I'll start here.
leonmarino said:
I would also like to say that it is completely unnecessary to use words like "bullshit", "rotten bastards" and multiple *** to make your point. I feel offended that you not only misinterpret my words you also make personal offences.
Well, now that I've had some time to sleep on it, I can honestly say some of what I said was unwarranted, such as the all of the
ad hominem attacks. If I misrepresented or misinterpreted your posts, I apologize. I reacted the way I did because I was deeply offended. People are screaming at each other here in the United States almost as badly as they were before the U.S. Civil War over what is going on in Iraq, let alone everything else. I, personally, am sick and tired of all of the anti-American sniping that happens on these (and other) forums.
Was Jim Crow acceptable in European terms? I cannot speak for the rest of Europe, but Holland does not have a history of lynching and segregation. Holland had its colonies and slave trade for sure, but the discrimination did not continue till deep into the 20th century.
No, Holland has no history of lynching, but that is because Holland is much more homogeneous than the United States. The slave-trade was begun under the Europeans. The United Kingdom did not outlaw slavery until the early 19th century. And the doctrines of Aryanism and Social Darwinism were born in Europe, and Jim Crow is acceptable under both philosophies.
As for Jim Crow, northerners were not happy about it. The moment blacks began to protest during the 1960s, white northerners (especially college students) began to march and protest with them. Groups like the Freedom Riders would travel to the southern states and attempt to protect blacks attempting to vote.
The thirteenth and fourteenth amendments, made immediately after the U.S. Civil War, guaranteed full citizenship and the right to vote to all persons born in the United States, regardless of color. Jim Crow is a product of the southern Democrat politics. The north never advocated it. The reason it wasn't stamped down on with both feet is because we didn't want to fight another war, and also because Abraham Lincoln was dead, and his successors had sucked the marrow from the bones of the south instead of attempting to heal the breach, like Lincoln wanted. Jim Crow was allowed in order to heal the wounds and give the southerners an olive branch.
I was just merely expressing my opinion that saying that "And as empires go, historically speaking, we have been the kindest empire in human history" is a statement that is a bit biased and overlooks some darker pages and footnotes of American history.
Find any better ones. And please, don't try to apply anachronistic morality on them. Just find a better one.
The US has done good things and bad things; I believe that we agree on the facts, it is just that our perspectives on things differ.
Given your statements, I can only assume your perspective is that the United States is a greedy warmongering nation that has only acted out of its own devious and maniacal self-interest throughout its entire history.
This would totally ignore the fact that there are millions of liberal Democrat Americans waving signs screaming that we aren't altruistic enough and need to donate more money to starving people worldwide.
There is a possibility that oil is a major factor in the invasion of Iraq.
I was talking about the tsunami. Oh, by the way, I noticed that nobody donated anything to the Hurricane Katrina relief fund. Except Americans, that is. Huh. Evil imperialists. We give money to victims of a disaster half a world away, and nobody even gives us so much as a cent when we suffer from one.
Molding Iraq into a democratic country and installing lots of US firms there would be very good for the US economy wouldn't it? Do you believe that it is an act of altruism?
Invading Iraq has been wreaking havoc on our economy. Prices keep rising, but our wages don't. Gas keeps going up, but our expendible capital doesn't. In addition, the people screaming the loudest for our invasion of Iraq are the Iraqi-Americans and Iraqi immigrants. (Iranian-Americans and Iranian immigrants are also screaming at the top of their lungs for us to clean Iran's clock, too).
I mean, similar dictatorial regimes exists in Sub-Saharan countries, but why doesn't America send its troops there?
If we did, would you support us? Or would you sneer and say that it was a neo-colonial imperialist attempt to create a new market for American firms?
By the way, under Clinton's administration, we had troops in Sub-Saharan countries. After he botched Somalia, as well as a few other incidents, we've pretty much pulled out of there. Our lack of support in those areas from the UN (who sent us there in the first place) pretty much went to show how worthwhile that organization is.
Now if the US would care so much about democracies it would end the dictatorial regime by force and try and fine the companies involved wouldn't it? Maybe the US government does not care about democracies or dictatorial regimes if they can still get their hands on the things they want: oil.
First you attack us for conquering the world and having our fingers in everyone's pies, and then you attack us for not having our fingers in enough pies? Or, rather, the pies that you would approve of?
Yes, oil is incredibly important to our economy. Everything hinges on it. The rising prices of gasoline and diesel have hit the American trucking industry between the legs. Because of that, transportation of goods is more expensive, making those goods more expensive. People have way less disposable income.
But, like I said, we are apparently not getting oil from Iraq. Despite the war, and despite our "victory" our gas prices are still 3x that what they used to be. And despite what the newspapers say, the average American isn't getting his wallet emptied at the pump. He's getting hit in the grocery store, because bread and milk prices are still rising.
However, in assessing America's motives in the past and present concerning intervention in foreign countries, you might overestimate altruism.
And my point is that you, and everyone else, underestimate it. You'd assign an ulterior motive to every single action we've taken since we were formed as a nation. And you also expect Americans to shut up and take it, hang our heads, and say, "What horrible little children we've been." Well, if caster51 is allowed to get away with believing that there was no Rape of Nanking (I notice you and a few others were strangely silent on that one), then I must ask why Americans must be constantly confronted with our evils and never praised for what good we've done? We
do confront our evils. You apparently have never heard about the constant anti-war protests that have been going on since 2003. You haven't read the American textbooks that paint General Custer as a murderer. You haven't watched movies like
Dances With Wolves that portray the Native Americans as victims of white aggression. We know what we've done. We know how much of it was right, and how much of it was wrong. We don't need people from other countries waving their fingers at us when they fail to come to terms with their own bloody pasts.
osias said:
You don't mention the philippine-american war?
The US got the philippines from the Spanish, without consulting any filipinos. The filipinos were fighting for their independece against the Spanish, and they already declared their independence before the American troops occupied their land. Estimates say that 250,000 to 1,000,000 filipino civilians died of war and after-effects of the war. The US took away their independence.
The United States gave them their independence after fighting against the rebellion. Period. They got their independence. I will reapeat that one more time, in case you didn't read it.
THE UNITED STATES GAVE THE PHILIPPINES THEIR INDEPENDENCE.
A quote from Wikipedia:
Some Americans, notably William Jennings Bryan, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, and other members of the American Anti-Imperialist League, strongly objected to the annexation of the Philippines. Other Americans mistakenly thought that the Philippines wanted to become part of the United States. Anti-imperialist movements claimed that the United States had betrayed its lofty goals of the Spanish-American War by becoming a colonial power, merely replacing Spain in the Philippines. Other anti-imperialists opposed annexation on racist grounds. Among those who opposed annexation were individuals such as Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina, who feared that annexation of the Philippines would lead to an influx of non-white immigrants, thus undermining white racial purity in America. As news of atrocities committed in subduing the Philippines arrived in the United States, support for the war flagged.
Mark Twain famously opposed the war by using his influence in the press. He felt it betrayed the ideals of American Democracy by not allowing the Filipino people to choose their own destiny.
"There is the case of the Philippines. I have tried hard, and yet I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess. Perhaps we could not have avoided it -- perhaps it was inevitable that we should come to be fighting the natives of those islands -- but I cannot understand it, and have never been able to get at the bottom of the origin of our antagonism to the natives. I thought we should act as their protector -- not try to get them under our heel. We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now -- why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation." [22]
Some later historians, such as Howard Zinn, cite the Philippine-American War as an example of American imperialism.
Except for racist
Southern leaders (South Carolina is a Southern state), most of the reasoning against the war was simply because many of us believed it ran contrary to our goals.
In 1916, less than three years after the revolt was squashed (i.e. the evil US empire won), we gave them self-government and promised them independence. After we reconquered them from the Japanese, we gave the Philippines their independence in 1946.
BTW, "sixty years after capturing Korea"? Japan didn't annex Korea for such a long time.
Yeah, in the 1880s.
You like to compare who is more evil, who is more kinder, but what's the point?
You apparently missed it. The point is simply that everyone thinks its cool to hate on the United States, while forgetting their own pasts, their own histories, and their own atrocities. It isn't comparing. It's realizing that when you point your index finger at someone, you've got three other fingers pointing right back at you.
Let's assume that the US was not as worse as any other country. Say you killed 10 people, and i killed 20 people, and you were not as worse as me, so you can get away with it? Where does that sense of moral superiority come from?
I dunno, you tell me. You are the one saying I'm horrible and deserve punishment for killing 10 people while forgetting that you have the blood of 20 on your hands.
Is that all? I heard that 90% of American schools do not teach vietnam? Is it true?
No. It is in American textbooks. It is part of the educational curriculum. And it is a huge part of American popular culture. Dozens of anti-war movies center on Vietnam, and the horrors of the war. Many of those movies paint U.S. soldiers as victims of a heartless American government who sent them there to die, while many others portray many American soldiers as cruel and sadistic, like
Casualties of War.
If we are educated about the Vietnam War, it is from a definite bias against our government and ourselves.
They did issue a number of apologies, although most of them were not accepted.
This is new to me. If you can give me a few sources, I'll give them some thought. I'm not challenging you on this, but I would definitely like to see some facts for future reference.
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It doesn't feel good to have someone throw the gauntlet down against your country, does it? I've noticed that no Americans here post scathing criticism of other countries, especially Japan. Considering our two countries fought a bitter war with millions of corpses between us, we might have a lot of reason to hate one another, yet I haven't seen any Americans on this forum attempt to spit in the face of the Japanese.
I have, however, seen people from everywhere throw mud on the United States. Comments about Americans being stupid, evil, imperialist, and treacherous keep getting thrown about nonchalantly, as if nobody is ever going to be offended by it, and everyone simply accepts that Americans are black-hearted scum.
I don't know how any of the other Americans think about this. Some have been indoctrinated by our far-left-wingers into thinking that we are the root of the world's evil and deserve to be destroyed. Other, more moderate Americans on these forums are strangely silent whenever someone sees fit to provoke or criticise us.
I have reacted the way I have because I am simply sick and tired of it. I know that no nation in history has acted purely out of altruism, but I also disagree with those who would refuse to believe that altruism plays no role in any of the actions of the United States, such as rebuilding Europe and Japan, the Berlin Airlift, getting shot at trying to feed people in Mogadishu '92, or Tsunami relief. I don't blame the Japanese for Nanking any more than I blame Germans for Hitler or Britain for Dresden. But I find it disheartening when, although I will not level judgement upon them, I find that the hammer of judgement is gleefully slammed down upon my head by others. Ever since I was in Middle School, I've been taught that the United States is evil, that it is a greedy, selfish, and sinister empire, and that the rest of the world is comprised of its victims, and there is no redemption for any American except to hate his own country. And I have a big problem with that.