so, the end justifies the means? no, it doesn't! supporting a dictator who tortures and kills his own people is wrong, even though you do it for stability reasonsJohnG@lt wrote:
A) We don't have an empire so you can stop quoting Lenin. We don't fit inside of your Leninist world view. Sorry.Mekstizzle wrote:
Nope.JohnG@lt wrote:
Christ, you have to be trolling. You can't possibly be this stupid.
There's many people out there with the view that the US needs to do everything within its power to keep the status quo. To keep certain people/countries where they belong. No matter what, as long as it keeps the US standing good. Which is fundamentally a reasonable (but crazy, evil, hellish) standpoint for someone in any country to have. It's more realistic for people in the US than most others, because it can do it.
All I'm saying is how it is for the people who hold opinions like that. It means war, lots of it. I don't know why you guys are getting so uncomfortable/defensive about it. That's how it is. You can't get your empire/hegemony without being crazy.
B) The primary reason any country anywhere in the world wishes to have stability is because stability is necessary for trade. The Middle East just happens to have the poor luck to be sitting on the worlds largest deposits of what we in the industrialized world require for our societies to function, oil. This doesn't make us evil. This doesn't make oil evil either. It's just a fact of life. If the price of oil were to fluctuate all over the place because of disrupted production or war or whatever else that also means the prices of every other good we purchase would fluctuate with it. You can't have economic growth without stability. They are reliant on one another. So, if that means my country promotes stability as its foreign policy I'm all for it. If the people living in the regions find their governments intolerable, they can either rise up like Egyptians and Tunisians did (neither of which possesses oil) or they can move. I'm not going to shed any tears for people living in oppressive nations because it's their own choice. They're adults and possess free will.
If we were empire building we would've invaded Venezuela and kicked out Chavez. Or we would've annexed Mexico or any number of other things. So fuck off with that imperialistic America bullshit. The only time we've ever been guilty of that is when we fought the Spanish in 1898 and took over the Philippines and Cuba (neither of which we possess today).
and yeah, i bet most north koreans live there by their own choice. it's not like they are deterred (sp) from leaving their country (or will be butchered if they rise up against the government/military)...