No, there are well-defined standards for what makes a country democratic. No country that the US has invaded comes remotely close on any criterion, right?
Invaded, maybe not. Regime-changed? Most definitely. We've sponsored dictatorial coups against democratically elected socialists and communist governments, assassinations, etc.
Arguing that the US respects democracy would be quite a joke. I would also argue that "representative democracy" is no different than any other oligarchy, and the small amount of direct democracy and political power afforded to the average US citizen isn't all that much more than anywhere else in the world.
There likely was direct involvement by USA in overthrows of democracies of some Arab Spring countries, of Ecuador in the late 2000s, and maybe even Brazil and Argentina.
I can’t find anything about El Salvador that’s recent, and almost all of the overthrows of democratic governments happened during or before the 1970s (so 50 years ago.) I would also repeat I used the term invasion for a reason, had Russia used covert actions to bring a friendly regime to power in Ukraine it would be a very different situation.
I seriously hope I am straw manning you, but I don't think I am? Are you implying that invading countries and the consequent devastation of their population is something we should accept or tolerate because they don't have the "right" political system? The same political system where we are supposed to be able to oppose these wars and decide our own future, yet remain powerless to do in spite of largely overwhelming support against them?
In Iraq estimates for the total (and now severely dated) deathtoll [1] range from "just" hundreds of thousands to over a million. That's in a country that had a population of 25 million just before the war (2002). So the higher end of that measurement sees us having killed, or been otherwise responsible, for more the deaths of more than 4% of the population.
Beyond the barbaric and reckless brutality of it all, it also amounts to less than nothing. Democracy doesn't work in countries where people are polarized. In Iraq you have three mostly incompatible groups if Shia, Sunni, and Kurds. And large chunks of each group would be perfectly happy to see the others wiped off the face of this Earth. In this case democracy degenerates into an unstable tyranny of the majority. A problem we're likely to see if divisions within the country continue going in the current direction.
So in our brave new Iraq, the past 4 years have seen endless political assassination, insurrections, and the government killing hundreds of protesters against it all. Since the formation of the new Iraq style of government in 2004, only 2 of 6 prime ministers have managed to complete a single term. And one of the two guys that completed a single term was forced out by an insurrection shortly after the start of his second term.
The vast majority of Iraqis felt they were better off under Saddam. But hey, wrong political system - right? And Iraq looks like a utopia compared to most of the other countries we "democratized."
The vast majority of casualties of the Iraq war were due to the civil war that took place. You can blame the US for opening up a power vacuum but the civil war was brewing regardless and this is all still irrelevant since I specifically said Democratic.
I could make a list, and we could argue about it, but also, is "invading a democracy" the only horrific crime that a state can undertake, that it's citizens are responsible for preventing?
The post I was replying to actually said "waging unprovoked war on another nation," it didn't say anything about democracies, you've changed the language already, we can keep restricting the language legalistically until we are confident it applies only to what we accuse our enemies of and never to anything we can ever admit our own country has done and continues to do.
It shocks me that people don't realize how full of war and misery the world is every day, and how much the US government is responsible for. That the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a shameful travesty of violence only makes it more shameful that people turn it into some jingoistic "our population is more moral than their population" thing, that instead of using it as an avenue to empathy with refugees and victims of violence everywhere, we use it as a cudgel to paint some other population of day to day people as especially evil, when we aren't any better at figuring out how to deal with our complicity, in fact this projection is a way of avoiding it. We have nothing to be held responsible for on behalf of our government while living comfortable lives as our government commits crimes that we don't know how to stop, it's only them, who deserve punishment for not being willing to sacrifice everything to do something about their government.
The real relevance of "democracy" is probably on the state committing the crimes. If the USA is more of a democracy than, say, Russia, than the USA's residents hypothetically have more power over it's governments actions, and should be held more responsible for them. (Although I can say I don't feel much power).
As other commentators have said this statement is tautological.
Russians could same something to the same tune: “how many territories have we invaded that don’t have Russian heritage” and you get a similar tautological statement.
I find it surprising that people can be against Russia invading Ukraine but in the same sentence still legitimize the United State’s numerous invasions in other countries.
Except they can’t because there are quantified indexes and criteria the world has agreed upon to describe democracy, freedom and human rights. Anyone attempting to equate the US, by every definition a democracy with economic and political freedoms, to Russia is not an honest attempt. If the US invaded Canada or some nation that met the definitions of a free, democratic, society you’d have a point but they haven’t which is my point.
I can be against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and point out that the nations the US invaded were authoritarian in nature. I never said I supported US invasions just that they are not the same. We can also just drop the Cold War and start from 1990, since we’re comparing Russia and the US here, and you’ll see that Russia has invaded multiple democracies now (Georgia and Ukraine) while the US quite literally hasn’t. Whataboutism is dumb but it’s especially dumb when the thing you are whatabouting isn’t even close to the same. Overthrowing Saddam or the Taliban is nowhere near the same as invading a democracy because you’re afraid you won’t be able to dominate your neighbors anyone once they join the democratic alliance that was built to prevent you doing just that.
This is fun because American ideology makes this question tautological.
Any answer that could possibly be given will be invalid, because we wouldn't have invaded them if they were really a democracy.
Also I don't imagine that dead civilians particularly care whether the invaders who shot them were doing it in the name of democracy or not.
No, there are well-defined standards for what makes a country democratic. No country that the US has invaded comes remotely close on any criterion, right?
Invaded, maybe not. Regime-changed? Most definitely. We've sponsored dictatorial coups against democratically elected socialists and communist governments, assassinations, etc. Arguing that the US respects democracy would be quite a joke. I would also argue that "representative democracy" is no different than any other oligarchy, and the small amount of direct democracy and political power afforded to the average US citizen isn't all that much more than anywhere else in the world.
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That we know of, El Salvador.
There are quite a few entries in that list, and these are things we are aware of today after FOIA. This list is only confirmed intervention by the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_United_S...
There likely was direct involvement by USA in overthrows of democracies of some Arab Spring countries, of Ecuador in the late 2000s, and maybe even Brazil and Argentina.
I can’t find anything about El Salvador that’s recent, and almost all of the overthrows of democratic governments happened during or before the 1970s (so 50 years ago.) I would also repeat I used the term invasion for a reason, had Russia used covert actions to bring a friendly regime to power in Ukraine it would be a very different situation.
I seriously hope I am straw manning you, but I don't think I am? Are you implying that invading countries and the consequent devastation of their population is something we should accept or tolerate because they don't have the "right" political system? The same political system where we are supposed to be able to oppose these wars and decide our own future, yet remain powerless to do in spite of largely overwhelming support against them?
In Iraq estimates for the total (and now severely dated) deathtoll [1] range from "just" hundreds of thousands to over a million. That's in a country that had a population of 25 million just before the war (2002). So the higher end of that measurement sees us having killed, or been otherwise responsible, for more the deaths of more than 4% of the population.
Beyond the barbaric and reckless brutality of it all, it also amounts to less than nothing. Democracy doesn't work in countries where people are polarized. In Iraq you have three mostly incompatible groups if Shia, Sunni, and Kurds. And large chunks of each group would be perfectly happy to see the others wiped off the face of this Earth. In this case democracy degenerates into an unstable tyranny of the majority. A problem we're likely to see if divisions within the country continue going in the current direction.
So in our brave new Iraq, the past 4 years have seen endless political assassination, insurrections, and the government killing hundreds of protesters against it all. Since the formation of the new Iraq style of government in 2004, only 2 of 6 prime ministers have managed to complete a single term. And one of the two guys that completed a single term was forced out by an insurrection shortly after the start of his second term.
The vast majority of Iraqis felt they were better off under Saddam. But hey, wrong political system - right? And Iraq looks like a utopia compared to most of the other countries we "democratized."
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
The vast majority of casualties of the Iraq war were due to the civil war that took place. You can blame the US for opening up a power vacuum but the civil war was brewing regardless and this is all still irrelevant since I specifically said Democratic.
Arguments supporting presidents who committed literal genocide on domestic ethnic groups won't last long in this debate.
I could make a list, and we could argue about it, but also, is "invading a democracy" the only horrific crime that a state can undertake, that it's citizens are responsible for preventing?
The post I was replying to actually said "waging unprovoked war on another nation," it didn't say anything about democracies, you've changed the language already, we can keep restricting the language legalistically until we are confident it applies only to what we accuse our enemies of and never to anything we can ever admit our own country has done and continues to do.
It shocks me that people don't realize how full of war and misery the world is every day, and how much the US government is responsible for. That the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a shameful travesty of violence only makes it more shameful that people turn it into some jingoistic "our population is more moral than their population" thing, that instead of using it as an avenue to empathy with refugees and victims of violence everywhere, we use it as a cudgel to paint some other population of day to day people as especially evil, when we aren't any better at figuring out how to deal with our complicity, in fact this projection is a way of avoiding it. We have nothing to be held responsible for on behalf of our government while living comfortable lives as our government commits crimes that we don't know how to stop, it's only them, who deserve punishment for not being willing to sacrifice everything to do something about their government.
The real relevance of "democracy" is probably on the state committing the crimes. If the USA is more of a democracy than, say, Russia, than the USA's residents hypothetically have more power over it's governments actions, and should be held more responsible for them. (Although I can say I don't feel much power).
As other commentators have said this statement is tautological.
Russians could same something to the same tune: “how many territories have we invaded that don’t have Russian heritage” and you get a similar tautological statement.
I find it surprising that people can be against Russia invading Ukraine but in the same sentence still legitimize the United State’s numerous invasions in other countries.
Except they can’t because there are quantified indexes and criteria the world has agreed upon to describe democracy, freedom and human rights. Anyone attempting to equate the US, by every definition a democracy with economic and political freedoms, to Russia is not an honest attempt. If the US invaded Canada or some nation that met the definitions of a free, democratic, society you’d have a point but they haven’t which is my point.
I can be against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and point out that the nations the US invaded were authoritarian in nature. I never said I supported US invasions just that they are not the same. We can also just drop the Cold War and start from 1990, since we’re comparing Russia and the US here, and you’ll see that Russia has invaded multiple democracies now (Georgia and Ukraine) while the US quite literally hasn’t. Whataboutism is dumb but it’s especially dumb when the thing you are whatabouting isn’t even close to the same. Overthrowing Saddam or the Taliban is nowhere near the same as invading a democracy because you’re afraid you won’t be able to dominate your neighbors anyone once they join the democratic alliance that was built to prevent you doing just that.
Why does it matter if it's a democracy?
Because then we can use the non-democracy excuse to invade whoever we want.
We invade functioning countries about every four years.