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Comment by panick21_

7 hours ago

Yeah the world piece like all the wars in the middle east, Vietnam, proxy conflicts all over the world and so on and so on. I'm not blaming the US for all of these wars but they also didn't prevent them. And the US did overthrow many democracies and often made things much worse, Iran being a great example, but there are many others. I could go on.

Peace in Europe was maintained mostly by people in democracies generally wanting to work together. Yes the US had something to do with that as they supported that after WW2 but over the last 50 years, people in democracies generally don't fight each other. And more so by the threat of the Soviet Union that was so clearly the more dangerous option. Its easy to make allies if Stalin is on the other side.

And outside of Europe the US hardly maintained peace.

Nuclear weapons maintained 'peace' between Soviets and the US more then anything else.

And Europe has always pulled its weight in science, technology and engineering.

4 comments

panick21_

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peterfirefly  5 hours ago

> Vietnam

The US was actually on the right side in that one (just like in Korea). The Communists were not exactly the good guys and their "agricultural and personnel reforms" lead to drastically reduced food production and starvation and death.

Blame the US for real things instead, such as supporting the wrong side in Afghanistan in the '80s or ensuring the survival of the Soviet Union in the '40s.

  • sampullman  3 hours ago

    It's not so simple, the rampant corruption under Ngô Đình Diệm, misappropriation of aid, etc. shouldn't just be swept under the rug. Hindsight says remaining capitalist probably would have been better for the average person, but it wasn't so obvious at the time.

    Johnson was a warmonger, exaggerating (or possibly faking) the Gulf of Tonkin engagements to justify full escalation was a crime that led to the death of 60,000 Americans, hundreds of thousands more with PTSD, and 2 million+ murdered Vietnamese civilians. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of birth defects caused by agent orange and the still ongoing effort to clean up dioxins from the environment.

  • kakacik  4 hours ago

    Tell it to cca 2 millions civilians that died in Vietnam as a direct result of failed US invasion (I really mean just civilians mostly bombed into oblivion, entire human lives list is around 3 million). As in, vast majority of them would be alive is US didn't try their failed adventure. Tonkin gulf is a classic US made up war for power mongering reasons.

    Telling 'we're the good guys' while regularly bombing entire villages into oblivion with napalm on some vague suspicions ('we heard some gunshot when flying around so we blasted them' scenarios). My Lai and many others.

    If this is how US population views their past fuckups then no wonder we are where we are, objectivity ain't easy if one is on the wrong side, isn't it.

    Supporting wrong side in Afghanistan? Against Soviet invasion? Sometimes, often even there are no good sides.

    If you guys didn't support Soviet union in 40s (which they vehemently denied since then but its their inferiority complex, the issue with russian mentality since forever), there would be no massive eastern front with most german losses and wehrmacht spread out too thinly, and D day would be crushed like nothing. History would be very different in Europe and globally.