Seriously though, the USA is virtually always bad.

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        It’s so goddamn hilariously cartoonish.

        How much more would it have cost to ACTUALLY vaccinate people at the same fucking time lmao?

        They hate Pakistan so much they can’t even bring themselves to do incidental good

        • danisth [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          There was probably some rationale where actually vaccinating people would have meant involving other departments or some shit and they didn’t want to risk blowing their op. Basically the evil is baked into the system, it’s not some cartoon villain. IMO this is so much worse than some evil cia director who’s goal it is to fuck up pakistan.

  • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
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    Name me a time when the US was intentionally and objectively good and don’t include times it was repairing damage it did. I’ll wait. Forever.

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      Hey, they entered WWII after they helped inspire, arm, and otherwise equip the Naz- wait.

      Hey, they fought a Civil…War…against themselves…over slavery…

      Hey, they…uh…killed a bunch of British soldiers in the 18th century?

      I got nothing.

      ed: LMAO I didn’t even see the lib below me actually post fucking WWII and Ukraine

      Slava Ukraini bois I got Stephen Bandera tattooed on my nutsack isn’t he so cool

      Fuck off

      • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        Gonna need to start making one piece emotes about pirates being anarchists and hating the corrupt government. Which is an important distinction compared to most organized crime that normally works with the government

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      Fighting WWII and currently supplying lots of stuff to Ukraine.

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        Ah yes how could I forget a war that the US only joined years late and well after millions of people had already died. A war where the US setup their own concentration camps for Japanese Americans. A war where the US used nuclear bombs to obliterate civilians in an unprecedented way. SURELY that war the US was definitely the good guys there.

        And then Ukraine, a war where the US is giving unlimited guns to literal Nazis and shoving civilians into an endless and completely unnecessary meat grinder. Yeah definitely the objective good guys in that conflict. Also the US was largely at fault for the conflict in the first place so even if they were objectively the good guys here it would be them cleaning up their mess. They aren’t though they’re making it worse.

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          There are a few literal Nazis on both sides. Ukraine doesn’t have any in the government or high command apparatus.

          Why is the meat grinder unnecessary? Should Ukraine just give up it’s sovereignty and become part of Russia? If not, the war remains necessary.

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          Was WWII the US’s fault? No it wasn’t. Was it good they joined? Yes, you even agree since you think they joined to late. (And I agree they joined too let too) So that fits the qualifications of the first question.

          • edge [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            Was WWII the US’s fault? No it wasn’t.

            Hitler was heavily inspired by American treatment of Native Americans and black people. Although not completely, he thought the one drop rule was a little too much.

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              Yes and eugenics was horrible. But are you saying the entirety of Nazi Germany is the majority the fault of the US? That’s even more of a stretch than just following orders.

              Edit: solely to majority to better reflect the question

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                  I assumed the question meant majority fault, since that’s what I mean when I say something is someone’s fault. Sorry for the sloppy wording. Majority share of fault.

              • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                The apartide state of Jim Crow America founded on slavery and genocide? Yes, our evils going unpunished proved what could be gotten away with

          • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
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            Love that you completely ignored the part where the US involvement led to them brutalizing and murdering countless completely innocent civilians. That part is pretty inconvenient to your argument that they were somehow the good guys here so yeah it is a pretty safe bet to ignore it. I’d love to hear you defend it though I’m sure you’ll do Uncle Sam proud

            • JohnDClay
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              But it’s irrelevant to the question. The question was whether it was good the US joined WWII. Even accounting for the atrocities, I don’t know anyone who would say the US shouldn’t have joined the war.

              • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
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                No the question was is there a time when the US was objectively good. You used WW2 as an example. And then ignored all the completely heinous shit the US did during WW2.

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                  SIR, MY PUBLIC EDUCATION HISTORY CLASS SAID WE WERE HEROES AFTER FORCING ME TO SAY THE PLEDGE OF ALLIEGANCE EVERY MORNING, HOW DARE YOU QUESTION DROPPING NUKES ON CIVILIANS, PARTICULARLY THE SECOND ONE WHERE JAPAN’S SURRENDER ALREADY WENT FROM INEVIETABLE TO UNDENIABLE AFTER THE FIRST. I AM A HERO BY VIRTUE OF BEING BORN IN AMERICA. A “FEW” HORRIFIC, CIVILIAN MASS MURDERS IS MY DEFINITION OF OBJECTIVELY GOOD.

                • JohnDClay
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                  But it can still be objectively good they joined even taking into account the atrocities. It doesn’t need to be all good to be good over all.

              • Lochat [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                No, he asked if they were objectively good in that war, which they weren’t even fucking close. At best they were a grey-moralist lesser of two evil, but the fact you conflate that with “good” is exactly why you’ll never comprehend any situation with any nuance. In your mind it’s always “WW2 USA GOOD GUYS SAVED WORLD” like some lead-poisoned brain damaged boomer desperately trying to live voraciously through low-rent nationalist propaganda. I’d say, yes, America was the lesser of two evils compared to Nazi Germany and Japan, and the fact that’s the closest you can get to “good” and the political parties you need to compare yourself to, to look better in comparison to someone, proves Infamousblt’s point.

                The closest to “objectively good” America’s actions has been in a situation is “well, it’s not as bad as letting Nazi Germany take over all of Europe” and that’s not good, that’s horror.

                • JohnDClay
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                  The closest to “objectively good” America’s actions has been in a situation is “well, it’s not as bad as letting Nazi Germany take over all of Europe” and that’s not good, that’s horror.

                  That’s just the largest example that comes to mind.

                  I thought the question was ‘has the US done any good actions,’ which would qualify WWII. If instead the question was asking ‘has the US done any actions that are entirely and completely perfect’ I would say no nation has.

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              You want to explain that giant limbo to me? The US wasn’t even in on the treaty of Versailles if that’s what you’re taking about.

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                  So that makes them entirely the US’s fault? Capitalists and communists in many countries helped cause their rise to power.

              • RedDawn [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                The US wasn’t even in on the treaty of Versailles if that’s what you’re talking about.

                The US however was very stringent in demanding repayment for all weapons it provided to UK and France, with interest, which necessitated those countries being harsh with Germany over war reparations in turn. German war reparations essentially all flowed to America, to say they weren’t in on the treaty is true but it’s sleight of hand ignoring the role US played in dictating the economic direction of Europe through its role as creditor.

                Then, you had US industrialists funding and working with the Nazis as they rose to power.

                • imaqtpieA
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                  The US however was very stringent in demanding repayment for all weapons it provided to UK and France, with interest, which necessitated those countries being harsh with Germany over war reparations in turn. German war reparations essentially all flowed to America

                  This is an absurd take, regardless of its veracity (do you have a source?).

                  The budgets of the French and British governments are not the responsibility of the US, and there is no reasonable argument that would have justified forgiving those loans. The UK and France were harsh with Germany because they hated and feared Germany and wanted revenge after World War 1.

                  I have absolutely no doubt that you would be even more outraged if the US had indeed forgiven its wartime loans to Britain and France after WW1. I’m not sure what your angle would be, but it would probably be more persuasive than your current argument 😉

            • JohnDClay
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              At fault I was interpreting as majority. And it seems like people should be accountable for their actions even if they aren’t entirely original.

          • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            Was the US being in ww2 good? Probably not. Not just becoming a rogue nation and using WMDs on civilians but the money we stole from Europe went on to pay for us doing several genocides. So on balance it isn’t great

      • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        lmao they put half the nazis back in power after the war and are now arming nazis in Ukraine

        If thats the best you can find, then holy shit

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          You think West Germany was Nazi? I think they took a lot of the Nazis back for the space program.

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              But was the government Nazi? Since Nazi Germany had conscription, I’d image it’d be hard to find anyone in Germany who wasn’t a Nazi. But as I understand it, there was actual systematic denazification that kept the government on track.

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                But as I understand it,

                you have demonstrated over and over again that your understanding is woefully incomplete, almost cartoonishly shallow

                • imaqtpieA
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                  Since Nazi Germany had conscription, I’d image it’d be hard to find anyone in Germany who wasn’t a Nazi. But as I understand it, there was actual systematic denazification that kept the government on track.

                  Seems like you didn’t have a good response to this point, would you like to try again?

              • trompete [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                Look up some of these Nazis in the BRD. We’re not talking about conscripted soldiers. The people that are brought up check one or (often) multiple of the following boxes:

                • Members of the Nazi party and other Nazi organizations, and they weren’t forced to join these either.
                • Officers or officials in charge of the war crimes, the Holocaust, or some other Nazi crimes.
                • People directly on-the-ground involved in war crimes and mass murder.
                • Capitalists or managers profiting off the Nazi war effort, using slave labor and/or profiting of stolen Jewish wealth.

                There were thousands of people guilty of stuff like this in all levels of the BRD government, including many the highest levels. This was normal. The Western allies could have hanged some top 10,000 of those responsible, easily, but they didn’t. They let them out of prison, hired them, and helped them escape justice.

              • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                Pretty sure camp survivors weren’t. They would have needed new jobs so that would have been pretty a pretty good way to help fix things. Only we didn’t want justice. We wanted people who were used to fighting the soviets. So nazies. We wanted them in power, just working for us.

              • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
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                The Gehlen Organisation, which later became absorbed wholesale into the West German state as their intelligence apparatus, was literally just a bunch of Nazis headed by Nazi lieutenant-general Reinhard Gehlen.

                Was the government Nazi? Well, that entire arm of the government certainly was!

      • emizeko [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        D-Day happened not because of some altruistic desire to liberate France but because the remaining capitalist states saw that Germany was neither salvageable nor willing to work with them, and something need to be done to stop the Soviets from liberating all of continental Europe and building a socialist bloc with abundant year round naval ports in the open Atlantic.

        Prior to the war Nazi Germany was chomping at the bit to destroy the Soviet Union, and the Soviets wanted to take a wrecking ball to Germany, both for the sake of destroying the political epicenter of European fascism, and so they could keep pushing the revolution westward and take the entirety of the continent.

        The Western alliance with Poland was an attempt at managing this rivalry, so that they could try to force this nearly inevitable conflict to happen on their terms, not Germany nor Russia’s. The West must have seen that if Germany won this fight and had their pick of whatever they wanted in Eastern Europe, France would end up with a monstrous neighbor that occupied the entire rest of the European mainland, and although Communism would have been uprooted from Russia, Germany could easily use its newly acquired land/resources/industrial capacity to double back and take on France. The goal of destroying the Soviets is achieved, but the Fascist bloc becomes the dominant faction of the imperial core and the anglo-Liberal forces are forced to either submit or try to hold out as just the UK and US against the rest of the world.

        Now, if Russia were to win this impending Russo-German war, there was no way in hell Stalin slows his roll after beating Germany and stops at the French border— France and possibly Franco’s Spain would be next, and where does this leave the West? Unlike a German victory, the anglo-Liberal faction of the imperial core is all that’s left and they are stuck with the entire European mainland controlled by communists, an outcome they’ll do anything to avoid. With the shipyard of Germany and France and access to the open Atlantic, they can threaten anglo naval superiority and even plan an invasion of the British isles— and unlike Hitler, who represents just another faction of capitalism, Stalin and the communists are far less likely to give the remaining Western countries the option to accept subservience if they lay down their arms.

        So the West find themselves in a position where if they do nothing in this coming Russo-German war, they are screwed either way, and although a Nazi victory is preferable, they figure that through geopolitical fuckery they can get involved and alter the tides. If they side with the communists, which god knows the Western governments broadly speaking do not want to do, they can at least manage the fall of Germany, and hopefully negotiate a post-war European order where the Soviets do not have access to the open Atlantic (i.e., ports that aren’t in an inland sea or the hard to navigate Arctic). D-Day was of course an attempt at taking back territory in France but more importantly it was the first step toward securing a foothold in Germany and making sure that there was a mobilised, battle-hardened force waiting to meet the Soviets so that a hard limit could be put on their Western advance. I don’t mean to say that no one wanted France back under a French government, or that there weren’t people in the anglo military commands and governments who were genuinely disgusted by the Nazis and the crimes committed continent-wide during their occupations, but to the cold, realistic, realpolitiking minds of the people at the top like Eisenhower, the primary goal was setting up the board for the next fight— the Anglosphere versus the Soviet Union.

        US General George Patton was adamant that if he was allowed to, he could have taken American troops to Prague and secured Czechia for the West in the post-war order well in advance of the Red Army’s arrival. He was promptly informed by Eisenhower that he would doing no such thing. The post-war order had already been negotiated behind the scenes, and through strategically supporting their mortal enemies against a foe that really wasn’t much different than themselves politically or economically, the intact West had made sure that they also held at least part of Central Europe, instead of either Germany or the Soviet Union controlling the entire continent. So D-Day wasn’t purely an anti-communist action, but was also crucial to the Western grand strategy of making sure the Soviets didn’t just keep steaming onward, and setting the stage for the Cold War in terms more favorable to the West.


        based on comments by @[email protected]

        • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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          While there are aspects of that narrative I agree with, I think there’s some pretty questionable claims as well.

          Now, if Russia were to win this impending Russo-German war, there was no way in hell Stalin slows his roll after beating Germany and stops at the French border

          What?? Even with support from the rest of the Allies, WWII was devastating for the Soviets, it required an extraordinary loss of life and resources to defeat the fascists. I’m not inclined to believe that Stalin would simply attack France out of nowhere in this timeline, and I certainly don’t agree that “there was no way in hell” they wouldn’t. What’s your reasoning or evidence for this idea?

          So the West find themselves in a position where if they do nothing in this coming Russo-German war, they are screwed either way, and although a Nazi victory is preferable, they figure that through geopolitical fuckery they can get involved and alter the tides.

          It’s quite a big brained move to try to alter the tides by siding with the larger threat lol.

          I don’t think there’s reason or evidence to suggest that the West found German dominanation all that preferable to Soviet domination. Losing is losing, and while the fascists would preserve and extend the systems of capitalist exploitation, it likely wouldn’t be the same exploiters at the top. Germany posed a very real threat of dethroning and replacing the exploiters, which to the exploiters is just as bad as the system of exploitation being dismantled.

          This narrative also neglects the Soviet perspectives of the time. The Soviets were more than happy to accept help from the Allies and if anything were critical of them not taking more territory faster. It was only once victory was a forgone conclusion that the rush to sieze land really kicked off. It’s also worth noting that the UK and France got involved before any fighting between Germany and the USSR broke out.

          So D-Day wasn’t purely an anti-communist action

          Wasn’t purely anti-communist?! It’s pretty absurd to imply that it was primarily anti-communist, the Soviets wanted D-Day to happen.

          I find this whole narrative is very oversimplified, speculative, and not aligned with the actual history.

          • SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            Actually the overwhelming majority of French resistance saw the Red Army as liberators in 1945. The last thing they wanted was to see the bourgeois collaborationist government come back, as were many countries in Europe. There was practically no resistance if the USSR wanted to move into France.

            The problem that Stalin would face was whether the Americans would allow it, and if the situation would devolve into the US dropping atomic bombs in Europe (since there was no way that the Americans could fight the Red Army without losing support of the population of the entire continent i.e. practically handing Europe over to the Soviets, and also risking domestic dissent at home since, you know, dropping the A bomb on white people is not the same as dropping it on the Japanese).

            • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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              Actually the overwhelming majority of French resistance saw the Red Army as liberators in 1945.

              That’s a totally different scenario to what’s being discussed. We’re not talking about the USSR moving into France in the historical timeline. We’re talking about a timeline where France and the UK sit back and let Germany duke it out with the USSR, and then, after a long, bloody war, the USSR emerges victorious, and then decides to invade France for some reason. In this scenario, there is no French resistance because there is no Nazi occupation of France.

                • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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                  The USSR never invaded West Germany post-WWII, so with the benefit of hindsight, probably never.

                  However, if France and the UK were so concerned about that, then instead of going to war with the USSR’s #1 enemy, they could have sat back and built up their strength while letting the two fight. Then, once in this timeline the USSR finally defeats the Nazis singlehandedly, they could attack the USSR themselves, since it would’ve been considerably weakened while they were at full strength.

                  The reality of British and French motivations were more complex than a singular focus on defeating the USSR through the 5th dimensional chess move of forming an alliance with them. What they wanted was stability. They wanted to maintain their “rules based international order” (with themselves on top). The idea was to keep Germany on a leash as a guard dog against the Soviets, and they cut him an incredible amount of slack, just straight up handing him Czechoslovakia in spite of being in a formal alliance with them. But Hitler figured he could just get away with whatever and it turned out that there was, in fact, a line.

        • JohnDClay
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          But even if it was self serving as well, was it good they joined the war?

      • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        They entered WWII in the European theatre long after the heavy fighting was already done, same in the Pacific outside of their little island-hopping campaign. They waited that long so they could be war profiteers beforehand. They had a doctrine of targeting civilian population centres, culminating in the needless nuking of two Japanese cities, despite the Japanese being willing to surrender already.
        During the war American companies were still producing war material for Germany, and these companies were compensated by the US government whenever they got bombed by the allies.
        After the war the US absconded with several high-rsnking Nazis and integrated them into their own government. Others were pardoned after a few years. Same was done with war-crime unit 731 in Japan. After the war the US also initiated operation gladio, which created several fsr-right stay-behind terror organizations, with the purpose of suppressing left-wing movements in Europe.
        The US sucks.

        CW: sa

        Even according to the NATO-rag that is Wikipedia, the us soldiers were responsible for 14.000 rapes in France alone. They were known to be pillagers.

        • JohnDClay
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          It does if the other side is undoubtedly the bad guys.

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            You seem to be viewing this like its sports, I don’t fucking care about who you think are “undoubtably” bad guys, as far as I’m concerned America is worse. It’s getting people killed, for lines on a map, and you guys brought this on.

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              Why is it the US’s fault that Russia decided that Ukraine should be theirs? Does Russia have a moral obligation to not be relegated to a regional power?

              • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                jesse-wtf like seriously wtf are you attributing moral obligations to a country of millions of people.

                You know that Ukrainian cities have been getting shelled for like 8 years now, it’s just that now it’s not only the Ukranian government doing it.

                • JohnDClay
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                  We are taking about good and bad, and whether it was bad or good that Russia invaded. Those are moral questions. So yes, we can ask whether the actions of a nation are moral.

      • robinn2 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1. Fighting WWII: The US declared war on Japan in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor, it did not declare war on Germany; Germany declared war on the US three days after the US declared war on Japan. The US was blatantly looking after its own interests rather than a genuine commitment to destroying Nazism (a movement they themselves inspired [1] [2]). Not a good example.

        2. Supplying Ukraine: Surprisingly Nazi proxy wars are bad and so is funding Ukrainian war crimes.

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          But was it bad they joined? Even if it was self interested, it’s still a good thing.

          • robinn2 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            Obviously Nazism is evil, but the US isn’t ideologically opposed to Nazism (quite the opposite), so their rise to power is just the rise of one Nazi power at the expense of another (allowing the US as a world power emerging from WWII to massacre millions across the world). Besides, OP said intentionally good, this was incidental insofar as it aided in undoing Nazi ethnic cleaning (as well as “don’t include the times it was repairing damage it did”, as encompassed in the US inspiring Nazism).

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              That makes the definition very broad indeed. In that case I’d have a hard time seeing any country satisfy it. Since everything impacts everything else in some way, and since an entire nation never have completely spotless intentions, no country ever would fit these criteria as you’ve expanded them.

              • robinn2 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                Name me a time when [a country] was intentionally and objectively good and don’t include times it was repairing damage it did.

                The DPRK’s support for Algerian independence under the NLF and recognition of the Algerian state as a sign of internationalist progressive policy; DPRK’s support for the national liberation struggle of the Mozambican people; the USSR’s aid to Korea in gaining independence from Japan and the PRC’s deployment of troops to wage war against the occupying U.S. imperialists in the Korean Peninsula; the USSR’s support for the Cuban struggle against U.S. imperialism; the PLA’s liberation of Tibet from feudal theocracy with the support of the toiling masses of Tibet; the USSR’s support for the Nicaraguan Sandinistas against the reactionary U.S.-backed “guerilla” Contras; these are a few examples.

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                  Having a government in power that you backed is beneficial to you, therefore it isn’t altruistic. So it isn’t fully objectively good as someone above objected.

    • adriaan
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      That’s a bit disingenuine. If your only stance is “USA bad” you would side with the Axis in WWII, the motivation for the USA joining the Allies is irrelevant in that outcome. Sadly you have to actually think about geopolitics sometimes because they’re really fucking complicated. You’ll find that almost all nations are straight up bad and that the big distinguishing factor about the USA is not how bad it is, but about how much bad it’s able to project globally as a hegemon.

      • Annakah69 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        USSR vs Germany was the main show of WW2. US dragged it’s fear and only opened a second front when it was apparent that the Soviet Union had won the war.

        So maybe USA bad, communism good gets you to 100%?

      • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Not really. Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union before Pearl Harbor. The Soviet Union also had skirmishes with Fascist Japan and IJA warcrimes like the Rape of Nanjing already happened. It was pretty obvious which side was good. If anything, it shows the absolute moral bankruptcy of the US that chose to sit on the sidelines while their imperialist rivals killed and bombed each other, hoping to recreate WWI where the US became the first among equals because it was virtually unscathed by WWI. The real anti-US side would be to pick the nonfascist side during the 1930s when the fascists were invading Republican Spain and the Republic of China and not be “isolationist.”

  • SpiderFarmer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    My new thing is just telling people I don’t like countries that regularly bomb hospitals. It’s 50/50 on people then defending the US even harder.

    • MCU_H8ER2 [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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      1 year ago

      I told my (sorta) friend that Obama oversaw a bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital and his only response was a smug ‘well it wasn’t on purpose’.

      • JohnDClay
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        1 year ago

        Do you think it was on purpose? (I haven’t looked into the one yet)

          • JohnDClay
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            I mean hospitals can be set up anywhere and enemy combatants can hide in hospital buildings. You’ll need to go a little deeper.

              • JohnDClay
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                I said you’ll need to go deeper. Where in the command chain did the error happen? Or was it commanded from the top? Using munitions on hospitals usually isn’t as efficient as command centers, so it might actually be a mistake.

                Wait, are you actually anti Russian aggression? Yay! Could you help me out explaining in this thread that it actually isn’t okay for Russia to invade?

                • Again, fucking ghoul. Lives are a toy to you to be thrown around to smear your enemies is that it? Arabic lives are worthless, honorary aryans are exceptions?

                  I don’t want the war to happen, and that means both sides need to come together for a peace agreement. Invading another country, although with sense considering the geopolitical implications, was still a terrible thing. This is the position of Hexbear. You guys just stick on the parts where we say ukraine needs to pay reparations as well.

                  The bombing of donbass was insanely inhumane. There was no reason to do that! Russia does not have the subversive ability to prop up such complex movements. They cannot claim that they are just russian soldiers. the separatists have been asking for referendum since the fall of the Soviets. There should have been a renegotiation of the borders of the post soviet republics at the very least, they were made with the other republics.

                  The mess didn’t start with putin, it started with the fall of the soviet union. An entity with which, all the republics would be without war, and would be working together for the advancement of peace and mutual prosperity.

            • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              That hospital wasn’t just “set up” anywhere and enemy combatants weren’t hiding in there and even if they were, you dont bomb hospitals, that’s a warcrime

              Seriously wtf is wrong with you?

          • JohnDClay
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            1 year ago

            That’s actually a good question. It’s worse if it’s malicious, but it’s still terrible if it’s accidental. The situation never should have been able to arise, preferably because the war never started.

        • robinn2 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          It was a result of the U.S. purposely undoing progressive reform in Afghanistan[*] and backing extremists to draw the USSR in and provoke a slaughter (then lying about it and saying they only funded extremists afterwards, only to admit this later); the U.S. then returned to assert control of the middle east due to oil pipeline plans/natural gas reserves. Oh and also the U.S. used the economic system that they had set up during occupation to starve Afghanis after they left. This wasn’t some silly accident, it was part of a plan that no matter what meant the destruction of Afghanistan and the murder of hundreds of thousands. It doesn’t matter if it was directly “on purpose.”

          [*] US State Department Memorandum six months before the Soviet invasion: “The United States’ larger interest…would be served by the demise of the Taraki regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reform in Afghanistan… The overthrow of the DRA [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] would show the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that the Soviet’s view of the socialist course of history as being inevitable is not accurate” (reproduced in Cockburn and St. Clair’s Whiteout, pp. 262-63).

          • JohnDClay
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            Thanks for the context. I agree that if the war is unjust, the individual events should have been avoided and are culpable to the one who is perpetrating the injustice.

            I’ll need to look into it more carefully, but that looks pretty convincing that the US was unjust to get involved.

        • somename [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          The US was the one facilitating the violence, so it being “accidental” doesn’t matter. If I shoot a gun randomly into a crowd, it doesn’t matter if I didn’t actually mean to hit anyone.

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        1 year ago

        Is this some sort of misguided american unexceptionalism where you think every other country is also doing wars in a billion places?

        • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          I’ve seen this rhetorical tactic taken up by neoliberals and left libs when arguing on behalf of imperialism.

          “This is American exceptionalism to say the CIA and the US military are all powerful and the sole cause for 50+ coups and invasions. You are denying the agency of foreign nations to be fascist on their own by saying America installed all the fascists”

          It’s like they are trying to use anti-Americanism to argue pro-Americanism. It’s really a great tactic for muddying the waters and confusing everything by using a left rhetorical tactic to defend the fascist American empire

        • JohnDClay
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          1 year ago

          All countries portray themselves well. European countries less than other Western ones, but Russia and China also cultivate a specific image of protectors of a lifestyle.

            • JohnDClay
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              What does that have to do with image cultivation?

              They’ve been less military active in force projection, so probably not many yet. But I’m sure they’ll get their chance as they become a super power with global power projection.

              Actually, they’ve at least flooded their own hospitals, I wonder if they’ve accidentally bombed any with failing rocket stages?

              • RedDawn [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                It’s not logical for you to defend the US as global superpower by asserting, without evidence, that China might also do the same bad things if they could. They haven’t done those things and you’d need to provide compelling evidence that they have plans to do so. If not, you’re inventing a completely false equivalence out of whole cloth.

              • Sephitard9001 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                Okay. The U.S. is the largest power with the largest global power projection. China might also become a large power with global power projection. This is bad because they might bomb hospitals. This means the U.S. is bad because they do bomb hospitals. This means that China might as well be just as bad as America. This means that Ukraine might as well be just as bad as Russia because they also bomb hospitals.

                So where is this going exactly? We’re still left with “America does bad shit at a larger scale way more often” even when you imagine China doing the same thing in an alternate reality. Is this a useful line of reason? I can justify literally anything doing this.

      • SpiderFarmer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        Yeah, I suppose at this point it’s harder to find countries that haven’t. Though the US and NATO-aligned nations do have a certain knack when it comes to atrocities.

  • GnastyGnuts [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    Usually the way NATOists and liberals put it is “‘America Bad’ is not an ideology / political philosophy”, and it’s like okay, it’s still fucking true though. What am I supposed to do with a true statement if not believe it? And what am I supposed to do with that belief if not let it inform my broader ideology, especially when it relates to the country I live in, which also happens to be the current global hegemon?