It had nothing to do with foreign policy(unless you actually recognize the Confederacy as an independent country).

Even though we had to drop some bombs to do it.

He also intervened (badly) on the Horn of Africa… At least he tried.

that "war can SO be progressive"...and helped create the "liberal hawks" that enabled Bush to do his worst in Iraq in the bargain.

As a partner to the UN and Euro Allies to achieve his goals, while Junior disregarded, lied to and coerced everyone to get his wars.

You can cite Clinton as precedent case, but Bush used that precedent for all the wrong reasons.

The Serbian bombings only really stopped because the people of Serbia stood up and overthrew Milosevic. If he'd stayed in power, the bombings would have started again at some point.

Even an albeit noble one, is that war tends to kill a lot of non-combatants.

From WWII on, as the US employed carpet bombing strategies, the juries are still out on how effective it really is.

I'm an Air Force guy, they used to tell us that bombing the shit out of everything from the Wild Blue Yonder was always the greatest thing since sliced bread… However, I kind of figured out that it was complete bull that they were feeding us, because it's so freaking obvious that bombs do not control an arena… Infantry does.

You're not going to find a lot of instances where American use of force is employed to save the innocent and the downtrodden. Even if we use that excuse, behind it lies our need to maintain our geo-political and economic hegemony over the planet.

Even when we're playing nice, we are really only playing for ourselves.

You asked about the intentions of American foreign policy, not the efficacy of it.

Your point is taken with me: out of the 80 or 90 armed conflicts/wars/police actions/etc I can think of off-hand, I can name two that might have had some altruism: the Balkans and Somalia, and we quit Somalia because it was hard.

Still a lonely bright spot in a history of bullying and oppression.

Milosevic might be alive today and in power.

They felt someone had their back. When someone has your back in these situation then you can focus on looking forward
In my thoughts anyway

in regards to the 78 day bombing of Serbia.

He had congressional approval but said "there wasn't time" to seek UN approval. No UN approval for the bombing was ever granted. No evidence of genocide was found by the FBI and UN investigators after the war. You can verify all of that easily.

What many "liberals" don't know about the 78 day bombing of Serbia was that it was the first PNAC project.

Don't believe me. Click the following link:
http://newamericancentury.org/balkans.htm



Kosovo was a precedent for Iraq and Libya.

The reasons are explained here:

Backing up Globalization with Military Might

that never passed the smell test for many, including me.

It's an institution that can never be anything but a tool of the rich to immiserate the people. The personalities in charge of it are of no consequence.

The only progressive, humane step would be to abolish the World Bank and replace it with something that offers financial assistance on dignified, democratic, anti-austerity terms.

Always the kidder.

It's committed to imposing austerity and increasing poverty in all the countries it deals with. It has NO positive agenda.
Why on Earth would you defend the World Bank, of all things?

If the World Bank was anti-poor in the past, it will always be institutionally anti-poor.

NO individual appointee can change that, and you know it.

Individuals have no power within the World Bank...it's all about the institutional structure.

The World Bank was FDR's idea and is opposed by the Texas GOP. Color me unsurprised.

He also meant for their to be an international agency, with powers equal to the World Bank, to stand up for the interests of the poor.

That's something we need to build now...so that "the bottom line" will no longer be just about short term rate of return.

some here will never pay attention, but I certainly learned something.

In fact, some here hate this country so much that they remain blind to what good can come from this Presidency.

Great bullshit response.

The US was more then OK with staying on the sidelines while the rest of the world did the heavy lifting.

And fought(though not hard enough)against the Holocaust(the U.S. still owes the world's surviving European Jews an apology for NOT bombing the tracks leading to the death camps, when it knew where those tracks were as of 1944-a million lives could have been saved had the tracks been bombed, and there was no argument whatsoever against bombing them).

to their misery.

Because I certainly do. The reason Japan attacked us in the first place was because we wouldn't give them a free hand in creating their "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere".

IMO, the Japanese were just as bad as the Nazis. But too many people seem only to weep tears for the “victims" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as if the Japanese did nothing to start the war in Asia. Japan invaded China, not the other way around. The Chinese suffered between 20-35 million casualties during the Japanese invasion of China (1937-1945). The Japanese forced Korean women into sexual slavery as “comfort women” in field brothels where the women were forced to sexually "service", as many as 70 Japanese soldiers a day. In other words these women were raped 70 times a day for years on end. Everywhere the Japanese conquered, they acted like barbarians toward Allied POWs and civilians. The Japanese beat, starved, tortured and executed men and women. They used living human beings as living test subjects in their infamous biological warfare Unit 731.

So yes, I certainly think we were fighting for the "true victims of oppression in this world" in the Pacific Theater of Operations.

if the Japanese hadn't challenged U.S. markets, we would never have fought them-nor would our leaders have cared about the "comfort women&quot the U.S. never mentioned that issue at the time, btw).

And most of the places we "liberated" from them ended up with their own dictators, so it was kind of a lateral move.

Japan was a bad country...but we weren't fighting it because of what it did to people...we were fighting it solely because it was challenging us for market share. No concern for freedom was involved.

And there was widespread disgust with their invasion of China and southeast Asia.

I have a lot of family from that part of the world-- nobody there thinks that the Japanese occupation was anything but a nightmare.

fabulous individual.

Thanks for your OP - it instructs and informs.

Right along with your pronouncements in general.

After they left, by him and by Mao. How much of a difference did it make WHO did the slaughtering, once you'd been slaughtered? Dead is dead.

What a bunch of poppycock.

That's like saying the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union didn't matter because Stalin killed millions in the 1930s and sent millions more to the camps. Many collaborators, especially in Ukraine, turned on the Nazis pretty quickly because they realized they weren't any better than the Bolsheviks.

Just because your own leaders are bad to you doesn't mean you're indifferent to a horrible foreign occupation regime.

It was about hegemony. And Japan had a good reason to suspect that America wanted more of it in Asia (Hawaii was, of course, not yet a state).

Not defending Pearl Harbor here.

You can argue that we fought the Japanese over money and power, and since all wars about money and power you'd be right in a really trivial way.

But since the attack on Pearl Harbor was precipitated by our embargo of Japan instituted in retaliation for their refusal to abandon their occupation of Manchuria you have picked an unfortunate example.

If the USA had not been using an embargo of Japan at that point, I'm sure plenty of people now would be criticising FDR for trading with the Japanese imperialist invaders of China.

(as if often the case, a slam on America is actually a slam on human beings. The history of altrustic war could be printed on a matchbook cover.)

to moral superiority, in the way OUR leaders always do.

Hitler thought his people were the master race, Japan's emperor was god on earth, the British and French fully believed they were civilizing the world in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries when they built their empires. I could go on but hope I don't have to.

Except, you know, the entire Bolshevik block, to say nothing of many Islamist states today. Oh, and the Maoists (most of the non-European left for that matter). These are all countries that not only believe and state that they have found the One True Way To Be, but work very hard at exporting that One True Way everywhere, whether the people they're exporting it to want it or not.

...so even if we were to wage one on their behalf, it probably wouldn't turn out well for them.

But I'm not just talking about war. I'm talking about the values our regime has stood for in the world-by all the means at its disposal.

After the war in the Pacific, General MacArthur and GHQ did a lot in Japan to help previously landless peasants and promote a more egalitarian society.

in this thread I won't engage it other than to say I disagree with your analysis of it.

What I'd really like to ask is do you think nations should wage war to fight for the "poor, the dispossessed, working people, or true victims of oppression" in the first place? Let's say, for the sake of argument, that a wand was waved and Ken Burch was placed in sole charge of the foreign policy of the United States. Would you conduct your foreign policy based on world-wide altruism or on your country's specific interests?

Waging wars against regimes around the world that oppress the poor, working people, and the like would, I wager turn into a full time endeavor, with a re-imposition of a large draft, to boot. Like, a draft of a WWII-style scale, 16 million men and women. You will also have to put the U.S. economy on a war-time footing, which might not be an altogether bad thing since a war-time economy is the closest to socialism the United States has ever been. It might tame some of our current capitalistic excesses, just as it did in 1941-46 (I say '46 because the U.S. basically stayed on a war footing till then, although the war was over).

I can think off the top of my head dozens of regimes that fit the parameters of governments that oppress the poor and working folks, but altruistic wars are usually tough sells back home after the bullets start to fly.

Of course, you'd probably wage NO wars, unless we were invaded or attacked by another nation-state, and that would be an improvement over our foreign policy since the end of WWII (that's a bipartisan swipe, BTW: I don't think LBJ's foreign policy was any better than Nixon's, for instance). So, a Ken Burch foreign policy probably would get my support in any event.

It was the whole question of what we, as a country, use ALL of the means by which we interact with the world to affect what happens in said world? And who do we work for and against in all of that?

I think much of American foreign policy has been used at the behest of corporations and other powerful interests over the years - the term "united fruit company" and "union carbide" come to mind, to name just a few - but on the other hand I don't think Harry Truman, for instance, thought he was doing anything but helping out an ally when he sent the country to war in Korea.

So, when it gets down to cases, I tend to parse the particulars of any given case, not really look at the broader pattern. Perhaps I should look broader. Your OP does cause some thought and reflection. Thanks for posting it.

... in that they protected or liberated countries or were fought against entities that attacked us, though were not necessarily explicitly only the poor or dispossessed.

As mentioned above-- all of World War II, including the Pacific theater, Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as our aborted attempts in Somalia.

Also, the Korean War and the first Iraq war, both fought under UN auspices.

The Vietnam war was misguided and perhaps aimed at stemming the advance of communism and not necessarily helping the South Vietnamese, but we didn't really stand to gain a whole lot from it.

The ironic thing is that when we don't intervene, we get blamed for it too. How come we didn't stop the Rwandan genocide, I've heard people ask. Why was that our job, as opposed to India, or Argentina, or Nepal? Unfortunately, the world does look to us for leadership in this regard, including military intervention if need be.

He just wants to hate.

He should run for office.

I've never personally attacked you, to my recollection.

Why do you reduce any views of this country that you disagree with to "hate"? Can't you accept that a person can challenge what the regime does to the world out of LOVE for the ideals of this country...ideals that will never be advanced through the use of force again?

Why do you have such a narrow notion of patriotism?

with a grain of half truths as a core -

And you will not admit the error of that bogus posit in the threads here where people PLAINLY show you how bogus your posit really is.

The only answer for me, therefore, is that you have an emotional attachment to this stance.

You love America??

When was the last time you posted ANYTHING positive about it on this board??

It's enough to love the good things done by the people here, and the occasional victories for positive values(like the New Deal or the partial victories of the Civil Rights movement).

You don't get to be the arbiter of who does and doesn't love this country...and making people "prove" they "love the country" is always a right-wing stance anyway, not something Democrats should indulge in. It's the kind of thing Joe McCarthy used to do. You are better than that.

I said nothing hostile to you.

(mostly hindsight crap like this OP)

every time you post.

Fuck, man, you feel this bad about stuff, RUN FOR OFFICE.

Still haven't shown me where you've posted something positive about the country in the last year.

If you live in this country, that is a sign, in and of itself, that you love the place. And what I say, even critically, is said out of love...it is love of country to speak honestly about what the leaders of the country do.

And being critical of the direction of this country isn't "hostile"-it's not an attack on you, since you have little or no say(like the rest of us)as to that direction. I have no negative feelings about you, or any feelings about you, other than that you personalize the debate when it should never BE personalized.

And you're not obligated to say a certain amount of "positive" things to get the privilege of speaking honestly.

I'll say some positive things about the country right now, to put that to rest(though you can probably find many such things in my posts if you research them).

It's positive that the LGBT rights movement seems to be winning. It's positive that Obama was re-elected. It's positive that we aren't in a shooting war with Iran(at least not yet). That's for a start.

And for the record, I'm in a job where I can't actually run for office, at least until I retire, so don't keep throwing that one out at me. There are other ways to speak out without being a candidate for something...especially since, as a candidate, you're usually given the instruction to say as little as possible about anything.

We could have the foreign policy of Sweden or Canada...that would give us as much if not more influence in the world, without being seen as would-be Romans.

Except you NEVER start an OP with that idea.

Your 'honesty' runs as far afield as rancor and criticism can carry you.

Your posts reflect the most pejorative stances possible.

Really.

The 'activist' purity tests can only go so far.

But, thank you for your well written and insightful post.

It has been both illuminating and instructive.

If you start threads like that, you end up sounding like the "God Bless The U.S.A" guy.

Any thread started on proclaiming one's patriotism is going to be pushing for a right-wing agenda...and demanding that dissent be silenced. A thread like that can't have humane and positive effects.

The only reason to demand that people state their love of country would be if the country was on the verge of a lethal invasion or total collapse. It's embarrassing to insist that people declare their patriotism in any other situation.

The country is in no danger of catastrophic decline...so it wouldn't serve any purpose for me to shout in an OP about how much I love the place.

And here's the thing...

If I didn't love the country, I wouldn't bother commenting on what it does. I'd just give up and be silent.

'...you end up sounding like the "God Bless The U.S.A" guy.'

I gotta tell you, man, that is one of the most pejorative, ignorant things you've ever written here.

Who could give a living shit how this stuff SOUNDS????

Mebbe you're more interested in the aural equivalent of what the idiots in the press call 'optics'

Mebbe more interested in the way shit looks rather than working towards what can actually work.

I dunno.

Your mileage, as usual, may vary.

Yet, another quote:

"The country is in no danger of catastrophic decline...so it wouldn't serve any purpose for me to shout in an OP about how much I love the place. "

'Nuff said.

This verse from Phil Ochs "Power and the Glory":

"Yet she's only as rich as the poorest of the poor,
Only as free as a padlocked prison door.
Only as strong as our love for this land,
Only as tall as we stand".

That is my patriotism.

Why SHOULD I do an "America is The Best" OP? What good does it do to post that, anyway?

It's not like refusing to do so is the same thing as saying "Clifforddu sucks!"

And the country ISN'T in any danger of catastrophic decline or invasion. You'd have to agree with that, I think. It's not as if Kim Jong-Un is marshalling his forces in the Tidal Basin, for God's sakes.

Why are you so fixated on making people prove they're patriots, anyway? What gives you the right to demand proof of loyalty?

'Why SHOULD I do an "America is The Best" OP? What good does it do to post that, anyway?'

That was never my criticism or suggestion.

By the way: ('cliffordu sucks' has only one 'd' in the 'cliffordu')


And, to quote you again:

'Why are you so fixated on making people prove they're patriots, anyway? What gives you the right to demand proof of loyalty?'

I never said ANYTHING about your patriotism or needing proof of loyalty. Ever.

I never would.

I just wanted to know if you have EVER posted an OP that started on a positive note about the US or the current administration.

I mean, really.

Have you ever??

I'm not sure why it's obligatory to do OP's on how good the country is.

And it's not as though I memorize every OP I've ever posted, so I can't really be expected to have "evidence" of the sort you demand within instant reach.

I've expressed a lot of positive sentiments about the country when good things have been done.

It doesn't matter whether those were in OP's or not.

Demanding that I prove that I've done "The country is good" OP's is a bit like the people who complain because the papers don't do more "good news" stories-good news shouldn't be so much of an exception to the rule that you NEED to note it.

Just asking a question.

Not asking if the country is good -

Just asking if you've EVER posted a positive OP about the administration or, about the US as a whole??

Simple question.

I can search all MY posts for this info easily.

Post one of yours and I'll STFU.

I read a lot of stuff here, Ken. Never seen a supportive OP from you for this admin or the US as a whole for as long as I've been here.

Not looking for a fanboi post or yay team stuff, just ONE decent positive post about the admin or the US.

I've made posts thanking Obama for things, and expressing relief that he was elected and re-elected. I wouldn't lie about that. And you aren't entitled to declare people anti-American. You're no MORE American than anybody else, and you don't speak FOR America. OK?

Nobody else memorizes everything they post...so if I say I've done the sort of OP you're talking about, it goes without saying that I'm telling the truth...refusing to accept that is the same thing as calling me a liar, something you have no right to do on this board.

This has turned into harassment on your part.

and I have NEVER called anyone un-american on this board.

If you think I am harassing you, report me to the administrators.

Or simply put me on ignore.

Starting in pre-revolution times all the way to our present wars against the poor, the dispossessed, working people and victims of oppression.

Of course, the leaders of these wars always told us that we were fighting for justice, freedom, and self-protection.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy. - Gandhi

In the context of the time, the SA and the MA were not minor -- they involved significant percentages of available men, materiel and means. The SA was fought primarily by the native population in the Philippines and Cuba rather than the Spanish colonial troops. The Indian wars were enormous and not internal -- the Native Americans had their own nations and governmental structures.

Wars of conquest aren't new.

that what our country's government has done to the world, in general, has been fairly dark and ugly.

Puerto Rico for the Puerto Ricans!

Barking the same old shit.

If you hate America this much, run for fucking office.

I hate what our country's leaders have done to the world. There's a huge difference.

of history. why would they?

This country's foreign policy would break Thomas Paine's heart if he came back to see it today.

killing indians in support of empire. pretty much as soon as we got rid of the british we started with our own imperial ambitions -- extending power west and into the caribbean, pacific, etc.

America doesn't exist without war.

or if so, only accidentally. Germany declared war on the US.

Yes, we have had, over the last 100 years or so, more power ergo more opportunities to wreak havoc, but it's pretty much a universal that foreign policy is conducted in what the leaders of any given nation perceive the best interest to be. This isn't PhD. level stuff.

You fervent believers in American excetionalism on either side of the spectrum fascinate me, though I will admit I'm much more partial to those of you on your side of the bridge than the rah rah American never wrong great and noble side.

... Working to stop the Tamil/Sinhalese bloodshed, East Timor, Kosovo, protecting the Kurds after Desert Storm, the Marshall Plan, everything the Peace Corps has done, SALT, Somalia...

Oh, you didn't actually want an answer, right?

If they had, they would never have insisted that a post-apartheid government agree to an IMF austerity program to pay off the debts of their just-defeated oppressors.

And it's rich that you'd mention East Timor, since Indonesia only controlled that country because Henry Kissinger made sure they did...it's meaningless for one U.S. administration to end an oppression that a previous U.S. administration caused-especially since we gave no guarantees that we wouldn't pull a Kissinger again in the future.

Fine, a few small things were done...small things at best...none outweighed the coups, the destabilization campaigns, the trade deals designed solely to benefit our corporations.

We could do better than this. We could have a policy towards the world based solely on good. Why not try that? Why not admit that "our national interests" aren't the interests of anyone but the rich?

That must be useful to know when they're "sincere" or not.

They made South Africa's freedom meaningless by tying it to a crushing austerity program, when we had a moral obligation to allow them to spend as much as they NEEDED to spend on education on housing.

Instead, we forced them to embrace "market values"...and, in so doing, we've torn South Africa apart.

A real anti-apartheid policy would have embraced full social equality from the start. Why couldn't our leaders do that? There was no difference between making the new South African government pay off the apartheid regime's debts and making survivors of the Holocaust pay off the Nazi war debts-or making the Navajo balance OUR budget.

Wow

East Timor was liberated by its own people from the misery Henry Kissinger imposed on it-and Northern Ireland was largely the work of Mo Mowlam(though Senator Mitchell did some good work there).

Against our leaders' larger history of always taking the side of the rich in the world, though...

Your question was whether we ever went to war for the dispossessed. Somalia fits this perfectly. Your question did not include a metric of success.

If there'd been a way to stop him without feeding people, Clinton would have done that at the time.

Also, I clarified my OP to state that I wasn't talking exclusively about the use of military force...there are other ways to "fight" for things and for certain classes.

My original point still stands. Someone brought up Somalia. You rejected it by saying that we weren't successful. But you didn't say we had to be successful, just that we tried. Now you have a different argument. Fine. But this exchange gives me the impression you have your mind made up, and further discussion about this would not be productive.

Reread it.

OK, we did try to get rid of a bad guy in Somalia.

According to Wiki....

The Peace Corps is a volunteer program run by the United States government. The stated mission of the Peace Corps includes three goals: providing technical assistance; helping people outside the United States to understand American culture; and helping Americans to understand the cultures of other countries. The work is generally related to social and economic development. Each program participant, a Peace Corps Volunteer, is an American citizen, typically with a college degree, who works abroad for a period of 24 months after three months of training. Volunteers work with governments, schools, non-profit organizations, non-government organizations, and entrepreneurs in education, hunger, business, information technology, agriculture, and the environment. After 24 months of service, volunteers can request an extension of service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Corps

The Peace Corps was a decent idea...but you also have to understand that, in part, it was designed to be the "human face" of U.S. dominance.

It wasn't done simply because it would have been the decent thing to do...which was the only valid motivation for something like that.

because they have to justify the action. But the volunteer aspect and the earnest and idealistic people who ran the operation 24/7 is a perfect hands on way that the USA showed they were about more than war...

about the link between poverty and aggressive capitalism.

Still, that program is almost dead now-killed because it showed young Americans reality and they talked about what they'd seen.

were some of the most eloquent and persuasive spokespersons for non-intervention.

There are millions of S. Koreans that are not so poor and devastated due to the actions of the Military and foreign policy. The stark reality is right next door, that is what the whole of the country would look like if the North Koreans won the war.

You are also stating a idea that is like trying to prove a negative. Even in instances when it looks like we have destroyed the very lives and country that we went in to protect, say Vietnam as an example, and a more horrific future is unrealized. How can one say that good has been done or not been done. When evidence of a possible worse fate never materialized.

As stated above, we are in a no win situation most of the time. If we act we are being Imperial and who asked us to be the worlds cop. If we do not act, we are selfish indifferent Imperialist that will only help when it benefits us.

It's immaterial that that may not have been our intention, we achieved it.

about this. I think this kind of question is on the minds of many Americans these days...(of the past 40 Somethings).

It wasn't completely negative, and I'll allow for that.

But we still need a massive change in what we do outside of our shores.

We need to make sure our country ceases backing corporate power against workers and the poor.

We need to make sure our policies don't keep using the developing world as a toxic-dumping ground.

And we need to live as equals with the rest...the world no longer needs a "leader", the people of the world need to be helped to lead themselves.

Good War, Bad War, War of Choice, War of Necessity are all excuses for terrible human behavior. I must admit among the myriad vast number of innocents killed sometimes participants get what they deserve. Not being Omnipotent any opinion I might express is just that another opinion from a flawed Human justifying bad behavior. Mark Twain came as close as anyone to getting it right in his War Prayer

and the control of the masses is what is always the eventual undoing of most nations and power mad leaders.

but as I stated in my response below, wars are generally fought over resources or want of resources.

once you understand that, it all becomes clear.

WWII was about oil.

japan needed it, but they invaded china to get to the oil field in that area, so we cut off their supply they were getting from us and they attacked us.

germany wanted to expand in order to feed it's people and grow a bigger population to take over the rest of europe, in order to do that, oil poor germany tried to take over the middle east and push to through stalingrad to get to the sebastopol oil fields.

Lots of potential conflict especially as climate change takes hold. Besides the herd needs to be thinned out from time to time something even "good" wars can accomplish.