:lamo
Sorry. Not buying that.
I didn't realize this until another friend on mine posted it to another forum, so I can't take full credit.
If you review the history of the 20th century, you'll find more instances where the US left after the military conflict, only to have something of greater evil raise up form the ashes.
Post WW I bailed on Europe, the world got Hitler, Bolsheviks and other fascists came to rise and got WW II.
We stood by as Japan raped Nanking and we got Perl Harbor.
Post WW II we stayed in Europe, it flourished and is Democratic.
We stayed in Japan, it flourished and is Democratic.
We've stayed in Korea and Taiwan, there are prosperous and free people, and trusted allies.
The Persian Civil War wasn't our problem, now we have radical Islamist all over.
No Russians in Afghanistan, so not problem, the Taliban moved in, and attacked US soil from there.
Now we are pretending that the Syrian Civil War and the unrest in the Pakistan frontier are not our problem.
What do you think is going to happen next?
That in itself does also substantiate that the US is a noble force of good on the planet, more so than anything that the left can say and uses to denigrate the nation. It also dispels the idea of "needless wars and their resulting quagmires".
Would you rather deal with it early, before it grows into a larger problem? Or would you rather deal with it later when it's a larger problem? Because dealing with it you will.
Its not that simple at all.
The winners unjustly punished the losers in WWI, creating the resentment and severe poverty in Germany that Hitler and the Nazis successfully exploited.
The winners unjustly punished the losers in WWI, breaking up the Ottoman empire and creating new, and often arbitrary, national borders which destabilized the middle east. The middle east remains unstable.
The USA prepared for war with Japan, with a military base and warships stationed in Hawaii and we got Pearl Harbor.
We bombed Germany into complete submission. This time we did not collectively punish and impoverish the losers of the war, instead we helped them rebuild. We did not allow Germany to rebuild their military, which helped them flourish economically.
We bombed Japan into complete submission, did not allow them to rebuild their military which helped them flourish economically, and we helped them rebuild.
To insure a supply of oil and in the name of anti-communism, we destabilized several middle eastern countries by assassinating and/or overthrowing their leaders and supporting oppressive dictators, now we have radical Islamists and dictators all over the region.
We destabilized several Asian, South and Central nations by assassinating their leaders and supporting oppressive dictators, leading to several ongoing long-term guerrilla wars and allowing criminal organizations to exploit the instability and gain political power.
We refused to support any of the many anti-colonialist independence efforts in the third world and instead sided with the imperialists, their puppet governments and brutal dictators in the guise of fighting communism, leading to several ongoing long-term guerrilla wars and instability.
The Russians destroyed much of Afghanistan, we supported and funded the Taliban because they fought Russia. After the Russians leave, the Taliban terrorizes Afghanistan with their extreme theocracy.
We allied ourselves with a fragile coalition fighting the Syrian government that included radical Islamists, dropped bombs, contributed to a huge refugee crisis and the spread of militant radical Islamists in the region.
In summary, we have had some successes with our foreign interventions but many more disasters which lead to much of the world's current violence and strife. We can do things to other countries, but we have been proven unable to predict the ultimate results. We were most successful in Japan and Germany because they were so defeated they could not resist our intervention. That required genocidal levels of violence and destruction, which may have been justified in those countries due to their extreme aggression, but that level of violence is rarely justifiable morally or strategically. We also refrained from imposing or allowing commercial (corporate, big business) exploitation of Germany and Japan and the rest of Europe, as we did in third world countries, the areas that remain unstable today.
Recommended reading:
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA Paperback – May 20, 2008
by Tim Weiner (Author)