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[FearfulJesuit]

Under any other US administration I'd say the CIA should assassinate Bolsonaro and install a liberal puppet government. But we don't have the moral authority.

Is there any point where you have the moral authority to assassinate world leaders to install puppet governments

Seems like a dick move that will have long term consequence literally every time it has ever been done

We interfered in elections in postwar France and Italy to keep the communists out, and we were right. We should have interfered in the 1933 Reichstag elections, and we would have been right in invading after Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland. We should have interfered when Ukraine starved in the 1930s. We should have intervened in Syria when Assad used sarin. We would be vindicated right now if we were to invade Saudi Arabia and send the royal family to the Hague.

The fact that interventionism has so often been used for evil purposes doesn't write it off as a principle. Human rights don't exist unless somebody enforces them. Brazil has no nukes and a military that is a threat only to its own citizens.

We have the power to restore and maintain liberalism, and with the power comes the duty.

[smjjames]

Under any other US administration I'd say the CIA should assassinate Bolsonaro and install a liberal puppet government. But we don't have the moral authority.

Is there any point where you have the moral authority to assassinate world leaders to install puppet governments

Seems like a dick move that will have long term consequence literally every time it has ever been done

And considering how many times we've already done it in South America....

Anyhoo, Trump already congratuiated Bolsonaro in a phone call.

Speaking of one country overthrowing the leader of another, looks like Brazil is about ready to follow in the US's footsteps. Though I think Trump would happily leave Bolsonaro holding the bag and let Brazil deal with the aftermath.

Honestly though, I think we should stay completely out of it (militarily wise anyway and possibly CIA stuff) and let Brazil make the same mistakes we did on their own continent.

[redwallzyl]

Under any other US administration I'd say the CIA should assassinate Bolsonaro and install a liberal puppet government. But we don't have the moral authority.

Is there any point where you have the moral authority to assassinate world leaders to install puppet governments

Seems like a dick move that will have long term consequence literally every time it has ever been done

We interfered in elections in postwar France and Italy to keep the communists out, and we were right. We should have interfered in the 1933 Reichstag elections, and we would have been right in invading after Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland. We should have interfered when Ukraine starved in the 1930s. We should have intervened in Syria when Assad used sarin. We would be vindicated right now if we were to invade Saudi Arabia and send the royal family to the Hague.

The fact that interventionism has so often been used for evil purposes doesn't write it off as a principle. Human rights don't exist unless somebody enforces them. Brazil has no nukes and a military that is a threat only to its own citizens.

We have the power to restore and maintain liberalism, and with the power comes the duty.

You have it backwards, the US installs the fascists not the democracy.

[FearfulJesuit]

Under any other US administration I'd say the CIA should assassinate Bolsonaro and install a liberal puppet government. But we don't have the moral authority.

Is there any point where you have the moral authority to assassinate world leaders to install puppet governments

Seems like a dick move that will have long term consequence literally every time it has ever been done

We interfered in elections in postwar France and Italy to keep the communists out, and we were right. We should have interfered in the 1933 Reichstag elections, and we would have been right in invading after Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland. We should have interfered when Ukraine starved in the 1930s. We should have intervened in Syria when Assad used sarin. We would be vindicated right now if we were to invade Saudi Arabia and send the royal family to the Hague.

The fact that interventionism has so often been used for evil purposes doesn't write it off as a principle. Human rights don't exist unless somebody enforces them. Brazil has no nukes and a military that is a threat only to its own citizens.

We have the power to restore and maintain liberalism, and with the power comes the duty.

You have it backwards, the US installs the fascists not the democracy.

Past performance doesn't, and shouldn't, dictate future results. (Though it is one of the few small mercies of this administration that it's isolationist, because I don't even want to think about what an interventionist Trump would do.)

Honestly though, I think we should stay completely out of it (militarily wise anyway and possibly CIA stuff) and let Brazil make the same mistakes we did on their own continent.

Glad to know the thousands who're going to be killed under the Bolsonaro régime can be comforted by the fact that other people minded their own business.

[smjjames]

Have you seen our recent attempts at intervention? Particularily the 'invade a country' part.

Yes, past performance doesn't and shouldn't dictate future results, but if you're consistently screwing it up, maybe you should consider changing how it's being done.

[smjjames]

Honestly though, I think we should stay completely out of it (militarily wise anyway and possibly CIA stuff) and let Brazil make the same mistakes we did on their own continent.

Glad to know the thousands who're going to be killed under the Bolsonaro régime can be comforted by the fact that other people minded their own business.

I was referring to joining into a Brazillian war or coup on Venezuela.

[Loud Whispers]

We interfered in elections in postwar France and Italy to keep the communists out, and we were right. We should have interfered in the 1933 Reichstag elections, and we would have been right in invading after Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland. We should have interfered when Ukraine starved in the 1930s. We should have intervened in Syria when Assad used sarin. We would be vindicated right now if we were to invade Saudi Arabia and send the royal family to the Hague.
The fact that interventionism has so often been used for evil purposes doesn't write it off as a principle. Human rights don't exist unless somebody enforces them. Brazil has no nukes and a military that is a threat only to its own citizens.
We have the power to restore and maintain liberalism, and with the power comes the duty.

America did intervene in Syria, Iraq and Libya, to the point where it's a fucking meme at this point where you can continually destabilise countries and install a foreign regime backed by US military power and intelligence in the name of freedom. Because nothing says liberalism quite like reverting a democratic vote through the CIA.
Old democracies are not made overnight. It takes stability, practice and generations. The USA has the power to stop blowing up everyone, and with that power comes the duty to stop blowing everyone up. Living under the shadow of American hegemony will merely create more millions who are disillusioned with American liberalism without having altered the fundamentals which caused them to disagree in the first place, completely disregarding whether disagreeing is a just mandate to execute whatever foreigners you want. The "everyday until you like it" approach does not work, especially when you're killing leaders who:
1. Have popular support.
2. Get more popular for surviving assassination attempts.
To replace them with a leader drawn from the previous failure of an establishment, WHO CREATED the mess which has made Bolsonaro popular to begin with. Not every problem can be solved with more bombs and assassination, American investment would do more to help create a strong Brazilian middle class than blowing up all of the leaders they support would ever do in a thousand lifetimes

[FearfulJesuit]

We interfered in elections in postwar France and Italy to keep the communists out, and we were right. We should have interfered in the 1933 Reichstag elections, and we would have been right in invading after Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland. We should have interfered when Ukraine starved in the 1930s. We should have intervened in Syria when Assad used sarin. We would be vindicated right now if we were to invade Saudi Arabia and send the royal family to the Hague.
The fact that interventionism has so often been used for evil purposes doesn't write it off as a principle. Human rights don't exist unless somebody enforces them. Brazil has no nukes and a military that is a threat only to its own citizens.
We have the power to restore and maintain liberalism, and with the power comes the duty.

America did intervene in Syria, Iraq and Libya, to the point where it's a fucking meme at this point where you can continually destabilise countries and install a foreign regime backed by US military power and intelligence in the name of freedom. Because nothing says liberalism quite like reverting a democratic vote through the CIA.
Old democracies are not made overnight. It takes stability, practice and generations. The USA has the power to stop blowing up everyone, and with that power comes the duty to stop blowing everyone up. Living under the shadow of American hegemony will merely create more millions who are disillusioned with American liberalism without having altered the fundamentals which caused them to disagree in the first place, completely disregarding whether disagreeing is a just mandate to execute whatever foreigners you want. The "everyday until you like it" approach does not work, especially when you're killing leaders who:
1. Have popular support.
2. Get more popular for surviving assassination attempts.
To replace them with a leader drawn from the previous failure of an establishment, WHO CREATED the mess which has made Bolsonaro popular to begin with. Not every problem can be solved with more bombs and assassination, American investment would do more to help create a strong Brazilian middle class than blowing up all of the leaders they support would ever do in a thousand lifetimes

Counterpoint: Germany after the war.

I agree that we've tended to make a mess of things recently, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I think the experience of postwar Europe should tell us that the real problem wasn't that we intervened too much but that we were unwilling to commit to the intervention. Liberalism won in Germany, in large part, because we enforced liberalism and engaged in ruthless denazification of the country's institutions. We didn't let Germany try Nazism again after the war. That's a good thing.

What if we'd engaged in a campaign of detalibanization and enforced liberalism outside of Kabul?

(And of course, we poured vast amounts of money into Germany after the war, too. We should have done that in Afghanistan. Nothing makes people like you more than free money; a $200/month welfare check per Afghan household in villages that don't harbor insurgents and treat their women fairly would have been a cheaper, and more lasting, way of getting people to like us than trying to wage a guerilla campaign.)

[Reelya]

Invading Germany when they remilitarized the Rhineland wouldn't have made much sense. The Germans and British were basically peas in a pod in WWI.

Wannabe dictators were coming to power all the time, but very few of them launched world-conquest attempts. Not even Stalin did that. So, while we have hindsight that stopping Hitler in particular could have avoided WWII, nobody alive at the time would have any reason to think that stopping Hitler was more important than stopping any particular other dictator.

What if we'd engaged in a campaign of detalibanization and enforced liberalism outside of Kabul?

"be liberal or die" that sort of thing? What an oxymoron.

"Forced liberalism" in Afghanistan would entail bringing in enough westerners to enact a complete martial-law government, with massive amounts of security personnel, and a surveillance state. The end result isn't "forced liberalism" at all despite whatever intentions were in place, the end result would be a technocratic surveillance police state with capitalism.

the Westerners you'd need to bring in to run something like that are in fact the reason this "forced liberalism" thing doesn't work. The job description of having complete power over a captive population in fact attracts rapists and murderers to run the place, and you get secret prisons, torture and the like, with a "liberal" facade.

[smjjames]

I agree, a large part of it was an unwillingness to stick to it, instead, in Iraq and Afghanistan we were 'Mission Accomplished! Lets go home!'.

However, there are two major differences from Germany vs trying to do the same to Afghanistan:

1. Germany is culturally closer to the US than Afghanistan is to the US, which means that there is a much bigger hurdle to overcome and more opportunities to screw up.

2. We weren't alone in fixing up Germany, the UK and France had big roles here too. I know we have NATO and all that, but it's not the same as having a country be fully or near fully commited to it.

Anyhow, we're massively derailing the South America politics thread, though I guess the interventionism is relevant?

Looks like some army guys decided to hold an impromptu military parade in the city/town of Niteroi.

[FearfulJesuit]

What if we'd engaged in a campaign of detalibanization and enforced liberalism outside of Kabul?

"be liberal or die" that sort of thing? What an oxymoron.

"Forced liberalism" in Afghanistan would entail bringing in enough westerners to enact a complete martial-law government, with massive amounts of security personnel, and a surveillance state. The end result isn't "forced liberalism" at all despite whatever intentions were in place, the end result would be a technocratic surveillance police state with capitalism.

Do you believe that if an American head of household keeps his daughter cloistered in the basement without an education and marries her off at 10, that he should be allowed to do so without any intervention?

Why should the moral reality change when you move from the US to Afghanistan?

The US has the power to protect the weak and innocent from the capricious use of state power by evil men. If human rights mean anything, they mean that the power implies the duty. Again: we enforced liberalism at gunpoint in postwar Germany. Were we wrong?

[smjjames]

What if we'd engaged in a campaign of detalibanization and enforced liberalism outside of Kabul?

"be liberal or die" that sort of thing? What an oxymoron.

"Forced liberalism" in Afghanistan would entail bringing in enough westerners to enact a complete martial-law government, with massive amounts of security personnel, and a surveillance state. The end result isn't "forced liberalism" at all despite whatever intentions were in place, the end result would be a technocratic surveillance police state with capitalism.

Do you believe that if an American head of household keeps his daughter cloistered in the basement without an education and marries her off at 10, that he should be allowed to do so without any intervention?

Why should the moral reality change when you move from the US to Afghanistan?

The US has the power to protect the weak and innocent from the capricious use of state power by evil men. If human rights mean anything, they mean that the power implies the duty. Again: we enforced liberalism at gunpoint in postwar Germany. Were we wrong?

Do you think a military solution is THE solution to use everytime? Like our only solution should be to bomb and invade the heck out of others?

[FearfulJesuit]

What if we'd engaged in a campaign of detalibanization and enforced liberalism outside of Kabul?

"be liberal or die" that sort of thing? What an oxymoron.

"Forced liberalism" in Afghanistan would entail bringing in enough westerners to enact a complete martial-law government, with massive amounts of security personnel, and a surveillance state. The end result isn't "forced liberalism" at all despite whatever intentions were in place, the end result would be a technocratic surveillance police state with capitalism.

Do you believe that if an American head of household keeps his daughter cloistered in the basement without an education and marries her off at 10, that he should be allowed to do so without any intervention?

Why should the moral reality change when you move from the US to Afghanistan?

The US has the power to protect the weak and innocent from the capricious use of state power by evil men. If human rights mean anything, they mean that the power implies the duty. Again: we enforced liberalism at gunpoint in postwar Germany. Were we wrong?

Do you think a military solution is THE solution to use everytime? Like our only solution should be to bomb and invade the heck out of others?

No, particularly when we're talking about countries with nukes, where the calculus completely changes. But a military solution was the right solution in Afghanistan. The occupation was executed poorly, but that doesn't refute the concept. The question to ask from Afghanistan isn't "did this refute interventionism?" but "knowing what we know now, if we could travel back to September 12, 2001, how would we intervene differently?"

I do think a military solution is probably justified in Saudi Arabia, between 9/11, Yemen, the Khashoggi incident, and tampering with global warming action--every minute the house of Saud continues to rule is a black mark on the West. In Iran it's trickier because the average citizen is pretty pro-American and the régime, while it commits atrocities, could be far worse. The solution to Iran is to keep sanction pressure up, but not to isolate the people, and let everybody know that as soon as they decide to to liberalize or have a revolution, they'll get all the help they want and be inducted into the free world immediately.

[smjjames]

Probably smack Pakistan around diplomatically and make them cough up Bin Laden.

[Reelya]

There is big difference. In Germany and Japan, they recruited the local establishment to run things. That way, there was continuity, and the previous low-level administration staff of the losing states were able to be recruited and have a future in the new Germany and Japan.

Whereas in Iraq "de-ba'athification" basically wrecked the whole plan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba%27athification

The policy had a deep impact on post-combat operations Iraq. It is estimated that 50,000 civil government employees, as well as the all organizations and their affiliates listed in Annex A of Order No. 2, were affected and removed from their positions as a result of de-Ba'athification. Another estimate places the number at "100,000 civil servants, doctors, and teachers," were forcibly removed from the public sector due to low-level affiliation.
...
Specifically, the Iraqi military was affected by Order No. 2. The Order called for the complete dissolution of the Iraqi military, and reportedly resulted in the unemployment and loss of pensions of approximately 500,000 individuals. The figures regarding this level of unemployment are approximately 27%. Many critics argue that this order specifically spurred the development of an armed insurgency.

The armed forces of Iraq in the Iraq war is only listed as 375,000 troops. People in Iraq don't join the army because they're monsters, but for the same reasons that people in any nation join the army. All up, somewhere just shy of a million people were barred from employment out of a nation of about 30 million. 1 in 30. It stands to reason that just about every Iraqi would know at least one person who was affected by this order. This is why ideas like "detalibanizing" Afghanistan wouldn't work either.