4 ms·
For a lot of countries in the world, "the baddies" are the USA Gov. Here is a big list of countries that suffered under USA intervention: https://en.wikipedia.o
by neves 6y ago
For a lot of countries in the world, "the baddies" are the USA Gov. Here is a big list of countries that suffered under USA intervention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
A lot of them were democracies.
- refulgentis 6y agon.b. for fellow readers: link is Wikipedia article called "United States involvement in regime change" - OP's implication every country involved is worse off for it is the usual surface-level analysis that's easy to make context-free, decades later, from the West - ex. I'm rather proud for the US being involved in regime change in most of these cases, and OP is too
- trasz 6y agoSo, which ones were better off?
- refulgentis 6y agoJapan, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium...alas that's all I can remember from the one screenful I grabbed! I continue to believe it was a mistake to breezily link to Wikipedia and conflate those experiences with genuine harm :)
- lifeformed 6y agoEasy to cherry pick WW2, which is pretty different from CIA secret ops overthrowing democracies and installing fascist dictators.
- refulgentis 6y agoAgreed! It is rather unfair to describe me as cherry-picking, however: every comment I've made firmly notes that posting an extremely broad Wikipedia article was flippant and dismissive of _actual_ atrocities. Asking for examples of the article being overly broad, then dismissing the examples as cherry-picking, is blinkered.
- lucian1900 6y agoAsk some of us from victim countries. You'll find no one praising the interventions the US made for the profit of its ruling class.
- refulgentis 6y agoConflating your experience as one of the countries on that list, deeply, genuinely, hurt, with others such as Nazi Germany, genocidal Japan, etc. does an extreme disservice to your experience. You don't need to defend a lazy link to a Wikipedia article to defend your story :)
- monkey_monkey 6y agoPutting s smiley at the end of that patronising paragraph reveals a lot about you and your motives.
- refulgentis 6y agoDoes dismissing the humanity of the person you're engaging with, based solely on a smiley, reveal anything about your motives? Historically, HN avoids this kind of personality-focused commenting, particularly when it involves telling other people what they're thinking. I, among others sympathetic to your care for other people and the impact of US regime change, would appreciate it if you would try the same. If you feel comparing, say, atrocities in Vietnam like My Lai to defeating Nazi Germany is justified, you're free to make that argument, and I won't try to divine your motives or politics in doing so. You don't need to make up reasons to other me for holding there's a huge gap between US regime change in Germany and Vietnam, and that it is at best lazy and at worst erasure to do so. On HN, the quality of moderation & discussion is such that it can move at a more principled pace than Twitter.
- diegof79 6y agoEven that list is not exhaustive as it excludes indirect involvement. For example it mentions Operation Condor in Latin America but excludes other countries affected by it (e.g. there is no mention of the US involvement in Argentina’s Dirty War of the 76: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War)
- pc86 6y agoWhile this is accurate it doesn't do anything to address to actual point being made.
- umvi 6y agoName a country whose government isn't "the baddies" to other people and countries?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]