10-24-2018, 07:55 AM
(10-24-2018, 07:04 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:(10-23-2018, 04:01 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: It's the Neocons who are dumb idealists who think we can create democracies at the barrel of the gun. Everything they have touched has turned the shit. They need to just fucking get booted out. They're too damn dangerous to be near any place of power. Note, Trump has a basket full of Neocons in his administration. I really wish the Democrats would run someone like Tulsi Gabbord. She deserves to be the first Woman POTUS instead of that hack , Hillery.
I'll argue for the opposite: it's the non-interventionists who are a misfortune for mankind. The Continent is especially full of them, despite their overall good domestic policies.
Exhibit 1: Hitler. If the British and French forces decided to topple him in 1933, when German military was very weak, there would be no Holocaust. There would still be a war in the 1940s, because Poland the Soviets would have a fight over Belarus and Ukraine. Japan would also grab territory in East Asia. But there's no denial that without Hitler, WW2 wouldn't be so devastating.
Exhibit 2: Decolonisation. The French gave up their colonial empire, creating a power vacuum soon filled by murderous psychopaths like Mobutu, Bocassa or Pol Pot. The 1960s wouldn't be a bloody red decade if they decided to do some nation building. Britain did, and most of former British colonies are democracies.
Exhibit 3: Syria. Were Bush and Blair in power, Assad wouldn't gas people and there would be no ISIS. Obama acted as if he played France in an RPG and Trump does so as well. Trump's admin might be "full of Neocons", but because of the dotard's crush at absolute rulers, they are guaranteed not to act according to their ideology.
1. One would have needed a credible crystal ball in 1933 to see that Adolf Hitler was so monstrously evil and dangerous. After all, he thwarted what might have been a Commie takeover in Germany and protected property rights (except the property of Jews). Many hoped that he would come to his senses about the Jews; he obviously didn't. Short of that he was a godsend to German plutocrats and executives who were able to get high profits due to rearmament and the suppression of organized labor.
The mistake of the stronger Western democracies was that they treated the benign Weimar Republic so harshly (with damaging reparations on a country that would have fared better without them and needed a break) and kissed up to Hitler. If Weimar Germany survives, then Poland would have a natural and powerful ally in its west to thwart a Soviet takeover of what was then eastern Poland (now parts of Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine).
2. French and British colonial policies were very different. The French destroyed traditional aristocracies in favor of the republican sentiments of the French Republic, ensuring that there would be little tradition to preserve. Let's not forget that one of the worst African leaders ever (short of Mengistu) was Idi Amin, dictator of the former British colony of Uganda.
3. Bush and Blair are out of power for good reason. Dubya kissed up to Hafez Assad for a shared enmity against Satan Hussein. Assad was a very nasty killer before he participated in the war to liberate Kuwait. The Arab Spring was inevitable, and it is unfortunate that it did not do to Bashir Assad what it did to Qaddafi.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.