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Almost all of the American military actions you mentioned were in response to Soviet or communist actions. In no way were they just the American government bein

Almost all of the American military actions you mentioned were in response to Soviet or communist actions. In no way were they just the American government being violent for the sake of it. Maybe you think that America and allies should have just stepped aside and let communist armies capture the various states, but geopolitics in real life is a little more complex than that.

wesselbindt 2y ago
Indonesia's communist party was a social democrat one. They never armed themselves. Allende was democratically elected, no armed struggle from his end. I'm not claiming that what America did was right or wrong. Sometimes violence is the right answer, maybe here too. But to pretend that we won the ideological battle through conversation and ideas is just factually false.
- keiferski 2y ago
  I didn’t claim that the West won through conversation and ideas, I pretty much said the opposite.
  - wesselbindt 2y ago
    Ah sorry, I always make the assumption I'm talking to parent comments. Parent comment is claiming the cold war was won through liberal democratic means. I claim that the tools employed by the US were violent incursions. I'm not claiming the US was violent for violence's sake. They were calculated actions with the intent of smothering any left leaning movement in the third world. Specifically the Indonesian case is egregious because their communist party was about as left wing as Bernie Sanders, and still a US-backed genocide was carried out against (suspected) leftists in Indonesia. Similar with the case in Chile. This was a democratically elected center left president, and the US-backed coup installed a violent dictatorship for the next 15 years.
    - keiferski 2y ago
      No problem; and yes I think the best way to look at the Cold War is via the game theory approach of two powers battling each other. Each of them had ideologies that were integral to their actions, but not exclusively so, and they acted in ways contrary to those ideologies if it was deemed necessary in a realpolitik sense - which usually meant because the country in question was going to be influenced by the other player.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  if you look up Indonesia and Allende on wikipedia, it doesn't say "the US did this", and given wikipedia's politics, it would if they could make a case for it.

wesselbindt 2y ago

Indonesia's communist party was a social democrat one. They never armed themselves. Allende was democratically elected, no armed struggle from his end. I'm not claiming that what America did was right or wrong. Sometimes violence is the right answer, maybe here too. But to pretend that we won the ideological battle through conversation and ideas is just factually false.

keiferski 2y ago
I didn’t claim that the West won through conversation and ideas, I pretty much said the opposite.
- wesselbindt 2y ago
  Ah sorry, I always make the assumption I'm talking to parent comments. Parent comment is claiming the cold war was won through liberal democratic means. I claim that the tools employed by the US were violent incursions. I'm not claiming the US was violent for violence's sake. They were calculated actions with the intent of smothering any left leaning movement in the third world. Specifically the Indonesian case is egregious because their communist party was about as left wing as Bernie Sanders, and still a US-backed genocide was carried out against (suspected) leftists in Indonesia. Similar with the case in Chile. This was a democratically elected center left president, and the US-backed coup installed a violent dictatorship for the next 15 years.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    No problem; and yes I think the best way to look at the Cold War is via the game theory approach of two powers battling each other. Each of them had ideologies that were integral to their actions, but not exclusively so, and they acted in ways contrary to those ideologies if it was deemed necessary in a realpolitik sense - which usually meant because the country in question was going to be influenced by the other player.
fsckboy 2y ago
if you look up Indonesia and Allende on wikipedia, it doesn't say "the US did this", and given wikipedia's politics, it would if they could make a case for it.