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> The men and women who were involved in the CIA had just seen a terrible world war that had led to a massacre of tens of millions of people At which point Dul

> The men and women who were involved in the CIA had just seen a terrible world war that had led to a massacre of tens of millions of people At which point Dulles saw fully fit to start sneaking Nazis out of the way of justice. They were cartoonishly evil then, they were cartoonishly evil with the phoenix program, and they were cartoonishly evil doing Abu ghraib. Whatever they're doing now, it's cartoonish, as well. You don't need to force nuance in everywhere, sometimes a spades a spade.

hpoe 5y ago
You're ideological little sound bytes might make you feel good about yourself, but the more you know about an issue the more nuance there is. The fact of the matter is that we knew the cold war was coming and we knew that we would need to beat the Soviets to space, that's why we tried to round up all the best minds we could, because the alternative risk was to lose the world to another regime as tyrannical and bloodthristy as the Nazis, but now with nukes. They were wrong in Abu Ghraib, they were wrong in the Pheonix Program, they made many many mistakes and committed many atrocities. But if you continue to view them as cartoonishly evil because it makes you feel smugly morally superior to pass judgement on people and situations that you have only partial information on based on your wikipedia browsing then please continue to do so.
- deleted 5y ago
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- ianleeclark 5y ago
  There's no reason to be such a dick and accuse someone whom you have zero knowledge of of being a Wikipedia warrior, coming to do an internet maoist campaign, or whatever it is what you think I'm doing. The rest of the world gets that bad guys aren't twirling their mustaches as they bind damsels to railroad tracks. You should be able to piece together that, after a very short list of atrocities over a 70 year span, the word cartoonish might not actually mean cartoonish and instead trivialize the word given the glaring mundane history of the entire organization. Also, it's totally okay to feel morally superior to people who rape and torture. Especially those of us who do so in massive quantities.
- elefanten 5y ago
  Thank you for your posts, they're a needed counterpoint to the deeply slanted and historically decontextualized hot takes that make up the majority of this thread. I don't have time to add much at the moment, but it was nice to see at least an ounce of balance in the current state of this thread.
- deleted 5y ago
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- maybelsyrup 5y ago
  > we knew the cold war was coming This takes our agency (no pun intended) out of the equation a little bit, don't you think? To have a cold war was a decision we made (we and the Soviets, of course). Whether one agrees with it or not is another thing, but "was coming" ascribes a sort of inevitability to your argument that I don't think is merited. Making assertions by going "the fact of the matter is ____" is a nice flourish but it's lipstick on a pig in this case: your take is just as interpretive as the other poster's. Re: nuance, well, yes and no. There's a lot of nuance to a murder case in most instances, but in the end we have to consult some fairly un-nuanced principles to help us make a decision about it: is homicide wrong or not? Saying "yes, it's wrong" isn't painting a killer as cartoonishly evil or not nuanced enough; it's just saying murder is wrong. The killer may have had reasons and circumstance - nuanced ones, even. But he's still a killer. Same goes with the US government and the CIA, etc.: all the reasons in the world aren't gonna excuse you from accusations of "cartoonish evil" if your track record - your real behavior out there in the world - is one of cartoonish evil. The CIA didn't invent couching sociopathy in virtue or reason, but if you look at their track record you'll see they've gotten pretty good at it. They deserve only abolition and prosecution, but until that day, in my interpretation, they deserve every shred of scorn they get, nuanced or not.

hpoe 5y ago

You're ideological little sound bytes might make you feel good about yourself, but the more you know about an issue the more nuance there is. The fact of the matter is that we knew the cold war was coming and we knew that we would need to beat the Soviets to space, that's why we tried to round up all the best minds we could, because the alternative risk was to lose the world to another regime as tyrannical and bloodthristy as the Nazis, but now with nukes. They were wrong in Abu Ghraib, they were wrong in the Pheonix Program, they made many many mistakes and committed many atrocities. But if you continue to view them as cartoonishly evil because it makes you feel smugly morally superior to pass judgement on people and situations that you have only partial information on based on your wikipedia browsing then please continue to do so.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ianleeclark 5y ago
There's no reason to be such a dick and accuse someone whom you have zero knowledge of of being a Wikipedia warrior, coming to do an internet maoist campaign, or whatever it is what you think I'm doing. The rest of the world gets that bad guys aren't twirling their mustaches as they bind damsels to railroad tracks. You should be able to piece together that, after a very short list of atrocities over a 70 year span, the word cartoonish might not actually mean cartoonish and instead trivialize the word given the glaring mundane history of the entire organization. Also, it's totally okay to feel morally superior to people who rape and torture. Especially those of us who do so in massive quantities.
elefanten 5y ago
Thank you for your posts, they're a needed counterpoint to the deeply slanted and historically decontextualized hot takes that make up the majority of this thread. I don't have time to add much at the moment, but it was nice to see at least an ounce of balance in the current state of this thread.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
maybelsyrup 5y ago
> we knew the cold war was coming This takes our agency (no pun intended) out of the equation a little bit, don't you think? To have a cold war was a decision we made (we and the Soviets, of course). Whether one agrees with it or not is another thing, but "was coming" ascribes a sort of inevitability to your argument that I don't think is merited. Making assertions by going "the fact of the matter is ____" is a nice flourish but it's lipstick on a pig in this case: your take is just as interpretive as the other poster's. Re: nuance, well, yes and no. There's a lot of nuance to a murder case in most instances, but in the end we have to consult some fairly un-nuanced principles to help us make a decision about it: is homicide wrong or not? Saying "yes, it's wrong" isn't painting a killer as cartoonishly evil or not nuanced enough; it's just saying murder is wrong. The killer may have had reasons and circumstance - nuanced ones, even. But he's still a killer. Same goes with the US government and the CIA, etc.: all the reasons in the world aren't gonna excuse you from accusations of "cartoonish evil" if your track record - your real behavior out there in the world - is one of cartoonish evil. The CIA didn't invent couching sociopathy in virtue or reason, but if you look at their track record you'll see they've gotten pretty good at it. They deserve only abolition and prosecution, but until that day, in my interpretation, they deserve every shred of scorn they get, nuanced or not.