control quite a bit and its to long a story for this comment. Lets jump to the 'current' wars. Afghanistan was pretty clear cut. AQ was there, the US wanted to kick them out and install a regime that would prevent further use of Afghanistan at a base, so the Taliban had to go. There is little argument about this. Iraq is the real question. I have spent quite a bit of time on this. Its really a mystery because it simply does not make sense. There were a combination of ideas that 'infected' a small group of top military and political people. Iraq was actually the just a first step of a grand policy to rework the middle east. You can say about Bush and friends what you like, but at least they had a strategy. They basically wanted to demonstrate US power and US ability to install liberal democracy. This would split the Iran-Syria-Hezebolla Axis. It would pressure Iran and be helpful to Israel. With this success in hand, they could use soft power way more effectively to 'control' weak regimes like Sudan. The idea was, join the US and if you don't you will get hammer in the ground and replaced with a democracy. This strategy was of course thrown overboard when the Republicans lost the congress, Bush dumped Rumsfeld over board with it. Since then they are back to having no strategy and a ad-hock fire brigade style of policy making.
- jwtadvice 10y ago
  The purpose of the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and the support of the Afghanistan insurgency weren't intended to be net positives for the United States. They were intended to be net negatives for the Soviet Union. And they were. Now we have instable areas, but the US prevented the Soviet Union from continuing to expand and collapsed it by overwhelming it with military costs to stabilize its periphery. In some circles that counts as a net positive to the US.
  - nickik 10y ago
    A net negative for the Soviets is a positive for the US. That is fair enough but it does not mean that your statement is true. The War in Vietnam was far more costly and destructive then any 'damage' that was done to the Soviets. It was a absolute net lose in every way, money, lives, credibility and so on. It was a major victory for communism and all anti-imperialist colonialist struggles. You are just repeating the same failed and disproven logic that people like J.F. Dulles were advocating. They looked at everything in cold war terms, black and white. The reality however is different. Just because some countries are neutral or maybe communist does not make them automatically Soviet puppets and the countries in the same region do not automatically fall to communism because of that. Had J.F. Dulles just accepted the situation in 1953 the US would have been in a much better position during the cold war. Vietnam would not have been allied with China and Russia against the US. The idea of "world communism" is a fantasy that should not be a guid to policy. > support of the Afghanistan insurgency That was a great policy. Problem is just that even at the time people pointed out that it was unlikely (almost impossible) that the Soviets would attack threw Iran to the Golf. So there were no vital US interests at stack. The Soviet, we now know, had no plans to do so, and not the capability. In order to support the insurgency the US had to massively support Pakistan, they ignored Pakistani spread of extremism, they ignored the Pakistani nuclear program and the money flowed to the kind of insurgence that should not get money, rather then to the moderate afghani nationalists that should have gotten the money. How people defend this policy in still today is insane to me. A nuclear Pakistan and India is one of the greats dangers for nuclear war in the world right now.
    - jwtadvice 10y ago
nickik 10y ago
The Iraq war has been called "The worst foreign policy mistake since Vietnam" by Ambassadors, CIA directors, policy analysis's, foreign relation professors and more. The US had plans, if those plans had worked out, it would have been good for the US. These objectives failed. All expert universally agree that the US policy has many helped Iran, not the US.

mason240 10y ago

That advice is what lead to ISIS in the first place, when the US withdrew from Iraq too early before it was stable enough.

nickik 10y ago
You seem to live under the assumption that everything would have been better with the US there. That is a fantasy world that some right wing people live in. First of all, the US had a signed a agreement, breaking that would have been terrible (maybe read something about the history of foreign military bases that were not wanted in Iraq). Second, the US could not have sustained the force for financial reasons. Third, the US had done a horrible job of setting up the state and fixing that would have been almost impossible. "stable enough" could easily mean multiple decades or never. Britain has tried that as well. These problems were predicted by anybody who had a head on its shoulder in 2003. Invading Iraq was called the worst foreign policy failure since Vietnam by many important people form within the US government. Staying there even longer and spending even more money (long term strategic resources) on a essentially doomed nation building process. The US has already shown that they are absolutely terrible at nation building.
- mason240 10y ago
  >First of all, the US had a signed a agreement, breaking that would have been terrible The agreement was perused because the US government wanted to withdraw. I have no idea what you are trying to argue here (aside from circular logic). If the US didn't didn't withdraw ... it wouldn't have negotiated a withdrawl. >Second, the US could not have sustained the force for financial reasons. This is false. >Third, the US had done a horrible job of setting up the state and fixing that would have been almost impossible. Also false. At any rate, it was the Iraqis that elected leaders to draft their constitution and developed their government. >Staying there even longer and spending even more money And the Syrian refugee crisis coupled with our current and future involvement in Syria is free? >The US has already shown that they are absolutely terrible at nation building. You mean aside from the successes in Europe, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and others, right?