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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Well, what’s the alternate option? If the US hadn’t been the “police” of the world. It could have been Russia or China or India, would we rather have had them? And don’t say Europe unless you consider France and the U.K. and others and their things.

We don’t live on a vacuum. If you create one, someone will fill it.

I am loath to think of how much worse things could be despite the idiotic wars of Obama and W., I think the world is better off with the US guiding things rather than others.

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Absolute ridiculous false dilemma. It is not that if the US hadn't chosen to invade Vietnam and to kill everything that moves someone else would have, the US just opted to do that on their own. And it was not like they were there to free the people (from whom anyway, they were not enslaved). There was no vacuum to fill, the same goes for Iraq, Afghanistan, were the US created the vacuum that was afterwards filled by the now crumbling ISIS (though there at least the people were not free before).

And that's the core of the issue, and that is why these political comments are on point (which otherwise would be way too political for HN). By cooperating with the imperial US military Google is directly supporting one of the most evil forces in the world, by supporting the drone program they are directly supporting a program mainly used to kill civilians in the middle east. There is nothing good about this.

I don't think most people in the US will care about such issues until there's a program similar to the 1033[0], where hand-me-down autonomous drones are deployed agaisnt the civilian population stateside and weddings start getting double-tapped by MQ9 descendants.

Loin des yeux, loin du cœur.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1033_program

"And that's the core of the issue, and that is why these political comments are on point... By cooperating with the imperial US military Google is directly supporting one of the most evil forces in the world"

Do you mean the US military is one of the most evil forces in the world or the US itself as a geopolitical actor?

I mainly meant the military there, however it is debatable how much you can separate the two. But that discussion would be imho too OT for here.

If you boil down your statement into "I would rather have the Americans kill these people than the Chinese" you will begin to see the real meaning of what you are saying.

Maybe I’d ask the Vietnamese, who we fought, who they’d rather have, or the afghans who fought the USSR, who they’d rather have to get the meaning of what I’m saying. You can also ask the Pakistanis if they’d rather have US or India, go ahead.

"Who would you rather be oppressed by?" isn't a very convincing argument that you're on the right side of history.

Just because there exist worse oppressors than you doesn't mean you're not evil as well.

Why are these posed as either/or? The Vietnamese/Afghan people would rather have either side than the dual sided proxy war they received.

Oh come on.

The US established itself as 'the world police' and built 900+ military bases around the globe to protect its own financial interests at the point of a gun.

Let's not pretend it does any of this shit out of altruism.

In many cases the countries have asked for the bases though. This is still happening today https://www.armytimes.com/news/2018/05/29/why-poland-wants-a...

False dilemma fallacy

The least fallacious fallacy next to the Slippery Slope fallacy.

If it's not US, Russia or China on top, then it is somebody else.

What had the Romans ever done for us?!

I do not think so, in this case, if we didn’t become hegemonic someone else would. Look at the Middle East and all the jockeying around within. Same for East Asia. The question is given someone will be stronger and exert power, who in a game theory framework would exercise their dominion with the least negative consequences. I’m confident most people would agree that the world is better off not having succumbed to Comintern communism.

But regardless, what were the plausible alternative realities that you think were viable options given what we know?

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