>protect themselves from the United States military
Protect themselves from the US military how? When they start imperial subjugation campaigns...or?
China's malicious aspirations are the only thing the US is concerned with.
Protect themselves from the US military how? When they start imperial subjugation campaigns...or?
China's malicious aspirations are the only thing the US is concerned with.
It's clear enough to note that China has short-term aspirations of invading a sovereign state, and leave it at that.
There is no comparison of morality between the US and China. For all its faults and failures the US is unequivocally a more moral and just nation.
Let's not just leave it at that. I won't let you deceptively downplay the egregious evil China is and has been responsible for. It's directly responsible for multiple events that when measured over the course of history, are the most insane human atrocities ever committed.
However, the US has killed many times more people in other countries, and brutalized countless nations - Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iran, Irak, Cuba, Palestine, Cambodia and many others.
They are both immoral, but i d different ways at different times, like all empires have been and forever will be, from the Romans to the Arabs to the Mongols to the French, Dutch, Belgians etc.
> However, the US has killed many times more people in other countries
That's just inaccurate. The founding of the current communist regime resulted in more deaths within China's borders than all of the US's military campaigns (and espionage) since WW2 combined. I've seen it said a lot that the "US kills more!" So I wonder if that's just a talking point the CCP is trying to disseminate to distract from their current genocide.
But, if I am a citizen of, say, Lebanon, I have many more reasons to fear the USA than I have to fear China. I'm much more likely to be killed by the US government than the Chinese government.
You are very clearly uninformed about history. Especially if that's your list of brutalized countries with zero insight into the many factors stimulating US intervention in most of them and the aftermath resulting from failed or cessation of intervention, especially in those supported by the CCP.
Vietnam, Cambodia, and Southeast Asia Aftermath
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_Hu%E1%BA%BF
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Cong_and_People%27s_Army_...
https://hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP6.HTM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indochina_refugee_crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide
https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/post-war-vietnam/#Purges...
El Salvador and Cuba I will grant that the clandestine support of a coup and refusal to condemn an oppressive, violent junta that came to power was inexcusable on the part of the US, but its involvement still has nothing compared to the CCP and USSR involvement in mass genocides and democides across the globe. The guerillas weren't benevolent liberators either.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-03-18-mn-12349-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/26/cuba-fidel-castros-recor...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121496498705421951
Nicaragua Another good example of the faults and failures of the US historically, but incomparable to the CCP, and aligned with global economics at the time. A victim of the intense geopolitical tensions and climate in the late 19th and early 20th century thanks in large part to the fallout from the Spanish-American War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq. The collapse of the Ottomon Empire was the motivating factor in harsh and enduring political tensions in Central Asia. Not US intervention. US involvement in Afghanistan all started with solicited intervention by the populace for help against imperial actions by the USSR. Continued intervention was not purely political or economic in nature, and certainly not genocidal or democidal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Civil_War_(1992%E2%80%9...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Civil_War_(1996%E2%80%9...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Afghanistan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#Afghanistan_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Emirate_of_Afghanistan...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hazara_people#A...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalq
Iran Another failure, yet still incomparable to the history of the CCP. The rise of an Islamic theocracy in the geopolitical landscape of Iran should not be surprising, regardless of US intervention. It coincides with other theocratic revolutions in the region that were not the consequence of intervention by the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Zia-ul-Haq
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_republic
Hopefully with this history lesson you develop an understanding that even with the many wrongs the US has committed over time, none come close to the CCP in its relatively short existence. The US has killed orders of magnitude less people domestically and internationally, justified and unjustified, across its entire history than the CCP has unjustifiably across the globe in the last 75 years.
Taking just Cambodia - the Khmer Rouge regime was of course supported by China with massive resources. However, the US has also killed tens of thousands of Cmabodians directly in bombing campaigns during the Vietnam War, between 30,000 and 150,000 (likely committing the war crime of Aggression, as they were not in a state of war with Cambodia); this helped galvanize the population towards joining the enemies of the US, helping the Khmer Rouge attain power.
Later on, in 1979 when the re-united Vietnam attacked the Khmer Rouge, both the US and China condemned the actions of the Vietnam liberators, and helped defend the Khmer Rouge from international opinion (since Vietnam was being supported in this by the USSR). The US sent lawyers to defend Pol Pot himself from the tribunals in the newly liberated Cambodia, and both China and the US helped keep Khmer Rouge affiliates on the UN seat for Cambodia until 1993. Of course, China went further and launched a retaliatory war against Vietnam for their liberation of Cambodia.
You also seem to be greatly minimizing the US involvement in many of these places. The US occupied Nicaragua for 20 years, installed a military dictatorship that ruled it for 50 years, and then trained, armed and directed guerillas that killed and tortured hundreds of thousands of civilians to try to stop the revolution that took down the Somoza dictatorship. Much of the rest of South America saw similar treatment from the US: coups taking down socialist popular movements and installing military dictatorships instead, then supporting violent militias if counter-revolutions started.
In the middle east, while many of the problems started with the British handling of the collapse of the Ottoman empire, and the USSR also led brutal wars of oppression, the US has picked up the torch in the last 30 or so years as the major source of strife in the region. They are responsible for:
- arming and training the Taliban
- installing Saddam Hussein in power, arming him, and directing him to attack Iran, even accepting his use of chemical warfare
- squashing Iran's brief democracy under Mossadegh, installing a military dictatorship under the Shah, starting the Iran Nuclear Weapons program, arming them (and then losing control to the islamic revolution)
- funding and arming Saudi Arabia and allowing it to spread its demented form of islamic fundamentalism, supporting even as we speak their invasion of Yemen
- supporting the Israeli apartheid state, illegal nuclear weapons arsenal, and illegal occupation of Palestinian territories
- invading Afghanistan in 2001 and killing thousands in the process, causing the deaths of as many as 100,000 civilians overall in the conflict
>Israeli apartheid state
Apartheid states do not let the oppressed class have massive representation in their representative government at all levels.
They do not have members of the oppressed class sit on the bench of the highest court in the land.
They do not mandate, at a federal level, that ALL state enterprise MUST have a member of the oppressed class on their board of directors.
They do not consistently have individuals from the oppressed class as cabinet members.
They do not have ambassadors belonging to the oppressed class.
They do not have members of the oppressed class as some of the highest ranking generals in their military, or as commanders of, hilariously, the border police.
Members of the oppressed class in apartheid states do not have the highest standard of living and quality of life compared to members of the same religious and ethnic groups in the region.
Apartheid states do not bend over backwards to accommodate, preserve, and enable the cultural and religious practices of the oppressed class, even when its members openly call for the genocide of the predominant ethnic group in the locale, refuse to participate in coalition governments, and reinforce sectarian, segregationist cultural policies and beliefs.
If you sincerely think Israel is an apartheid state, you are woefully uninformed, and a fool that has fallen for blatant propaganda.
Israel is very obviously leading a campaign to eradicate the Palestinian population and take their land without taking the people.
They are violating all two-state solution guarantees through their obviously illegal settlements. And they do not want to simply occupy the Palestinian territories and go for a single-state solution, because that would leave Palestinian Arabs a majority (or at least extremely large minority) of the population, which contradicts the dream of an Isareli state controlled by God's chosen people.
All of your examples of how the minority Arab citizenry of Israel is treated well are entriely irrelevant, and if you know anything about the history of calling Israel an apartheid state, by people like Noam Chomsky, you would definitely know this, so I can only assume you are arguing in bad faith.
Palestine has rejected every two state solution proposed for the last half century. You're regurgitating ignorant nonsense. The ruling parties and majority population of Palestine are VOCALLY genocidal when it comes to the Jews, but you'd rather ignore that and accuse Israel of subversively carrying out a genocide against people it has in its highest levels of government. Then you have the audacity to accuse ME of bad faith. How many Jews are in Palestinian leadership positions?
I couldn't care less what Noam Chomsky says or thinks on this subject, he's one of the worst ultracrepidarian clowns in contemporary history.
How exactly do you square this circle?
> Palestine has rejected every two state solution proposed for the last half century.
This is twisting history. UN resolutions for a two-state solution have always been approved by Palestine, with the USA being the veto against them. The idea of recognizing the state of Israel has been accepted by Palestinian leadership since the 1970s. But, the specific proposals that have usually been on the table have been almost universally laughable: taking away even more of Palestinian territory, limited access to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, limited access between the two halves of the Palestinian state and many other issues.
Not to mention, almost all of these negotiations were "arbitrated" by Israel's single biggest ally in the world, the USA. This would be as if you'd expect peace talks between Ukraine and the Donetsk separatists arbitrated by Russia to go well.
> They are free to become Israeli citizens at any time and those are the positions they end up in when they do.
And looking a little bit into this, it's amazing you can claim this, as the truth is precisely the opposite. 90% of the Arabic population of Palestine before the war did not qualify to become Israeli citizens. Now, not only do they not have any special right to become Israeli citizens, they don't even have the right to enter the country, even if they have a spouse or property there, unless they meet some other conditions.
By contrast, any person of Jewish decent or that converts to Judaism has the right to become a citizen of Israel with minimal other conditions. They will also likely receive property from the JNF if they wish to settle in Israel.
The PA and Hamas have repeatedly rejected two state solutions, refuse to recognize Israel, and openly call for genocide.
You failed to answer my question too. This discussion over
> The massacre at Huế came under increasing press scrutiny later, when press reports alleged that South Vietnamese "revenge squads" had also been at work in the aftermath of the battle, searching out and executing citizens that had supported the communist occupation.[10][11]
This feels like the classic 'barrage of bullshit' strategy, where a load of dubious claims are thrown out in the knowledge that it's near impossible to refute them all, and refuting part of them will come across as "well, this one might be contested, but look at all the others!".
Wikipedia editors at work
This isn't a whataboutism equivalency. It is a statement that one needs to first be honest about ones own shortcomings before disparaging another.
> absolutist surveillance state
I'm pretty sure that neither Google nor the rest of the world is thrilled about NSA warrantless mass surveillance programs.
> is currently participating in genocide, has institutionally striven to sustain an ethnostate
State supported ethnic cleansing of Native Americans in the 19th century. State supported subjugation and murder of African Americans in... well, improving, but still counting.
> exercises extrajudicial imprisonment and execution...
Extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, and torture in third party countries and at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
> ... against vast swaths of the population to preserve political power
20th century voting rights struggles, in which African Americans were systemically disenfranchised with the goal of preserving white political and economic power.
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I'm a proud American, support the use of the US military on the global stage as a force for increasing moral good in the world, and consider the Chinese model of authoritarianism incompatible with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness owed to every human. I believe the US holds individual freedom and equality before the law as much higher ideals, and delivers on them more often and fully, than China does.
But there's a reason Martin Luther King Jr. talks about "self purification" as one of the three prerequisite steps before direct action, and it's because easy hatred corrupts true justice.
Enumerating the ways in which your opponent looks like you, and the ways in which you've fallen short of your own ideals, isn't an argument for inaction, but a clarification and sharpening of action. 1960s racial injustice in the United States provided an embarrassing talking point while the US lectured the USSR on individual freedom. Using the evil that another does as justification for righteousness requires first accepting the evil that one has done.
I guess that's why they called it the Civil War?