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Comment by vasco | Hacker News Reader

America changed the narrative to be the good guys. Wars are no longer result of need for exploration, previous land claims, manifest destiny or anything else. In fact wars are no longer wars, but merely establishing freedoms to the oppressed populations. Military isn't willingfully enlisting to go kill foreigners in foreign lands, they are protecting the freedom at home. Countries that are subjugated and forced to keep military bases in their borders aren't vassal states, but partners. Yet the song changes very quickly when any other country does a tiny bit of the same. I don't dislike these rulers of our times, but one should not be naive to think that it doesn't even matter what you vote for, as you say, you're just gonna be part of the same imperialist State Department roadmap.

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Exactly! You are describing classical academic gepolitics as explained by the most standard US military beureucrat before rampant ideological psyops took over.

John Mearsheimer is a good example of this line of thought but he's somehow a radical these days.

The US is fighting bloody wars for resources and control like a big game of RISK, that's how historical empire has always worked and most knew this decades ago, but now theres layers and layers of bullshit on top.

Just admit it, we live a very wealthy life partly because we've plundered the world, not because we've protected ourselves from the bad guys and became uniquely enlightened in a world of savages, that's the winners writing the history, another historical trope that has been memoryholed.

With that defeatist attitude might as well have the USSR run the world at the end of the cold war.

Wars are horrible and they're almost always done for geopolitical power or resources, not to protect enlightened democracy or whatever.

Wars are terrible! But as soon as you have some preference for the society you want to live in (or consider better), you might need to confront issues of violence in defense. I did not find the USSR model preferable, for example.

I get what you mean and me neither but the relatively modern ideological lens, that most wars are fought for democracy, or to protect liberalism is just not true from a historical or economical standpoint.

Most US wars are fought because of realpolitics, resources, opening markets, company contracts, like a game of Civilization, empires battling empires, or plutocrats taking over markets in poorer parts of the world through brute force foreign policy, just like in the rest of history.

There is no US exceptionalism even though i love many things uniquely about your country as a whole and wouldn't live in neo USSR ( unless part of the intelligentsia, which in some parts look like parts of the american plutocracy ).

Would the world be a better place if North Korea had won? Saying it is all/mostly realpolitics etc., does not mean that the outcome was always worse than not fighting or at the very least it isn't easy to make that determination across the board (doesn't excuse bad military action, either).

Painting the picture that the alternative to hyper aggressive war machine is North Korea is a little bizarre to me to be honest.

That is not the point. Just saying the US is a hyperaggressive war machine isn't leading anywhere. Wars have consequences and if they hadn't happened we'd have had the counterfactual, which might not always be great, either.

> Just admit it, we live a very wealthy life partly because we've plundered the world

I dont like this take. It suggest that the sole source of US wealth is natural resource theft. It is not (sole source).

The US fucks/fucked with many countries for many reasons. Ideological - fight vs spread of communism, figting 'terror' in afganistan. Those can be also tied to interest of Military–industrial complex - war is private profit.

Other reasons is to secure the flow of resources, all coups and dictators in middle east were an attempt to stabilise oil flow. State doesnt care much how it will be done. All they care is that oil will arrive cheaply at steady rate. Private companies will help for some cut.

Saudis did what us told them, they are now building indoors ski slopes on their deserts, US doesnt care - even though wahhabism is in practice an ideological opposite of US. They hardly sound like poor oppressed people who's oil being stolen.

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