One thing that our foreign policy has excelled at over the last two decades has been on inflicting untold misery on millions of innocent people. Our sanctions regimes alone, on Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea, Iran, Yemen, and probably a dozen other countries has achieved next to nothing in terms of benefit to the US. Yet our policy elite seems addicted to continuing these malicious actions. What makes it even worse, is that many of these sanctions were levied after we had destroyed the physical and social infrastructure of some of these countries. Pure evil.
There’s a strange moral reasoning at play. The model of applying a sanctions regime is a kind of virtue signaling that we, the US, is making a statement of disapproval of a certain government, even if—as is usually the case-- those sanctions are not effective in general or effective in advancing US interests in particular or actually have terrible humanitarian consequences as implemented. It's the signal that matters, not the all-too-predictable consequences. The sanctions on Iraq in the 90’s is a classic example.
Similarly, there’s that disdain for diplomacy and “negotiating with terrorists”, in which those approaches are moral abominations because they signal an implied US imprimatur of legitimacy on those governments even if they advance US interests and avoid conflict (or nuclear proliferation).
The reasoning seems to be that all moral culpability for the negative humanitarian impacts of that sanctions rest on the “bad actor” governments, whose actions US policymakers assert precipitated the need for those sanctions. There’s no apparent constraint for proportionality or justifiability in their use in light of the economic hardships they can cause on the usually innocent population or any barrier to prevent them from being used as a naked act of aggression to destabilize governments. We can do all that and still maintain the delusion of believing ourselves to being the “good guys.” It’s a kind of moral narcissism.
Maybe all that would be fine, if idealistic and impractical, but then they’ll go full Henry Kissinger and throw their arms around the governments of illiberal autocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and shower them with subsidies and arms deals, for which of course we bear no moral culpability when those arms and subsidies are used to terrorize innocents and brutalize their own people.
Time to face facts - we are the Evil Empire, and if we were sink today into the sea, most of the rest of the world would be glad to see us go.
"A Wolf, meeting with a Lamb astray from the fold, decided not to attack the lamb, but to find some reason to justify to the Lamb why the Wolf had the right to eat him. So the Wolf said:
“Sir Lamb, last year you greatly insulted me.”
“But,” bleated the Lamb mournfully, “I was not born last year!”
Then the Wolf said, “You feed in my pasture.”
“No, good sir,” replied the Lamb, “I have not yet tasted grass.”
Again the Wolf said, “You drink water from my well.”
“No,” exclaimed the Lamb, “I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother’s milk is both food and drink to me.”
Upon which the Wolf seized the Lamb and ate him up, saying, “Well! I won’t remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my accusations.”
Moral: The tyrant will always find a reason for his tyranny."
For a few more years, the United States will have absolute dominion, and will use that power in an absolutely corrupt manner, at the behest of Israel and Saudi Arabia. When the reckoning for us comes, as eventually it will, nobody will shed a tear for us, nor should they, for we do evil.
I think back to the days when all the power resided in white men and how we heard that if we got more women in positions of power, their "maternal instincts" would change the world. Well, HRC, Albright, Rice, Powers, Chaynes, et.al., only prove how hubris cares not about gender or any other demographic division. Like hungry, oversized hogs to the trough, we crowd our snouts in pushing away any who get in our way. "Runts" like Afghanistan ... the old hog cares not for them.
The writer of the Politico op-ed sounds a lot like a bitter ex-colonial settler reacting to the independent movements in the 1960's. "After all we did for them, this is our rewards! Well now they are on their own.," imagining that with time the new independents would come around. Colonial nations cut their losses and stopped supporting the infrastructure projects they had realized, only to see the countries fall into disrepair. Somehow or other, however, all these ex-colonies survived and, yes, there was corruption and, yes, they played one resource hungry foreigner against the other. But they were independent, and that is what mattered.
One thing that our foreign policy has excelled at over the last two decades has been on inflicting untold misery on millions of innocent people. Our sanctions regimes alone, on Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea, Iran, Yemen, and probably a dozen other countries has achieved next to nothing in terms of benefit to the US. Yet our policy elite seems addicted to continuing these malicious actions. What makes it even worse, is that many of these sanctions were levied after we had destroyed the physical and social infrastructure of some of these countries. Pure evil.
There’s a strange moral reasoning at play. The model of applying a sanctions regime is a kind of virtue signaling that we, the US, is making a statement of disapproval of a certain government, even if—as is usually the case-- those sanctions are not effective in general or effective in advancing US interests in particular or actually have terrible humanitarian consequences as implemented. It's the signal that matters, not the all-too-predictable consequences. The sanctions on Iraq in the 90’s is a classic example.
Similarly, there’s that disdain for diplomacy and “negotiating with terrorists”, in which those approaches are moral abominations because they signal an implied US imprimatur of legitimacy on those governments even if they advance US interests and avoid conflict (or nuclear proliferation).
The reasoning seems to be that all moral culpability for the negative humanitarian impacts of that sanctions rest on the “bad actor” governments, whose actions US policymakers assert precipitated the need for those sanctions. There’s no apparent constraint for proportionality or justifiability in their use in light of the economic hardships they can cause on the usually innocent population or any barrier to prevent them from being used as a naked act of aggression to destabilize governments. We can do all that and still maintain the delusion of believing ourselves to being the “good guys.” It’s a kind of moral narcissism.
Maybe all that would be fine, if idealistic and impractical, but then they’ll go full Henry Kissinger and throw their arms around the governments of illiberal autocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and shower them with subsidies and arms deals, for which of course we bear no moral culpability when those arms and subsidies are used to terrorize innocents and brutalize their own people.
United States foreign policy *is* evil.
Time to face facts - we are the Evil Empire, and if we were sink today into the sea, most of the rest of the world would be glad to see us go.
"A Wolf, meeting with a Lamb astray from the fold, decided not to attack the lamb, but to find some reason to justify to the Lamb why the Wolf had the right to eat him. So the Wolf said:
“Sir Lamb, last year you greatly insulted me.”
“But,” bleated the Lamb mournfully, “I was not born last year!”
Then the Wolf said, “You feed in my pasture.”
“No, good sir,” replied the Lamb, “I have not yet tasted grass.”
Again the Wolf said, “You drink water from my well.”
“No,” exclaimed the Lamb, “I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother’s milk is both food and drink to me.”
Upon which the Wolf seized the Lamb and ate him up, saying, “Well! I won’t remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my accusations.”
Moral: The tyrant will always find a reason for his tyranny."
For a few more years, the United States will have absolute dominion, and will use that power in an absolutely corrupt manner, at the behest of Israel and Saudi Arabia. When the reckoning for us comes, as eventually it will, nobody will shed a tear for us, nor should they, for we do evil.
I think back to the days when all the power resided in white men and how we heard that if we got more women in positions of power, their "maternal instincts" would change the world. Well, HRC, Albright, Rice, Powers, Chaynes, et.al., only prove how hubris cares not about gender or any other demographic division. Like hungry, oversized hogs to the trough, we crowd our snouts in pushing away any who get in our way. "Runts" like Afghanistan ... the old hog cares not for them.
The writer of the Politico op-ed sounds a lot like a bitter ex-colonial settler reacting to the independent movements in the 1960's. "After all we did for them, this is our rewards! Well now they are on their own.," imagining that with time the new independents would come around. Colonial nations cut their losses and stopped supporting the infrastructure projects they had realized, only to see the countries fall into disrepair. Somehow or other, however, all these ex-colonies survived and, yes, there was corruption and, yes, they played one resource hungry foreigner against the other. But they were independent, and that is what mattered.