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by enriquepablo 2344 days ago
> As a result, it's worth cautioning people that just because a fact of foreign policy efforts was true 100 years ago does not mean that it is true today.

Perhaps we might say something contrarian to this: if it was something true 100 years ago, the burden of proof is on the side of proving it is no longer so. And I think you will have a hard time at it.
1 comments
jcranmer 2344 days ago
The US no longer has a foreign policy explicitly built on the protection of American commercial interests abroad. If you haven't noticed, we no longer invade countries (e.g., Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela) when they threaten to nationalize industries that the US has a large stake in.

If you believe that the foreign policy is built on that premise, but that the government is lying about it, then the burden of proof is on you to show that lying is in effect.

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yesenadam 2344 days ago
>The US no longer has a foreign policy explicitly built on the protection of American commercial interests abroad.

Ok, literally true I guess? Not "explicitly" maybe. But you continue

>If you believe that the foreign policy is built on that premise, but that the government is lying about it,

>If you haven't noticed, we no longer invade countries (e.g., Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela) when they threaten to nationalize industries that the US has a large stake in.

What the US does nowadays isn't less appalling. I suggest the recent book The Wikileaks Files: The World According to US Empire, which goes around the world looking at the way US leaders/diplomats/agencies think and talk and act in relation to various countries and regions. Not how their press releases describe it, but quoting from their actual communications and instructions and advice and reports, in great detail. Mostly it's about the 2000s and 2010s, with some historical context. Warning: it will be very disheartening.

In the 1990s I read most of Chomsky's earlier political books, with each book focusing on a particular country/region, and following up his sources - books, papers, media, the UN voting record etc. That was incredibly depressing and sickening. The US crushing any show of real democracy and independence in country after country. Often training torturers and arming death squads in the service of dictators they installed and armed etc. (When they weren't actually invading and/or bombing) And covering it up with self-righteous propaganda about being pro-democracy.. It's hard to believe at first, so different from the glossy CNN/NBC/CBS/ABC picture of the world.

>the burden of proof is on you to show that lying is in effect.

Just read The Wikileaks Files and you should be amply satisfied on that score. (But sounds like your whole world-view will be shattered, sorry for that.) Yes, "built on the protection of American commercial interests abroad", yes, "the government is lying about it", it's plain as day.

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int_19h 2344 days ago
Well, no, we don't invade them - we subsidize a coup in their country. It's much cheaper that way, when their own troops are performing occupation duties, paid for by the taxes of the people they occupy.

And if those people revolt, then there's a "legitimate government" asking us to help them in a "police action" - not a war, God forbid! And then we train their troops and give them munitions. And if all that fails, then we send our troops to protect the "legitimate government".

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jcranmer 2344 days ago
> And if those people revolt, then there's a "legitimate government" asking us to help them in a "police action" - not a war, God forbid! And then we train their troops and give them munitions. And if all that fails, then we send our troops to protect the "legitimate government".

And the last time this happened was... ?

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specialist 2344 days ago
It has never stopped.
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enriquepablo 2344 days ago
> then the burden of proof is on you to show that lying is in effect

Don't say on "me", I was just offering a plausible side. But I agree it is a difficult question. There is the point you make, but there is also the point made by asking "cui bono".

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specialist 2344 days ago
What measure of proof do you require?

One would have to be fantastically incredulous to imagine the USA invaded Iraq for anything other than the loot.

As @yesenadam notes, there's mountains of evidence, readily visible to anyone choosing to notice.

On your point of commercial interests, as though there's a distinction from trade policy, Saddam and Gadaffi had the poor sense to seriously propose abandoning petrodollars, sealing their fates.

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