Featured Poll: Even in GOP, little appetite for military involvement in Ukraine

No--it's realistically acknowledging our limitations and realizing there are many other nations that could step up to the plate if they feel threatened by tyranny. It's also understanding that the founding fathers never intended our nation to be the policeman of the world.

It's also opening one's eyes to the fact that in many cases our nation has supported (overtly or covertly) the overthrow of democratically elected governments in many nations and has propped up autocrats in their places. In other words, our foreign policy has actually SUPPORTED tyranny in these cases when it has been deemed beneficial to the Empire's interests.

 

... and surrending the rest of the world to tyranny. You can paint it in whatever pretty little self-interested colors you wish, but that is the bottom line.

Totally irrelevant. The founding fathers didn't see their efforts as creating a world superpower. They say their efforts as creating a haven for freedom, liberty, democracy, and religious liberty.

I defy you to prove that statement. Give an example, I'll show you to be wrong.

Ah, I see ... one of those who sees this nation as the "primary exporter of imperialism" or some such neo-socialist pap. No problem. Example away. I'll still show you to be wrong.

 

You don't think we did just that in Pakistan ? Weren't we borrowing like 5 billion a month from China to prop up Mushariff ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afwbHUSweL0

 

No, Paul was being disingenuous, as are most Libertarians in trying to discuss the national debt in public. They oversimplify as a scare tactic.

We don't borrow directly from any country. We sell treasury bonds, notes and bills on the open market, and whoever buys them buys them at the market asking price we, the United States, put on them. We have no control over who buys those financial instruments, and Paul didn't bother to tell people that 57% of all such instruments are bought by the American people.

China owns roughly 9% of our debt. Japan owns about 6%. No other nation owns as much as 3%, as most of it is held by the American public. Yes, it's still borrowed money, but Paul blatantly lied in order to make a point that wasn't truthful to begin with.

 

Ah, let's see...backing the Shah, Pinochet, numerous central American dictators, and so forth....

Saith the neocon.

 

A king, not a democratically elected official, from a long line of uninterrupted kings going back twenty-five centuries.

"Backing" is hardly a proper word, though the U.S. did actively impede Allende's rise to power, but obviously failed. As for participating in Pinochet's coupe, there is no evidence in CIA documents released in 2000 that such interference occurred. The CIA had numerous members of Pinochet's government, including the state police agency, on their informant's payroll, a move designed to keep Pinochet in check. Most of Central and South America were "lose/lose" dilemmas, given that doing nothing turned the entire South-Western hemisphere communist, and doing anything smacked of interference. Given today's milquetoast foreign policy which seems likely to allow a reconstitution of the old Soviet apparatus, that would be an ugly scenario indeed.

 

Ok, but my point about the money being used to keep a dictator, who overthrew a democratically elected government, in power stands. We have been meddling money and personal wise, directly, in the mid-east since 1953, I think. When did we install the Shah of Iran ?

 

We didn't. What we did was overthrow the Prime Minister, who had nationalized Iran's oil industry, so we could bring back back private firms. 1953. TPAJAX Project.

 

We didn't install him. As I said below (or above, depending on the way you choose to see posts displayed), Iran had been under a monarchy continuously since the Persian Empire. There was a "democratically elected" president in 1941, Mohammad Mosaddegh, following a Soviet invasion of Iran that same year. He nationalized the oil companies and through foreign firms out of the country, and yes, he was deposed with a U.S. backed rebellion, backed to the extent that we supplied the rebels with arms and money to overthrow the communist regime. The prospect of giving the Soviets full control over Iranian oils fields, and by extension, most of the rest of the Mideast had that government been allowed to stand and Soviet adventurism not blocked. As it happened, both Western intervention and by the Second World War quelled the Soviets' appetite for conquering the Mideast. The Shah reassumed the Pahlavi throne on September 16 of that year. The rebellion was entirely fought by Iranian nationals.

Had the Soviets not been stopped there, today they would stand astride the Mideast. The financial crises that brought down the empire would never have developed, given the riches they would have acquired in controlling the world's oil supply.

 

We found out in 1999, the CIA was directly involved in the ouster of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz, again, because private fruit companies were threatened.

 

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/ir/pdf/ChurchIR_3D_Trujillo.pdf

 

I don't know how I got the above link posted, it is not the one I wanted to put up, and it doesn't address the point at all.

 

In the 1950s it was the "evil United Fruit Company" that was the reason for U.S. intelligence and diplomatic interests in Central and South America. In the 1970s, the boogieman became the oil companies, and that thought-line continues into today as the liberals' lies about why we have interest in keeping the Mideast free and open to the world economy. In reality, the interests of the U.S. to stem the tide of spreading communism was the end-game of these intelligence operations, to protect private interests not just of U.S. companies, which were of minimal consideration by the U.S., but those private interests within those countries where communism was attempting to gain a foothold. And now it is to prevent radical Islam from becoming the Colossus astride the Mideast.

Yes, the USF complained that Árbenz' government had taken the vast landholdings the company had in Guatemala, and there was some political reaction on Capitol Hill. But overall, the U.S. government wasn't concerned about Árbenz' actions. Not until he began speaking along the lines of the communists, urging the lower classes to be at economic and social war with the upper classes. CIA Director Allen Dulles, though criticized widely for reaching these conclusions, accurately stated that these actions were the direct result of Soviet influence with Árbenz, and represented a "Soviet beachhead" in the Western Hemisphere.

As with Chile a couple decades later, the CIA undertook covert operations to fund and supply a rebel army to overthrow the Árbenz government. At the time the revolution occurred, his government was weak and disorganized militarily, and the revolution still took three years. And yes, it was a military coupe that eventually replaced Árbenz. Two successive military governments, neither of which lasted long, were followed by the 36-year Guatemalan Civil War. Anyone who doubts communists were interested in the events occurring in that Central American country either prior to or after U.S. intervention via the CIA should pay particular attention to the Soviet funding that reached the communist-backed counterinsurgency that sought to reestablish socialist government in Guatemala.

 

There is another choice and we do not have the money to spend. It just is not there. It will have to be borrowed and then billions in interest must be paid on it. However weak it may make us militarily, we need to take care of our debt first. And then work our way back. And Reagan was not overseeing a 17 trillion dollar debt.

 

TNID, we can argue the merits of the actions, but you have to concede we have sent money, weapons, and even troops to get rid of democratically elected regimes, and we have propped up dictators.

 

Which was precisely my point. Yet, the propaganda machine for perpetual war declares that our interventions are for the sake of "freedom" in "democracy" (or to stem the tide of "communism" back in the good old days). The actual facts demonstrate the Orwellian nature of these claims. TYRANNY and indeed TOTALITARIANISM may exist on both sides of the polictical spectrum.

 

Once down, we will never recover. That's the beginning of the end.

Nonetheless, he put us in debt in order to bankrupt the Soviets. It worked.

Again, I'm not anxious to pile the debt deeper and higher, and would prefer any other alternative. But we must draw a line in the sand and enforce it against the aspirations of a KGB thug wishing to revitalize the old Soviet empire.

If anyone has any ideas that don't involve virtual capitulation to Putin, I'd welcome them. As of this moment, however, that is exactly what our Little Marxist Dictator is doing.

I didn't say we haven't. But it has never been for "big fruit" or "big oil" as the liberal ninnies have contended.

Whether you want to admit it or not, there is a continual battle of good vs. evil in this world, and sociopolitically it takes the form of democratic governments vs. repressive governments, be they socialist or fanatical religious in nature. Those interventions were at times, indeed, overtly ideological, but nonetheless necessary. I notice that none of you have argued my points that, had we not met Soviet adventurism of either overt or covert natures in this hemisphere and the other, we would not be debating today online about the wisdom of those past interventions, as the failure to undertake them would have resulted in Soviet victory.

You might want to look at Orwell's personal and political views on how to deal with communism. Remember, 1984 was about a repressive socialist regime based in Great Britain, not about a democracy of British or American style facing down such socialist opposition.

 

Nah, it ain't the Ruskies you're concerned about, and it definitely is not America that you care for. You're heart is somewhere else, Likudnik. Is 'The Lobby' paying you to promote these neocon fallacies here on the BB? Are you getting a check from Likud?

There's estimated 65 million premil dispies here in the U.S. alone that worship and adore the nation Israel and believe we're in the last days, and these are the Christian Zionist base that is the very lifeline of the neocons. If they 'wise up', the neocons are dead, a thing of the past.

 

That's hilarious!! Thanks for that.

 

Laugh. Time will tell. There's something about 17 trillion dollars debt for this country that just doesn't compute with you. You keep pushing for us to just keep on keepin' on as if a day of reckoning is not going to come. When __, you going to high tail it to Israel?