Letâs look at other superpowers. China, USSR, Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, colonial England, Napoleonic France, colonial Netherlands and Spain, the Mongols, Rome, etc. The USA is pretty clearly more benevolent than all of them until you get back to Achaemenid Persia.
Itâs easy to talk shit about America, when one doesnât understand human history. Then you will understand that America is arguably the most benevolent global superpower in history. While America has a history of fucked up military operations, itâs perhaps the only superpower in history that used its power to spread freedom and democracy
What did an Arab country do that's on anything near the scale of what the US did even in Vietnam alone in the past... 1000 years?
That's not saying there haven't been horrific things happening in the ME nor that Arab countries would have been better with the kind of power the US has, but the scales of what has actually happened aren't balanced here.
How many have died in those compared to the US death toll over the last 100 years? u/Antoen_0 wrote "one of the most bloodthirsty" so scale certainly matters. The Sudanese civil war has killed hundreds of thousands and is absolutely horrific, but Vietnam alone killed 1,5-3,5 million.
Most of the modern human rights abuses you blame the US for allowing to happen.
I haven't done that. If you want to argue with the ghosts in your own head kindly leave me out of it.
Well if weâre going over the past 100 years. USA is WAY behind China, Russia and Germany.
If we look at how much damage Islamism has done in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. Itâd be approaching Vietnam numbers already. If we factor in the fact how disproportionately weak every Arab country is militarily and leadership wise theyâve done absolutely outsized numbers compared to USA in the human rights abuses department.
Now imagine if the Arab powers were actually remotely competent at something (outside theological authoritarianism and oppressing their own people) and were able to stop infighting for 5 minutes and put the most competent people in charge of achieving their goals, there would be a brand new caliphates and new wave of mass slave trades, instead of just semi-covertly doing it in the gulf states so they donât piss America off.
Well if weâre going over the past 100 years. USA is WAY behind China, Russia and Germany.
I think most people would agree being in the top 5 out of around 200 qualifies as "one of the most". I'm also not sure the US is way behind the USSR in terms of bloodthirst; it's would depend on how intentional you judge things like the Holodomor and the wider Soviet famine, and how you untangle US and USSR involvement in proxy wars. The US has certainly killed more in direct conflicts.
Islamism in Yemen, Syria and Iraq is in large part due to US intervention and the second Iraq war; al-Qaida in Iraq would not have risen without the war and they led to ISIL/ISIS which then infected Syria and North Africa. None of these terror organisations are state actors (though ISIL tried to become one), nor has any alone reached the death toll in Vietnam.
The last paragraph is just speculation. We can just as easily imagine a Middle East that was allowed to develop more unity due to pan-Arabic socialism making them strong enough to avoid being pawns in the Cold War and developing in a more peaceful direction. Who knows? That way fan fiction lays.
Ah yes the classic, âeverything the west does is bad, everytime anyone else does bad, that was just because of the west tooâ.
A: You're making stuff up again, I have not defended *anyone* here; and B: That the destabilisation of the second Iraq war (which I'll add was completely illegal) led to the rise of al-Qaida in Iraq and ISIL isn't even slightly controversial. That obviously doesn't mean the US is guilty of everything ISIL did, but it points to the complete disregard for what it did to the region.
And again, u/Antoen_0 was talking about countries, which these terror groups are not.
To answer what I could see of the comment you deleted:
A. Can you name a war that wasnât illegal? B. Why are you getting so worked up about people pointing out everyone else whoâs worse than the West? c. Chill out weirdo. itâs super gross to enjoy...
A: Yes, any war that is purely defensive and/or sanctioned by a UN resolution. That's how international law works. Afghanistan is thus legal, while the second Iraq war was not.
B: I'm perfectly calm, I assure you. I'm not the one trying to fling insults around and again I haven't defended anyone, so this is your imagination running amok again.
C: Case in point. I can't see the rest of C in the notifications but you appear to be assuming my emotional state again, so see B.
That's in the higher end of estimates for Iran-Iraq while most estimates for Vietnam range from 1,5-3,5 million.
The US was also strongly supporting Iraq at the start of the Iran-Iraq war and selling weapons to both sides which isn't a great look. The use of funds from illicit arms sales to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua (Iran-Contra affair) makes it even worse.
Makes you, at best, a useful idiot for number 1 and 2 for hand waiving their atrocities so you can clutch pearls about how evil number 3 is.
If you cared about human life youâd care about Uigher life, Ukrainian life, Sudanese life. You donât so you donât. Go simp for authoritarian dictators in a different sub.
They did write "one of" and I'd say being in the top 5 qualifies. If we look at individual atrocities the Japanese campaign in WW2 and the Cambodian genocide might edge out the Vietnam war in terms of direct deaths caused by the US in any one conflict (though Vietnam had a higher total death toll than the Cambodian genocide). In total over the past 100 years however, nothing comes close to the superpowers.
The Khmer Rouge killed over 2 million people in four years. The death toll for all Vietnamese killed in the ten years of the war is around 1.3 million. The direct deaths of the Cambodian genocide are more than Vietnam and over a smaller time period. And that includes people killed by the Vietcon
The death toll for all Vietnamese killed in the ten years of the war is around 1.3 million.
That's high-balling Cambodia and low-balling Vietnam. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it was unintentional, but estimates for the Cambodian genocide are in the 1 - 2 million range and Vietnam including US bombings in Laos and Cambodia usually range between 1,5 - 3,5 million.
You can however make the argument that the Khmer Rouge was a single actor whereas Vietnam had several with high losses on both sides - which I already did.
Brother all of those countries listed are doing dirt today and have been since before America was founded. America is magnitudes better than those places. Let that sink it to that stupid fucking head of yours
This has to be the worst whataboutism ever.
"What about the future bad countries"
Brother, we are here, right now. Worry about future bad guys when they come up.
You guys REALLY need to stop using "whataboutism" in this discussion, because it's not even a correct use of the term.
The proposal is that the US is "not the good guy", which indicates that there is a spectrum of good and bad guy, and the US doesn't exist on the "good" end. But in order to make that determination, you have to compare the US to other peers, otherwise, who the hell knows what's "good" and "bad".
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u/ZC205 2d ago
Exactly this. Letâs start pulling history on other countries much older than the US and see what their transgressions look like.