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by damien-rembert 666 days ago
As a non American, I'm not sure I get what you meant there, could you explain?
3 comments

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

Not every case will fit the parent’s criteria but it’s important to understand how the US’ realpolitik has affected the world. We (the US) are not always the white knight.

Also please add the context of Operation Condor [0] and the School of the Americas [1].

Also more recently the US participated actively in the coups in Ecuador, Bolívia, Brazil, Paraguay, ...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_condor

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_americas

The U.S. makes mistakes in terms of doing the wrong thing. But because it’s a democracy, it is capable of recognizing those mistakes and attempting to make amends. For example the internment of people of Japanese descent during world war 2, it was terrible for the folks rounded up and put into camps. It took 40 years, but we acknowledged it was wrong.

“In 1988, Congress passed, and President Reagan signed, Public Law 100-383 – the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 – that acknowledged the injustice of "internment," apologized for it, and provided a $20,000 cash payment to each person who was incarcerated.”

If you are in a dictatorship, that acknowledgement of a past wrong is absolutely impossible. That’s why democracy is so important. George Takei makes this point much more eloquently that I ever could, and it’s why he believes so strongly in democracy.

>If you are in a dictatorship, that acknowledgement of a past wrong is absolutely impossible

Immediately after Stalin died Khruschev went on to destalinize the country, with the USSR still being a "dictatorship" by any reasonable definition.

Did he apologize for any of Stalin’s actions? That’s was parent is saying. There was no apology for Holomodor, for example.
>Did he apologize for any of Stalin’s actions?

Yes, that was the whole point, he explicitly went around apologizing for Stalin and a lot of the stuff he did.. Rehabilitation of Volga germans, freeing political prisoners, partial? abolition of prison labor, shaming/removing Stalin's lieutenants, etc.

>There was no apology for Holodomor

There wasn't any apology for that, not that I'm aware of.

I think they are commenting on atlassianshrugged's tacit assumption that american foreign policy and military power is always used in support of democracy against totalitarianism, with a sarcastic reference to a socialist democracy that the CIA helped overthrow and replace with a military Junta.