Comment by palmfacehn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by palmfacehn | Hacker News Reader

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I agree there are distinctions worth making. The above poster's comment was concise. I'm not sure they intended to conflate the two ideas.

It is easy to observe how under Obama, the allegedly anti-war candidate pivoted to supporting invasions. He forgive his predecessor's use of torture. He said incoming administrations shouldn't prosecute the previous. The only gift he didn't grant was the wish to invade Iran.

There is a sense that the defense, foreign policy and intelligence establishment will have their way regardless of electoral outcomes. Trump's first term was unique in that he did not start any new wars. Permanent Washington sought to actively sabotage his administration. Many infer a correlation between the two observations.

As for the assertion that, "If we don't spend x amount of dollars or intervene, the world will devolve into WWIII", I'm not sold on this doom. We might equally ask, If the US continues to misallocate resources via uncontrolled spending, will we have a functional economy capable of fielding a meaningful military response?

Obama let Syria devolve into a civil war with something like half a million dead and many millions of refugees because he was afraid to use the power of the USA to stabilize it. The consequences of which still impact us today. In general he messed up the Arab Spring completely.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/29/obama-never-understood-...

He's super smart, had great intentions, and messed things up completely.

> the power of the USA to stabilize it.

The power of the USA is what destabilized it, by creating a breeding ground for all sorts of fun militias in Iraq.

Here's an interesting take. Not my favorite source ideologically, nor are some of the citations. However, citing the WaPo (again, strong dislike) which has been favorable to the Neocons is something.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-the-us-supports-the-islami...

>Ultimately, whether one pallet drifted into ISIS hands by accident in a recent airdrop is a moot point. Billions in cash, weapons, equipment, and vehicles have already been intentionally supplied to the many groups that ISIS represents, as planned as early as 2007. ISIS is the purposeful creation of the United States in its pursuit of regional hegemony in the Middle East, and ISIS’ atrocities were predicted long before the first shots were fired in 2011 in the Syrian conflict, long before the term “Islamic State” went mainstream.

He didn't "let it devolve into a civil war." He authorized the CIA to fund rebel groups which maintained and expanded the civil war.

What exactly do you suggest Obama should have done with "the power of the USA to stabilize it?" Invade? How would trying to 'fix' Syria be any different than trying to fix Iraq or Afghanistan?

I think he should have supported the more secular democratic elements against the regime. The regime was on the brink of falling and the outcome was probably going to have been not different than where we ended up. Instead Obama stood aside and let Assad and the Russians crush the opposition.

But that's just my opinion. My point being that "let's not intervene and let it play out" ended up with an amazingly bad outcome because the fear of a bad outcome from an intervention. Clearly a bad decision. A good decision, whatever that might have been, would have a better outcome. If the argument is that no better outcome was possible then that seems pretty wrong on the face of it.

Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan (e.g.) are fairly different places.

So the US has the moral right to install a western style gov into other countries?

How many times do we have to go down this road, tear apart countries, fuck them up more, and leave with everything in worse shape than before?

The US does not have the right to interfere and has proven over and over again that it will do all of the wrong things while trying to force other people with different ways of living and thinking to behave in a western way.

> So the US has the moral right to install a western style gov into other countries?

Sometimes, yes. A more powerful entity has a moral right to act to stop cruelty and abuse if they can.

I think acting to dismantle the Taliban, for example, is completely justifiable morally.

I disagree with this logic and morality. There is a moral obligation to intervene when failing to intervene results in more harm. Naturally the type of intervention needs to be reasonable for the circumstances. But standing by and letting Assad and Putin drop barrel bombs on the population of Syria is clearly not the moral path.

By your logic if Japan hadn't attacked the US then the US should have just stood aside and let the Germans take Europe in WW-II.

WWII was an invasion into Europe, not a civil war.

Every time we've intervened in civil wars, the outcome has been bad, with one exception -- Korea.

The problems with your thinking are:

#1 It's how the neo-cons think and is the justification for all of the US terrorism in the past 40+ years.

#2 Who are you to say what the best outcome for another people are? Which people? What group in Syria will have this great outcome now that it's controlled by Isis?

#3 How many people did you get to kill to experiment with nation building? Do you really understand the internal power dynamics of countries like Syria, Iraq? Or are you practicing a form of Imperialism?

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