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This is the new version of Western Exceptionalism: Everything - bad - that happens in the world, is always fault of Europe or the US. The people that live in t

by wtdata 7y ago

This is the new version of Western Exceptionalism: Everything - bad - that happens in the world, is always fault of Europe or the US. The people that live in those countries, the warlords they support, the wars they fight, the human atrocities they commit, their ethnically motivated conflicts, are never their fault, we are supposed to treat them as infants when it comes to all the shortcomings of their actions.

thefounder 7y ago
To keep it short, if you don't want migrants think twice before starting a war(i.e is it worth it? What after we win?) or just stop pretending you care about human rights(i.e people dying of hunger, abuse etc) even if you are indirectly responsible. I agree with you that many countries had flawed leadership to begin with it's not really the case with many others(i.e much of the middle east). Removing the government of another country by military force and destroying the social and physical infrastructure is the direct reason for the current situation. Arming various extremist groups does not help either. As we know Al-Qaeda was armed and trained by the U.S in the first place. Why did US invade Iraq? We know it's for the oil now but at least it should have had the decency to provide security/safety transition to a democracy in exchange for their resources. Not to mention that US vets their leaders/administration. They are not infants but have little choice in the face of the world's most powerful country/countries.
- baud147258 7y ago
  Regarding Lybia, the Western intervention just finished Khadafi's regime, the social and physical infrastructure were already well damaged from the existing conflict; without intervention, the conflict would have dragged on like in Syria. But now since there's a new war, the Western intervention seemed to have changed nothing, just with a new set of leaders.
  - thefounder 7y ago
    >> Western intervention seemed to have changed nothing, just with a new set of leaders. That's why I believe the world starts loosing its faith in the West. The latest interventions brought nothing good.
- keanzu 7y ago
  > Why did US invade Iraq? Why did Iraq invade Kuwait? Start a fight with a US ally and then complain when the US intervenes.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    Wrong war. Iraq didn't invade Kuwait the second time around; we blamed him for arming terrorists and maintaining weapons in violation of the terms of the ceasefire ending the first Gulf War.
  - thefounder 7y ago
    The Iraq-Kuwait war was settled 20 years before the Iraq invasion. So to answer your question Iraq invaded Kuwait for the same reasons U.S invaded Iraq: oil. Thus the reason we have a U.S invasion of Iraq, not a U.S-Iraq war. The pretext of invasions were different though. Busch said it was because Saddam was evil and had weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was more decent in its allegations and said Kuwait was stealing Iraqi petroleum through slant drilling. Btw Saddam Hussein regime was "created" by the US and the UK...
stunt 7y ago
It’s not Western Exceptionalism. It’s about being empathetic as a human being. Unfortunately some politicians are harming the way we feel about each other for the sake of their own game.
- wtdata 7y ago
  Please explain how blaming Europe/US for all the problems non western countries face, is "empathy". Because it really looks like "ideology", not like "empathy".
  - stunt 7y ago
    EU replacing patrol ships with Drones is not different than building a wall in the boarder. EU is already rejecting many refugees. It’s not like someone that makes it to the shore is going to stay without a good reason. That’s not just a good solution to this problem.
    - wtdata 7y ago
      My comment you were responding to, had absolutely nothing to do with drones. The comment was about perpetually blaming the EU/US for whatever bad happens in 3rd world countries.
cameldrv 7y ago
I'm sympathetic to your annoyance at reflexive anti-Americanism. We sure have had a bad string of making the same mistakes though over the past twenty years. The pattern is: There is a dictator that is oppressing his people, we feel bad about it and want them to be able to have democracy. We overthrow the dictator, and then things get complicated and we walk away, leaving the place in civil war and ruin. Often the problem is that the only reason it's a country at all is that some guy in London drew a line on a map a couple of hundred years ago, and the borders do not reflect ethnic or religious loyalties. In this post colonial situation, often the only thing holding the country together was the violence of the dictator. We then swoop in with fighter jets and maybe even ground troops, maybe stick around a while to run a few elections, but generally without the understanding of what's left of the power structure in the country. This is precisely what happened in Libya, and after Iraq and Afghanistan it's shameful that we just continue to do the same thing. Bomb Gaddafi and let the chips fall where they may, which turns out to be years long civil war. If you want to look for a relatively successful model of U.S. intervention, it's what we did in Yugoslavia. Just recognize that the country doesn't have enough holding it together to be a functioning democracy, break it up along ethnic lines, institute democracy in the statelets, and then let them all join the EU when they're ready.
- deogeo 7y ago
  > the borders do not reflect ethnic or religious loyalties. Wouldn't the diversity give them strength?
  - dmix 7y ago
    Plenty of borders in Europe, Asia, and even Africa have mixed nationality and religions too and there isn’t constant violence and repression by the biggest tribe. There’s far more positive examples than not around the globe. I’m actually in favour in smaller nation states and redrawing lines as a solution to the failures of centralized mega states and old world borders, such as lack of representation and cultural differences which cause policy conflicts (the smaller stuff, not just violence which is atypical in most places). Plus smaller states = way more experimentation, which the US states were supposed to be with Federalism but has had that slowly taken away. But that’s another story which doesn’t help explain the contradictions of this common explanation used selectively in Africa.

by wtdata 7y ago

thefounder 7y ago

To keep it short, if you don't want migrants think twice before starting a war(i.e is it worth it? What after we win?) or just stop pretending you care about human rights(i.e people dying of hunger, abuse etc) even if you are indirectly responsible. I agree with you that many countries had flawed leadership to begin with it's not really the case with many others(i.e much of the middle east). Removing the government of another country by military force and destroying the social and physical infrastructure is the direct reason for the current situation. Arming various extremist groups does not help either. As we know Al-Qaeda was armed and trained by the U.S in the first place. Why did US invade Iraq? We know it's for the oil now but at least it should have had the decency to provide security/safety transition to a democracy in exchange for their resources. Not to mention that US vets their leaders/administration. They are not infants but have little choice in the face of the world's most powerful country/countries.

baud147258 7y ago
Regarding Lybia, the Western intervention just finished Khadafi's regime, the social and physical infrastructure were already well damaged from the existing conflict; without intervention, the conflict would have dragged on like in Syria. But now since there's a new war, the Western intervention seemed to have changed nothing, just with a new set of leaders.
- thefounder 7y ago
  >> Western intervention seemed to have changed nothing, just with a new set of leaders. That's why I believe the world starts loosing its faith in the West. The latest interventions brought nothing good.
keanzu 7y ago
> Why did US invade Iraq? Why did Iraq invade Kuwait? Start a fight with a US ally and then complain when the US intervenes.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  Wrong war. Iraq didn't invade Kuwait the second time around; we blamed him for arming terrorists and maintaining weapons in violation of the terms of the ceasefire ending the first Gulf War.
- thefounder 7y ago
  The Iraq-Kuwait war was settled 20 years before the Iraq invasion. So to answer your question Iraq invaded Kuwait for the same reasons U.S invaded Iraq: oil. Thus the reason we have a U.S invasion of Iraq, not a U.S-Iraq war. The pretext of invasions were different though. Busch said it was because Saddam was evil and had weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was more decent in its allegations and said Kuwait was stealing Iraqi petroleum through slant drilling. Btw Saddam Hussein regime was "created" by the US and the UK...

stunt 7y ago

It’s not Western Exceptionalism. It’s about being empathetic as a human being. Unfortunately some politicians are harming the way we feel about each other for the sake of their own game.

wtdata 7y ago
Please explain how blaming Europe/US for all the problems non western countries face, is "empathy". Because it really looks like "ideology", not like "empathy".
- stunt 7y ago
  EU replacing patrol ships with Drones is not different than building a wall in the boarder. EU is already rejecting many refugees. It’s not like someone that makes it to the shore is going to stay without a good reason. That’s not just a good solution to this problem.
  - wtdata 7y ago
    My comment you were responding to, had absolutely nothing to do with drones. The comment was about perpetually blaming the EU/US for whatever bad happens in 3rd world countries.

cameldrv 7y ago

I'm sympathetic to your annoyance at reflexive anti-Americanism. We sure have had a bad string of making the same mistakes though over the past twenty years. The pattern is: There is a dictator that is oppressing his people, we feel bad about it and want them to be able to have democracy. We overthrow the dictator, and then things get complicated and we walk away, leaving the place in civil war and ruin. Often the problem is that the only reason it's a country at all is that some guy in London drew a line on a map a couple of hundred years ago, and the borders do not reflect ethnic or religious loyalties. In this post colonial situation, often the only thing holding the country together was the violence of the dictator. We then swoop in with fighter jets and maybe even ground troops, maybe stick around a while to run a few elections, but generally without the understanding of what's left of the power structure in the country. This is precisely what happened in Libya, and after Iraq and Afghanistan it's shameful that we just continue to do the same thing. Bomb Gaddafi and let the chips fall where they may, which turns out to be years long civil war. If you want to look for a relatively successful model of U.S. intervention, it's what we did in Yugoslavia. Just recognize that the country doesn't have enough holding it together to be a functioning democracy, break it up along ethnic lines, institute democracy in the statelets, and then let them all join the EU when they're ready.

deogeo 7y ago
> the borders do not reflect ethnic or religious loyalties. Wouldn't the diversity give them strength?
- dmix 7y ago
  Plenty of borders in Europe, Asia, and even Africa have mixed nationality and religions too and there isn’t constant violence and repression by the biggest tribe. There’s far more positive examples than not around the globe. I’m actually in favour in smaller nation states and redrawing lines as a solution to the failures of centralized mega states and old world borders, such as lack of representation and cultural differences which cause policy conflicts (the smaller stuff, not just violence which is atypical in most places). Plus smaller states = way more experimentation, which the US states were supposed to be with Federalism but has had that slowly taken away. But that’s another story which doesn’t help explain the contradictions of this common explanation used selectively in Africa.