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Comment by FpUser | Hacker News Reader

>"Regardless of anything that did, or never, happened at wikipedia, NATO should have invaded Saudi years ago."

The only reason for one country to go to war with another should be in response to other country starting a war. If you do not like what they do inside then do not deal with them. If you feel sorry about their people - accept their refugees. Nobody gives you a right to declare yourself a saint and start killing people under "high moral" pretenses. We have already completely fucked up whole bunch of other countries and killed their people just to "save" them from dictatorship with the end result of them ending up in even worst state.

You are simply advocating crime.

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> If you do not like what they do inside then do not deal with them.

Is that what you would have told Jamal Khashoggi?

I am talking about countries. Khashoggi is a not country. You can save the drama. Would you start a war over a single human?

So if a nation is committing genocide "inside their own borders" we just stop buying things from them?

Really, that is your position?

Let's say it's not Putin's position for example. But you meanwhile are using the exact same justification as him.

Total non-involvement is questionable and impossible, but think twice before blatantly calling to fight fire with fire and death with more death. Rule out at least semi-peaceful options first

>"Total non-involvement is questionable and impossible"

Really? I think it is quite possible. How actively the West was involved in preventing that horrible genocide / mass murder in Cambodia for example?

It's inevitable because of the dynamics of civilization once countries have the means to connect and travel and destroy each other IMO. And I think it's better if a freer country tries to enact a positive change than otherwise. But again the ends may not always justify, violence shouldn't be the first obvious choice if others are available

>"tries to enact a positive change than otherwise"

Well there are whole bunch of countries ruined by your "enactment of a positive change" and millions of people killed. I do not see many opposite examples. As I already said you just advocate crime on a major scale.

Again the earlier point which you did not disagree with is that it's inevitable, and so you can wait for China to do it in a less peaceful way

> millions of people killed

This is not what we are discussing and you know it. Millions of people killed in waging war and mass murder is exactly what happens eventually if you let bad guys prosper.

Sorry, positive change has to be enacted whether you like it or not, there is simply no noninvolvement in a shared world so the only alternative is a kleptodictator enacts their version of change and it will be positive to a much smaller number of people. You can choose if you want to enact positive change by way of violence or not, but calling for not enacting it is worse than calling for war, you would be leaving uncountable people and potentially your own descendants in future to suffer

>"Again the earlier point which you did not disagree with is that it's inevitable, and so you can wait for China to do it in a less peaceful way"

China is busy harassing their own but it was not China that had invaded and fucked up scores of countries.

>"This is not what we are discussing and you know it."

Yes it is. Cut the bullshit. The millions I was talking about are the result of the "enactment of positive change" you are so fond of.

Anyways I very much dislike your line of thinking an would prefer not to continue this lovely conversation.

Please go ahead live in your world, I'm immensely thankful your opinion is of no consequence.

That's a hell of a tangent, but for what it's worth it's absolutely the case that the US was involved (inextricably linked) to the genocide to some degree or another given that the relationship between the United States' massive bombing of Cambodia and the growth of the Khmer Rouge in recruitment and popular support has been a matter of interest to historians ever since.

Fear of Red China and the Domino Theory cast a long shadow as the West's attempts to put the thumb on the scale in various geopolitical locations arguably did more harm than good.

I do not find it "a hell of a tangent". You said that not involvement is not really possible and I just brought an example where the West did not really get involved in rectifying one of the most horrible genocides.

Whether it "helped" to cause it is a totally different issue. I was not talking about that part. I was not even aware of that particular aspect.

I'm a third party here, my comment above aside I've not said anything.

You didn't bring an example where the West didn't get involved, you bought an example of an outcome arguably caused by the West (ie. involved from the get go).

This reinforces the earlier point that "not involvement" is not really possible - global events are interconnected and penduluums swing both ways .. not giving a toss about the outcome of events someone had a large role in getting rolling is not an example of distance, just a lack of moral backbone.

>"I've not said anything."

My bad. Sorry. I did not look at the sig. You are a different person.

Non-involvement is a logically faulty/impossible position long term, you can find plenty of non-involvement very obviously, but I don't think you actually make an effort to understand what is written and by whom here so what does it matter.

>"So if a nation is committing genocide "inside their own borders" we just stop buying things from them?"

Yes. Exactly. Because by trying to fix it you will inevitably kill more and ruin the country completely and leave it in the worse state. The examples are numerous. Nobody gave you such rights. I however will support your personal decision if you grab the rifle go there and join their resistance.

>>leave it in the worse state.

that is because of half measures. The US policy was attempting to not be British where the "King" took and replaced completely the governance of the land / nation aka Colonization. That is one extreme

The US took the other extreme were by we ripped out the government and replaced it with nothing leading to worse problems, or in the rare times we did attempt to replace it we replaced it with governance by committee, and not a Constitutional republic, more of a EU style parliament also leading to worse outcomes as parliamentary governance can only work with established societies not newly formed ones

If instead if we would have put in-place actual constitutional republics under the doctrine of federalism for these nations I think there would have been far far far more successes and American would be seen more as a savoir than a conquer on the world stage today or included them as US Territories like Puerto Rico

>"If instead if we would have put in-place actual constitutional republics under the doctrine of federalism for these nations I think..."

Sure, we all know how to fix the world problems. NOT.

The alternative is to try to invade half the countries in the world. Since WW2, the US has killed over 30 million people in various military actions, and everyone of them was framed as some humanitarian action. Since 1991, we have invaded or attacked other countries over 120 times. Check out https://sites.tufts.edu/css/mip-research/

But really the alternative is to let whomever controls where the camera is pointed decide who the US invades next. Which means the US makes sure it controls where the camera is pointed, because that generates carte blanche for invasion.

Now I will tell you a secret that will give you the powers to predict the future: you can tell when the US is preparing to attack another country by watching an increase in human rights complaints on Western media. It's like clockwork. Compare the media coverage of about human rights in Iran vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia. Why is that? Because we've decided to overthrow one of these governments but not the other. Soon, we will start hearing about human rights abuses in Turkey, as they are defying the US by allying themselves with Russia and making peace with Syria, and so they may be next in line for regime change. You can tell if they are next in line by looking for news reports about atrocities perpetrated by Turkey. We can't just stand by!

In the same way, you can tell when the US has decided to back a government by watching the human rights complaints in media disappear. A good example is Venezuela, which we are reconciling with in order to gain access to their oil now that OPEC+ is giving us the cold shoulder. Notice how the atrocities and torment of the people of Venezuela is no longer a regular mainstream news item.

When Yugoslavia fell apart, all the various ethnic groups began attacking each other and ethnically cleansing rival groups from areas they controlled. We picked one enemy -- Serbs -- as they were aligned with Russia, and accused them of genocide even though the Croatians, Muslims in Bosnia, and other groups were all doing the same thing. We pointed the camera in one direction, got people worked up, and then bombed hospitals, bridges, trains, power stations, water treatment plants in Serbian controlled areas until they agreed to give up a portion of their land so that we could redraw their borders, shrinking their territory. Those ethnic groups in the new lands proceeded to ethnically cleanse their land of serbs.

Mission Accomplished for the humanitarian superpower, who really had no interest in humanitarianism but wanted to punish a Russian ally, and knew the domestic population and media was filled with fools who could be convinced that invading another country was OK - even moral - as long as you had enough cameras pointed at the right atrocities.

Also, one consequence of this "invade the world" policy is that the US makes so many global enemies, and is forced into so many commitments, that we become overextended and sufficiently hated that we lose our Global Cop status. Our Navy must now police the Straights of Taiwan, the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, Pacific Islands, the Caribbean and Atlantic. But we have lost our ship-building industry. We have 850 military bases from Africa to Asia to Europe and the Middle East. But we can no longer mass produce ammunition and many soldiers depend on food stamps. We have an overcommitment crisis because we insist on the right to invade anyone, at any time, that we decide is violating our unwritten set of rules.

That's where this idea of humanitarian-based invasions gets you.

I will be the first one to lean heavily into the critical side on how the US has conducted foreign policy. I also agree that non-interventionism is the path the US government should take more often

Your example is prime one, the US policy of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a terrible one. We continue that style of foreign policy at our own peril

That said I do believe there are cases where the world should intervene and often does not because it is seen as an internal conflict, or there is no natural resource in that nation to exploit.

My point being that simply saying that all internal conflict is off limits, and all external conflict is within scope is far tooo simplistic, there may be some external conflict I would say the US has no business interfering with, and some that I think we should, and there are many internal conflict that I think we should and many I do not.

>"where the world should intervene"

The world never intervenes. The US and some other countries / blocks do.

Until there is assured punishment for "wrong" interference your argument is empty. The only countries that get punished happen to be weak ones. And you probably aware about what the US thinks about ICC.

Captain of "no one should interfere with the inter workings of an nation" is now talking about having a World Government, ICC, and punishment for wrong interference

Make up your mind please? Or is your view just a standard anti-US position.

>"Captain ..."

Did I hurt your feelings sailor? I see no contradiction in my statements if you bother to actually read. I said "Until there is assured punishment". We know this is not happening. I do not see it as advocating world government. It simple means if one does not suffer the consequences of their action the one would simply degenerate into doing what they feel like.

Also I am not "standard anti US". The US is my neighbor (I am in Canada), I've visited it many times and admire many things. However their governments do commit major crimes and I am absolutely not fond of this part.

> My point being that simply saying that all internal conflict is off limits, and all external conflict is within scope is far tooo simplistic

That's not my position. My position is that historically nations wage wars for their own strategic interests. Interests that the nation needs in order to survive and maintain sovereignty. They do not wage wars for "humanitarian reasons". Wars cannot be humanitarian projects because every war is a humanitarian disaster.

Nations need to wisely and parsimoniously choose what their core strategic interests are -- for example maintaining access to some trade route they depend on, or maintaining access to mideast oil, or not having an enemy put an army on its border, etc. Nations have to pick these carefully and then they use military force to fight for those interests. That's how it's usually done by sane countries - those who are not trying to dominate the whole world.

Now, the number of wars that are waged for reasons of strategic self-interest is already a lot of wars. If you add to that "humanitarian reasons" as a legitimate casus belli, what you accomplish is creating even more wars, and that's the last thing you want to normalize.

Moreover, this new casus belli can be hijacked by an elite to wage war that undermines a nation's interests, because how do you really know that enemy X is such a terrible humanitarian disaster that you are justified in bombing their population into oblivion? This boils down to ideology, as the nation committing the atrocities does not believe it is committing atrocities, it believes its actions are justified. And the nation wanting to wage war on them also does not believe it will be committing atrocities but that this action (the war) is justified. So what you have is a war for ideological enforcement.

And as I said before, it has a secondary effect, in that by training a nation to wage wars purely for global ideology enforcement -- something that Europe last did in the crusader period -- you start down a road that always ends in disaster, because

1) a nation has only limited resources for war fighting, and if the resources it does have are expended in the name of global ideological enforcement, then it will not have the resources necessary to effectively defend its own strategic interests. The key blindspot of American interventionists is always that they never recognize limits. Go read some of the neocon journals - any article by the Kagan/Nuland/Bolton crowd will do -- you will search in vain for any description of limits. No realistic estimation of the forces required, and availability of these forces, availability of ammunition, sealift capacity, of how troops will be supplied and for how long. No discussion at all of limits -- only of ideology. It is just assumed that our power is limitless, because global ideological enforcement requires limitless power.

2) the number of wars waged will be huge. Think of all the nations that don't support gay marriage or our definition of "democracy", or the current preferred flavor of women's rights, for example, and so need to be invaded.

3) it will make enemies all across the globe that will, at some point, unite against us -- something that the US is beginning to painfully understand as it suffers a string of military and geopolitical defeats as well as increasing diplomatic isolation.

Wish there were more people like yourself on HN. We mostly get crusaders instead.

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