Comment by insuffi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by insuffi | Hacker News Reader

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History suggests the U.S. generally does whatever it wants in order to get richer, ever since WW2. Selling weapons to both sides of the war(e.g. both nazi germany and USSR) and helping out whichever side is winning.

So, no, history doesn't suggest that. Neither does recent history with 20+ regime changes.

edit: I feel like it needs reminding - I realize that in terms of geopolitics there needs to be a superpower. Every century has had a superpower that in all likelihood abused the weaker countries. My issue is with the way OP describes the issue: US being benevolent and great, bringing in fruits to US economy, completely ignoring repercussions worldwide.

In the grand scheme of things, knocking over a dictatorship and trying to build a democracy friendly to us, even if self-serving and ill-advised, is quite a different thing than just cynically conquering a country and harvesting its resources, the way the European countries used to before America came along. People use the phrase "American Empire" as a metaphor. They use "British Empire" literally.

But you still sleep well at night, right? Continuing to ignore the people dying everyday because of geopolitical aspirations.

Eh fine. I'm starting to sound self-righteous. My issue with your statement is how absolutely peaceful you are about contributing to war machine. You're implicitly helping the armed forces kill people.

> knocking over a dictatorship and trying to build a democracy friendly to us

If I remember well, Afghanistan, Irak and Iran are the last places where US overthrew a Shah or a dictator. I don't remember them being a working democracy recently.

By the way, why was there a dictatorship in the first place? Most often because of a colonial past (we're all guilty here, I am French myself). I just want to remind that I see nothing good in a country just overthrowing a dictatorship: What we need is to build economic growth, like the Plan Marshall.

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