Pants-of-dog wrote:Well, since US rule of Latin American puppet states has resulted in oppressive dictatorship and kleptocracies, it us stupid to argue that we should do that in order to prevent oppressive dictatorship and kleptocracies.
You are overstating it by calling it US "rule"; calling it meddling would be more accurate. A reasonable generalisation is that they helped those regimes which they saw as more friendly to themselves than their arch nemesis the USSR and undermined or interfered with those regimes which they saw as being more friendly to the USSR and hostile to themselves. Who they helped and who they hindered was decided by alignment. The USSR did the same, essentially. Taking the opposing view to yourself it is the likes of Castro's Cuba, Sandanista Nicaragua, communist Grenada and in later times Chavez's Venezuala who are the "oppressive dictatorships and kleptocracies" but really
either way this is just transparent partisan rhetoric.
Basically Latin America was a proxy battle ground between the US and the USSR which mirrors to some extent that East Asia was too. If you want to say the US should not have meddled but remain silent about the USSR's meddling shows you just wanted the USSR to win.
For myself I am not a huge fan of the US actually, I'd rather the British Empire was still a thing instead, but I'll take the US over the USSR any day, that's just my preference.
Pants-of-dog wrote:No. If the US intervenes and puts Islamists in power, arguing for non-intervention is the exact opposite of arguing that Islamists should be in power.
But that isn't a fair portrait at all. The USSR was creeping into Afghanistan and there was local opposition to this which given it is a muslim majority country unsurprisingly came substantially from Islamists. The US wanted to hinder the USSR and so went in to help those who would be willing to shoot and blow up Soviets and all those allied with them, unsurprisingly this happened to be the Islamists who were the most willing and able to kill soviets and their agents. Both the USSR and the US were intervening but the USSR was intervening to replace the Islamists, while the US just wanted to give the USSR a bloody nose. The USSR failed and retreated while the US patted itself on the back and basically forgot the place, leaving the people who had always been there, the Islamists to take back their country.
A truthfully anti-interventionist position is that NEITHER the US nor the USSR should have gotten involved which by default means letting the native Islamists have it.
There is a parallel to this with China's intervention (actually better just called full scale invasion) of Tibet, which in contrast to Afghanistan the US had virtually no success. Whose side were you on in that one? Do you support Tibetan Independance?
Pants-of-dog wrote:Then you supported the Communists in Afghanistan during the Cold war?
I was only a child at the time. Retrospectively the hillbilly islamists in afghanistan are the lesser of two evils when the other evil is crazy commies with half the world and thousands of nukes, so I think the US made the right play.
Pants-of-dog wrote:Oh, I see.
Intervention is good when you do it, but not when others do it. Got it.
You are almost right for once. Intervention is good when it helps your own side win and bad if it helps the otherside win. That may seem like a subtle distinction but it has an important difference for example the since the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan ultimately lead to its defeat and humiliation that was GOOD intervention from the US's perspective even though it was the otherside doing it.... I wonder if you get that?
"Never interrupt your opponent when he making a mistake" - Napoleon Bonaparte
Pants-of-dog wrote:Why are you deliberately trying to confuse things like the end of WWII with neo-colonialism, especially when they have such different objectives and dynamics?
No what you want to do is making false distinctions. If anything South Korea, W. Germany and Japan were cases where the US was playing a very much heavier hand than in Latin America. The US sent Pinochet some pocket change and maybe one or two advisors with the view of tripping up the USSR. Japan was smashed flat and remade as a US ally. That is what a REAL intervention looks like.
Pants-of-dog wrote:Yes. Unless you think a government that murders children is good.
Let's not get into a pissing contest on government political murders, communists don't exactly have a great record on that.
Pants-of-dog wrote:Because I am logically consistent and don't think that being a hypocrite is a good deal, even in foreign relations.
I also understand things like blowback and Pape's studies.
You are consistently pro-communist and anti-anti-communist, I'll give you that.
I understand blowback, but as much as it is desirable to get through a fight without a scratch it is expected to have to tank a hit now and again, it is unrealistic to expect otherwise. Pacifism and isolationism is no defence either though and can have its own kind of blowback. In the case of Afghanistan the US came off lightly. The blowback from the USSR's intervention cost them their whole empire...