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Comment by accountswu | Hacker News Reader

Simple one-liners often work well to brush aside the real issues, you don't need an argument, just a simplistic phrase that plays with emotions is enough.

May I suggest that you read about who was at fault at what place and when? The current Syrian dictatorship is not US-supported, neither are Iran and North Korea. Does that mean that Britain and US have no part in bringing Iran to where it is today (i.e. 1953)? Do you deny that 2 million Koreans were brutally murdered as a part of an imperial struggle in 1940s? Should we not mention that our one part Republo-crat government gives billions of dollars to dictators around the world and at the same time denies social services to its own citizens because we don't have enough money?

I suggest another link if you're not familiar: https://www.google.com/search?q=list+of+us+interventions+sin...

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Normally I try to stay out of politics, but this one is really off-the-mark --

> Do you deny that 2 million Koreans were brutally murdered as a part of an imperial struggle in 1940s?

That's... not even close to a correct understanding of what happening.

Without the U.S. forces in the Pacific, Korea gets Japanized by Imperial Japan and Korean culture very possibly would have been eradicated and the Koreans assimilated as entirely as the Empire could have.

Similarly, the Korean War kept South Koreans out from under Kim il-Sung's and Stalin's rule. All of the Korea would be the quality of North Korea without the Korean War...

There's (relatively minor) USA/ROK tension right now, but the two countries have been so incredibly good for each over the last 50 years it's not even funny. South Korean culture is vibrant, the people are strong, inventive, and hard-working, and there's an excellent blend of traditional Korean values and culture along with a selection of Western values, modernity, technology, and infrastructure.

All war is terrible, but America's role in South Korea has hands-down been one of the most positive things the USA has done in Asia, perhaps one of the most positive things the USA has done ever in terms of foreign relations.

I agree. If UN ever did the right thing by military intervention, Korean war was it.

I live in South Korea. Thank you all nations which helped us.

I think that your message shows one side of the story and that's the official US side. Like Gore Vidal said that in United States of Amnesia people don't remember anything that happened before last Monday.

Ever read about the 1980 Gwangju massacre? That was a massacre of 2000+ civilians in US-occupied South Korea, carried out by the US supported dictator General Chun Doo-hwan while Carter continued to support him.

http://www.workers.org/2005/world/gwangju-0526/ "They came to the U.S. on the 25th anni versary of the massacre because this is the country that has had the ultimate authority over the South Korean military since the end of World War II. It is the country that allowed a succession of military dictatorships to abuse the people even while nearly 40,000 U.S. troops were occupying the country. And it is the country that explicitly—and this has now been proven— gave the orders that allowed the Gwangju massacre to happen. And they came here, said Kim Hyo-Seok, to demand of the U.S. government that it “speak the truth, then apologize and pay reparations to the victims.” Kim spent time after the uprising and massacre as a political prisoner.

The U.S. government and the establishment media never talk about the Gwangju massacre. But in South Korea, that terrible event marked a turning point in the people’s acceptance of U.S. military occupation. Today, the majority of South Koreans say in polls that the biggest threat to peace in their country comes from the U.S.

May 18, the day that the uprising began in 1980, is now a national holiday in South Korea and Gwangju reverberates to demonstrations and rallies calling for U.S. troops out. Since the Iraq War began, a focus of those rallies has also been the demand that no Korean troops be sent to the Middle East."

You are correct in that Gwangju is the watershed moment of anti-Americanism in South Korea. It indeed confirmed that US is not on the side of democracy in South Korea, as they legitimized Chun regime and condoned the massacre.

On the other hand, while US formally held (still holds) "the ultimate authority over the South Korean military", what it meant in practice is questionable. US troops "occupying the country" is not really the correct description. I'd say "assented when consulted" rather than "explicitly gave the orders". Many description is possible, but I think the best description of what US did about Gwangju is "nothing".

It is certainly arguable that US should have done something instead of nothing, but unfortunately I don't think that is the normal standard. Also Korean war should be evaluated separately from Gwangju.

I am on board with most of your points, I just wouldn't place too much emphasis on the "diplomatic" actions of America's past. You don't blame a country for its history, you learn from it, identify flaws in the system and change them.. (ie: Germany and Nazism, or U.S and slave trade). However, a major problem I think is willing blindness, for example: how many Iraqi deaths have been caused by Bush's WMD charade? A lancet study suggests 100,000's... but the American consciousness finds such a figure unconscionable, so it is not reported.

satu, I agree with you, if the American support for dictatorships had ended then it would have been futile to mention the past. The problem is that this is how the situation is today and it's the same as it was 10 or 20 or 50 years ago.

The Bush's WMD charade surely was indirectly responsible for killing far more than 100k Iraqi civilians, perhaps more than a million. The infamous leaks showed us that the US gov and military were lying about the numbers, the actual number of Iraqis they directly killed was close to 109k back then (no minutes of silence for them on any September day).

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wikileaks-109000-deaths-iraq-...

Since you mentioned that, what is even less well-known is that Bill Clinton's administration "saved" 500k Iraqi infants from the Saddam regime between 1991 and 1996 by sanctions that refused everything including life-saving drugs into Iraq. What's reported even less frequently is that Secy of State Madeline Albright thought about it: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084/ Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

--60 Minutes (5/12/96)

Remember who was in Iraq shaking hands with Saddam and delivering killing machines in 1980s? https://www.google.com/search?q=saddam+rumsfeld

I'm not blaming fellow Americans for it, we're too busy watching celebrity gossip, who cares whether our tax money goes to kill thousands of protesters via dictators or to kill millions of civilians through our own machines.

You bring up some very interesting facts. Certainly being indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions should probably be keeping big time bureaucrats awake at night, but I sincerely doubt it. There are all sorts of psychological mechanisms that people employ to defend against this sort of cognitive dissonance... and unfortunately it is an easy and (sadly) natural part of being human. In the same way that Americans can eat meat while being blissfully ignorant of the environmental impact (let's not even talk about animal rights), Americans can also ignore what is occurring in dark rooms within foreign countries. It's the proverbial tree falling in the forest. My hope is that better data collection and live streaming will make global situations more 'real' to people. (ie: Abu Ghraib)

Young man.

I have been in your exact shoes and tried this exact strategy. Hated the exact same things you do. Told every internet forum that would accept me that the US Government has worked in order to support economic interests and supremacy through out the world and in the process has benefitted from and knowingly participated in serious crimes against humanity. I gave hundreds of examples backed by our own documentary record and declassified history. Chomsky style. I could go on for hours on just central America.

It doesn't work. Your words are going to fade into a black hole and eventually only you will remember them. And probably not, even.

This is not going to help you achieve your goals. Detach and think about why. It is obvious.

Sad. But true.

As satu said below, there's a lot of ways to avoid thinking in what their well-being costs all around the world. Most people just see gadgets, ignoring the kids killed in Coltan wars. We like to feed our vehicles without thinking about all kind of problems that the very same oil we are using is causing elsewhere. And it's natural, otherwise, we'd get crazy.

But then again, it's amusing when (just to put a silly example) a company changes something in their EULA, and lot's of people start calling for a boycott.

Our values scale is so damn wrong.

Sad indeed, the news of a a cat being rescued from a tree or Lindsay Lohan on drugs again is more important, that another 4 or 14 Afghan kids were just killed by NATO is not worthy of prime time, not when we are the ones killing kids.

>It doesn't work. Your words are going to fade into a black hole and eventually only you will remember them. And probably not, even. This is not going to help you achieve your goals. Detach and think about why. It is obvious.

It's not about "working" or "success", it's about doing the right thing and telling it like it is.

Also, the "not working" part? Not that true, anyway. It maybe have not worked for US leftists and the SDS et al, but it has worked wonders in many countries, for getting rid of dictatorships, colonialism and such.

@datapimp,

I know what you're saying, but I think that now the average American knows a lot more than she did 20 years ago, thanks to the internet. If it was up to the big media corporations the average Joe would never have found out about the other side, they would only know that we are liberating Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela etc. I think you must have change the mindset of some of the people that read your stuff, maybe you sowed some seeds of change (and no I'm not talking about Obama who is carrying out some of the same policy and taken some of the Bush policies even further, and has prosecuted more whistle-blowers than all other US presidents combined).

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