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DelightMachine -> RE: List of countries that put America to shame (4/24/2006 5:52:04 PM)
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ORIGINAL: philosophy
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ORIGINAL: DelightMachine
Many of these nations [CORRECTION: I MEANT TO SAY, AND SHOULD HAVE SAID, "GOVERNMENTS -- MY APOLOGIES] supported terrorism, massacred people within their own borders, started wars, imprisoned people who wanted freedom for their countries and supported other brutal, unfree regimes. In terms of death alone, tens of millions of people lost their lives as a result of the Soviet Union's actions.
Nothing the United States has done, anywhere, at any time, comes close to this. To even suggest this is obscene. I can't understand how anyone who actually wants to get their facts straight would say what you did.
.....just to keep facts straight........the US is responsible, or has been, for supporting terrorism beyond its borders. Northern Irish paramilitaries received a lot of aid from sympathetic US groups..when asked to please stop US citizens funding the people bombing each other in Ulster and mainland UK, Reagan found himself apparently unable to help.
Yes, YES! FINALLY someone on the other side who can actually cite FACTS. Thank you, Philosophy, for presenting an actual argument, backed by facts that doesn't fall apart the second you look at it.
As a matter of fact, I think you're absolutely right about Northern Ireland. You mention Reagan, but it was far worse than that. No other president seemed able to do anything much about financing support for the IRA in America either. Various Irish-American senators and congressmen were much worse.
I actually agree with you completely about all but the emphasis on Reagan. It disgusts me that we in the U.S. allowed this to happen. It's a black mark on our country and you're entitled to put it on the list of ways we've hurt people outside our borders.
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As for massacring people within its borders, there is the little matter of any pesky indiginous peoples........
Yes, but that's outside the scope of what I've been talking about.
If you're going to bring up the relationship between America and the original inhabitants, you might want to think about every single other nation on this earth and its relationship to the inhabitants that previously lived on the same land. I don't think there's actually an acre of land anywhere that doesn't have blood on it. But again, it's outside the scope of this thread. I don't deny that it's a black mark on us.
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...and as for supporting brutal, unfair regimes......Nicaragua, anyone?.
I could make the same statement about all the leftists in the world who supported the brutal Sandinista regime in that same country. And when we stopped supporting the Somoza regime, the Sandinistas took over. They were never strong enough to stay in power long or really cement their control, but they were certainly as brutal as the Somozas. And the Cuban communists are worse than either.
As a superpower, the United States has been faced with the dilemma of having to support one bad regime so a worse one wouldn't follow or so a worse one couldn't become more powerful. If you look at some things in isolation, you can point to the wrong we did while forgetting the good we did. When we decided to stop supporting the Shah in Iran, for instance, we got the Ayatollahs instead.
And, being made up of humans, we certainly made mistakes and sinned. Perhaps when we supported the coup that brought the Shah to power over a democratic regime we made a mistake or sinned or did both.
Simply saying we did something wrong doesn't make us black, but, as you said in an earlier post, it makes us some shade of gray.
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Now, in an earlier post i suggested that the US was seen by some as a knight in shining armour and by others as the great satan....and that both were right.
You would be more accurate to say that neither were right or that both were right on occasion. But you end it there, as if we were no better or worse than any other state on the planet. The more you look at history, the less room you have for that belief.
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i'm afraid that you come across delightmachine, as unable to accept that the US has ever made a mistake.....or that such mistakes are relatively insiginificent.
Well, in the last phrase you saved yourself from completely mischaracterizing my views. Actually I do believe that those mistakes are extremely insignificant compared to the good we've done, and I've come to that belief after years of reading and sitting back and thinking about it.
You can't compare, with any justice, the good we did in defeating Japan and being necessary in the defeat of Nazi Germany with the bad we did by supporting this or that dictator around the world. The evil that the Japanese and German governments were doing went far, far beyond anything that the U.S. is accused of doing, even by the anti-Americans. The same goes for the Communists. You don't compare even 10 massacres of Indians with the deliberate policy of Stalin to starve millions in Ukraine or the deliberate policy of Mao to commit the crimes of the Cultural Revolution.
The crimes of lynching in the South (and in some other places in the U.S.) are awful. They don't equal the Soviet Gulag Archipelago in immensity. Our opposition to the Soviet Union helped bring that system down. That is an enormous good for the world.
Admit the differences. Everybody should be able to admit that it's morally wrong to compare us to the Soviets or to dictatorships. Everyone should be able to admit how we were essential in saving the world from the totalitarian ideologies of the Nazis, Soviets and Japanese. If that makes someone uncomfortable, I think it says something disreputable about that person's character.
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Are you aware of the distinction in ethics, between relative and absolute views of good and evil? The US is both good and bad.........to compare it with other nations in an attempt to somehow 'prove' its evident worthiness is patently absurd........
Well if its absurdity is patent, it shouldn't be too hard to prove that point. You haven't. I disagree with you. Differences do exist. The Soviet Union was patently evil. The Nazi regime in Germany was patently evil. Various idiots around the world have called the U.S. patently evil. Glad you disagree with them, but your disagreement doesn't go far enough. Some states are more evil than others. Some states have done so much good that you shouldn't be calling them evil. In fact, you should be grateful that they exist. And when they've done a lot more good than evil in the world, you should be able to recognize that and tell the people spreading smears to go to hell. I notice you haven't criticized them at all.
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as citizens wherever we are, our most basic right, duty and responsibility is to make sure our own state acts honourably. We gain no honour by trying to suggest that our faults are simply lesser than others.....that way we simply avoid responsibility for those faults.
Now you're mischaracterizing the nature of the debate. I didn't bring up our faults, I brought up the benefits that the U.S. and other countries have given to people outside their borders. I asked people to name those states or nations that had done more for others. I specifically did NOT go around belittling American faults and I didn't bring up the faults of other nations until challenged to do so by meatcleaver.
I've said repeatedly that I started this thread because I believe unfair attacks have been made on my country. My point was to show that this country has not just benefited other countries a lot, but in an extraordinary fashion that few other countries could match, perhaps none. I'm sorry if that feels insulting to people like IronBear or NWEnglishDom or you or anybody else, but -- again, as I've explained again and again -- a fair, courteous, civil discussion of the truth doesn't have to insult anyone. In fact, I've repeatedly praised other countries, even in comparison to the United States.
In fact, I've even said some other countries or states may surpass the United States in their benefits to outsiders. Why does that keep getting ignored?
In fact, I've also said that looking only at a nation's benefits and not its faults is no way to compare nations -- but, as I have said again and again (and I'll keep saying it whether or not wytchywoman blows a gasket) I didn't start this thread to make others feel inferior (belonging to countries with smaller populations CAN'T MAKE ANYONE INFERIOR) but to DEFEND this country from anti-American slurs.
I had a damn good reason for wanting to remind people of the truth of American benificence -- it's hard to hate a country that has it unless there's something wrong with you. Anti-Americans react like a vampire to garlic when the subject is brought up, and they certainly can't admit that this country has done so much good in the world.
And yet no one has seriously argued that we haven't.
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We gain no honour by trying to suggest that our faults are simply lesser than others.....that way we simply avoid responsibility for those faults.
It's also true that we gain no honor by throwing calumny on a country like the U.S., which is precisely why I started this thread.
And nothing in any of my previous posts has suggested in any way that I was avoiding responsibility for the faults of the U.S.
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