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Comment by jameslk | Hacker News Reader

> One of the dark consequences of America losing its city-upon-a-hill aspirations is we're less able to effectively call out evil abroad.

"City-upon-a-hill" is marketing and has never been grounded in fact. It’s hubris and arrogance. The US is viewed as that place if you get on the wrong side of, it will bomb you or replace your government through coercion. It outspends every country on "defense" to ensure this.

History is littered with plenty of examples where the US favored a more authoritarian or "evil" government over less, sometimes even installing them. Arab Spring is a recent example where you saw governments replaced with the US' help, while leaving some notable monarchies alone.

In reality, the US employs its foreign policy for its own interests. It’s always been like that.

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The Arab Spring is a bad example if you're trying to say that the US is installing governments... South America's history provides far better examples.

That said, the US doesn't need to be perfect to still be an example of providing freedom for its own citizens.

There’s a lot of examples, yes in South America too, but the US helped replace or tried to help replace some governments during the Arab Spring. Libya being the biggest example, where the US and its allies imposed a no fly zone to help topple a dictator it didn’t like [0]. It could have done that in other places, but you didn’t hear a peep from the US when those protests were crushed by their governments during the Arab Spring.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...

Libya is a super super bad example if you're looking for bad US behavior. This is literally the very first sentence of your own source:

> On 19 March 2011, a NATO-led coalition began a military intervention into the ongoing Libyan Civil War to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 (UNSCR 1973).

Compared to the South America stuff, this is saintly and angelic behavior helping out the world in every way. It's not the US alone, it's a coalition that expands beyond NATO, there's a UN resolution...

In fact bringing this up as a "bad behavior" example proves just how much of a shining city on a hill the US has been around the world. It's been bad, but it's also done lots of good stuff.

I don't think you're understanding what OP actually said. They didn't cite the Libya example as an example of bad behaviour; there wasn't any value statement on it at all. They were saying the fact that they intervened in Libya but not elsewhere was an example of the US intervening when it suits them.

I'm not an expert in US foreign policy so I'll refrain from entering the debate itself, I just think you're not arguing against what the OP is actually saying.

> Libya is a super super bad example if you're looking for bad US behavior. This is literally the very first sentence of your own source:

> > On 19 March 2011, a NATO-led coalition

Contradicting yourself ?

In what way does cutting off the sentence create a contradiction? You'll need to at least point out some words that are a contradiction, or address some of the words in my comment.

States don't have friends, only interest (of transforming humans in bomb targets and genocide victims).

> States don't have friends, only interest

Quite the opposite. Actually states don't have interests - interest groups do - and those of them who are friends with the state get to install theirs as the state's.

> states don't have interests - interest groups do

People have interests. To promote those interests, they organise. Sometimes as interest groups within states. Sometimes as business corporations. Sometimes as states.

for its own citizens that were fortunate enough to be born at the right place at the right time. how should the rest of the world feel about the US if they get all the freedoms, comforts and opportunities and the rest of the world doesn’t?

Is that a country to be admired by all others or resented.

US probably never was "the good guy" and just acted on its own interests, but that's not the point. People believed that it's true. Or probably just internalized that as a part of a "country stereotype", like how Germans are hard-working and brits are polite. So it was OK and sometimes even expected for the US to scold the evildoers.

Now that changed, at least in my social circle, and US being moralistic is seen as hypocrisy.

> "City-upon-a-hill" is marketing and has never been grounded in fact.

Except for Germany 1945, Eastern Europe 1989, South Korea, etc. pp.

Kuwait 1991. Iraq NFZ 1992-2003. Haiti 1994. Ex-SFR Yugoslavia 1995. Again in 1999.

America has had a lot of less-than-ethical military adventurism, but it's also incorrect to say every instance of it was self-serving.

The problem with Ex-SFR Yugoslavia 1995/99 wasn't too much international/western involvement, but too little.

Oh! Really? https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/how-bushs-grandfa...

What happend in SK at the times was an authoritarian, maybe even police state. Not especially 'democratic'.

1989? Not that hard when 'mother russia' is collapsing, and occupied otherwise. For some decades, at least.

The fact you call it "mother" Russia lets me hope you use another word when referring to your own mother.

> Oh! Really? https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/how-bushs-grandfa...

From the article: "(...) his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act" – so... yeah, exactly. Germany 1945.

> Germany 1945

Huh? Soviet Union did the heavy lifting there

You could say soviets did all the WW2 heavy lifting, starting with

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_tank_school

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipetsk_fighter-pilot_school

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomka_gas_test_site and

and culminating in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...

lol, not really. First of all, the kind of "heavy lifting" the Soviet Union did was agreeing with Nazi Germany to partition Poland and subsequently raiding it together from both sides (Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) – never forget they were allies until Hitler turned on them.

The "heave lifting" you refer to was mostly paid for and organized by the Lend-Lease Act. There would have been no eastern front without it.

> In reality, the US employs its foreign policy for its own interests.

Sometimes I'm not even sure it's for it's own interests.

Most of the time when we people talk about the interests of a country they really mean the interest of a class of people within that country.

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