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The propaganda of the Cold War is breathtaking in its effectiveness. The USSR are the bad guys, comic book villains out to destroy the world. The US are plucky

The propaganda of the Cold War is breathtaking in its effectiveness. The USSR are the bad guys, comic book villains out to destroy the world. The US are plucky do-gooders, fighting to save the world from evil yet again (after single handedly winning WWII). There is no room for nuance. There is no grey area in perhaps the greyest of all conflicts since the Great Game. Both the US and USSR inflicted terrible damage to nations all over the world through proxy wars, intelligence agency coups. The ramifications of those conflicts are still felt throughout Latin America, the Middle East, and South East Asia. And that all gets swept aside by "The USA was a champion of liberty that pursued strategies intended only to defend the free world against the USSR." Read the Wikipedia article on "Covert United States Foreign Regime Change Actions" [0], and see how many of those nations benefited in the long run, and how some incredibly brutal regimes were installed or propped up throughout the third world, simply because they weren't communists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_re...

joeclark77 12y ago
You should have said "the anti-American garbage that leftist teachers are feeding to grade-school kids is breathtaking in its effectiveness" but in order to do that, you'd have to have some understanding of the true (not the political) version of history. What's really amazing is that you think your 1960s, nihilistic, self-loathing, theyre-all-the-same cynicism is thoughtful and original, and you assume that the reason I disagree with you is that I haven't heard of such a notion before, and must not be as educated as yourself...
- mercurial 12y ago
  Well, even without opening a history book (sadly, "leftist teachers" did not get rid of Allende all by themselves), one would think that the US military adventurism of the last decade would have equipped US citizens (I'll go out on a limb and assume you are one) with a healthy dose of skepticism. Governments have most often been waving various pretenses to make their actions look good. Manifest destiny, the white man's burden, the necessity to bring the socialist paradise... "Championing liberty" is just one of them. But you don't "champion liberty" by setting up something like the School of the Americas[1], or selling arms to Iran to fund Contras terrorists[2]. This is a different concept, which is "protecting your interests by whatever means available". 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_fo... 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras

joeclark77 12y ago

You should have said "the anti-American garbage that leftist teachers are feeding to grade-school kids is breathtaking in its effectiveness" but in order to do that, you'd have to have some understanding of the true (not the political) version of history. What's really amazing is that you think your 1960s, nihilistic, self-loathing, theyre-all-the-same cynicism is thoughtful and original, and you assume that the reason I disagree with you is that I haven't heard of such a notion before, and must not be as educated as yourself...

mercurial 12y ago
Well, even without opening a history book (sadly, "leftist teachers" did not get rid of Allende all by themselves), one would think that the US military adventurism of the last decade would have equipped US citizens (I'll go out on a limb and assume you are one) with a healthy dose of skepticism. Governments have most often been waving various pretenses to make their actions look good. Manifest destiny, the white man's burden, the necessity to bring the socialist paradise... "Championing liberty" is just one of them. But you don't "champion liberty" by setting up something like the School of the Americas[1], or selling arms to Iran to fund Contras terrorists[2]. This is a different concept, which is "protecting your interests by whatever means available". 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_fo... 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras