It’s ironic to see a South Korean say this when all you need to do is look across the border to see what a Chinese supported alternative looks like.

The United States carpet bombed North Korea, destroying 90% of all structures in the country, killing 300,000 in the immediate bombing run, then sanctioned them into the stone age. The relative poverty of North Korea is not a consequence of Chinese support.

The United States leveled Japan and Germany a few years before Korea - and in each of these cases, each was in a response to the war behavior of Korea, Germany and Japan respectively. Germany and Japan capitulated and accepted human rights and democracy. North Korea instead chose to continue on its path.

The outcomes between North Korea vis-a-vis Japan and Germany should speak for themselves.

What about Iraq and Libya?

They fucked around and found out? Is that how it works?…

What's the difference between them and Germany and Japan? They fucked around and found out too.

Germany and Japan had competent post-conquer leaders and orderly civilizations that was/is useful. Iraq and Libya had incompetent leaders and useless people.

So, to be leveled by US bombs and then capitulate is not exactly the way to prosperity, right?

Don't disturb the cognitive dissonance.

Don't give free world leadership examples in Chile, Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador, Iran, Palestine, Egypt, Bangladesh etc. The nature of the US military and economic machine as a force of ultimate good beating up truant, naughty countries must not be questioned. USA does not practice censorship, instead we have manufacturing of consent here.

How did iraq fuck around the USA in 2003? What the fuck, are the 1 million deaths caused by the iraq war also just people who fucked around and found out? I usually am pretty good at sensing sarcasm but this time I'm confused

Don't question American military interventions in an American forum. You will be downvoted. Instead, sing the song of the great freedumb leader.

Iraq is relatively democratic now. US didn't do ground operation in Libya. Libya is playground for Turkey and Russia.

> US didn't do ground operation in Libya

What an awesome excuse.

US obviously doesn't have resources to build democracy in every distressed country on the planet.

If it stops removing democracy from countries, it would be a great start.

For eg, not removing democracy in Haiti, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Iran, Palestine, Egypt, Bangladesh etc.

You forgot: Russia, N.Korea, China.

Why would I list Russia, n Korea and china in a list of democracies toppled by USA to put in a dictator?

Just to continue the list of nonsense examples.

Are you serious?!! All of these countries I listed had democratic governments couped out or attempted to be forced out by USA. If you are ignorant about history you can just Google it.

Or maybe staying ignorant is part of your grand strategy to avoid cognitive dissonance.

How is USA imposing a dictatorship on Chile nonsense?

.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...

> How is USA imposing a dictatorship on Chile nonsense?

I read section about US involvement, and nothing there says they organized coup in 1973, in opposite, this link says that many sources confirm US were not involved into the coup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_...

> Are you serious?!!

My critics is directed to your propaganda-troll alike communication style: thrown 10 names of countries without any specifics.

> I read section about US involvement, and nothing there says they organized coup in 1973, in opposite, this link says that many sources confirm US were not involved into the coup

Out of curiosity, skimmed the article a bit and look:

> They [Kissinger and Nixon] do take credit for creating the conditions that led to the coup. Kissinger says that "they created the conditions as great as possible." Nixon and Kissinger also discussed how they would play this event with the media and lamented the fact that, if this were the era of Eisenhower, then they would be seen as heroes.

Are you playing dumb or what?

> My critics is directed to your propaganda-troll alike communication style: thrown 10 names of countries without any specifics.

Seeing a spec in somebody's eye, but not noticing a log that's in your own, eh? Don't forget your tinfoil hat.

> Are you playing dumb or what?

creating condition: economic sanctions, is not the same as be involved in the coup.

Yeah, pushing someone of a cliff is definitely not the same as smashing their head with a rock.

Kommies completely restricted western trade. It was rules of engagement at that time, and US actions were soft comparing to kommies.

Sure, I guess sanctions were there just for the kicks without any real substantial effect. Just so that poor non-commies don't feel bad about themselves, since, you know, evil commies had already supposedly restricted all the trade.

> the US had dominated global economy as a result of WWII

or it is just capitalism is much more efficient than communism, or whatever bloody kommies tried to built.

Then maybe US obviously shouldn't aggressively burn down every other country, if it can't take responsibility?

And let's be honest, the US can't build an autonomous functional democracy in another culture, period. It's not the matter of resources, it's just theoretically impossible.

Just look at Afghanistan. It's "democracy" fell like a house of cards just as soon as the US had withdrawn it's troops.

Afgan people didn't want to fight for their freedom much, it would be better indeed to put these resources into Ukrainians.

Yeah, bad Afghan people didn't want to fight for a pro-American regime that supported brutal warlords and child prostitution. What a propaganda troll rhetorics.

Sorry to break it to you, but what had happened was exactly Afghan idea of freedom. A freedom from a puppet regime installed by invaders. It's not a healthy one, but there is nothing healthy to be expected after 20 years of being fucked by invaders "for their own good" under fancy fake slogans of "freedom".

But hey, war is peace, freedom is being a neocolony with a puppet government. Nothing new here.

> it would be better indeed to put these resources into Ukrainians

And those resources would be a shit load of NATO weaponry left to Taliban, eh?

I am not interested in discussing propaganda fantasies.

Well that's just escapism.

Or I value my time.

I admire your commitment to ignorance!

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-to...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2386629/

US is not perfect and you can find many more cases of misbehavior or conspiracies, but they are many times better in respecting human rights and development than regimes of Mao/Stalin/Putin/Xi.

Whataboutism is a good way to walk away from cognitive dissonance

https://www.google.com/search?q=greatest+danger+to+world+pea...

what is your goal in this discussion? What are you trying to achieve by personal attacks and low quality inputs? Just trying to vent?

You are using whataboutism, personal attacks and ignorance as a debating tactic - including quoting the CIAs words to exonerate the CIA. Its as if USA did not overthrow democracy to install the Shah of Iran. It's as if US government did not democratically elected Allende in Haiti. It's as if CIA backed banana republics don't exist in Latin America. It's as if USA did not send ships to the Indian ocean to assist west Pakistan with the genocide in Bangladesh to overturn the election results.

You are calling historical facts "fantasies" and making personal attacks on everything else. It's your commitment to ignorance even when all the information is shoved in your face that is impressive, much more than the whataboutism.

I in good faith checked your example with Chile, found that you didn't read link you posted, you compromised yourself and don't deserve any level of trust anymore nor any effort to check your other pointers. Again, what are you trying to achieve from this discussion?

> As I said I won't read your links anymore. Anything else? :-)

The commitment to ignorance and refusal to read, with celebratory, fait accompli, victory smiley is not surprising :) The stereotype of the proud ignorant American isn't without reason.

You were obviously arguing in bad faith from the beginning. The links for readers who will follow and are able to read, that would mostly be non Americans :)

You absolutely didn't read the Chile article in good faith. Instead you searched for a statement absolving CIA by the CIA. You live in a fantasy land where banana republics is just a clothing store. Not once have you acted in good faith. You are pretending to a level of ignorance that is completely unreal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Salvadoran_coup_d%27%C3%A...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Haitian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

https://www.newagebd.net/article/167119/kissinger-admits-us-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_genocide

https://chomsky.info/secrets04/

> You absolutely didn't read the Chile article in good faith.

you are free to follow your beliefs.

As I said I won't read your links anymore. Anything else? :-)

Relatively democratic like in 124 of 167 countries by democracy index?

there are almost 200 countries in the world.

If you look at dynamics by years, index was much better when US left in 2011. You want US to police Iraq forever?

It looks like you think USA is the moral force of God on earth. United States held power over west Germany and Japan, and they actually received boosts from the Marshall plan after WW2 to keep the American economy in overdrive.

All of the eastern bloc including N Korea and Cuba were subject to severe economic blockades and sanctions. Cuba performed the best and N Korea the worst. Even here, NK outperformed South Korea until 1980. Why didn't the greatness the "free world and human rights" work until 1980?

Please stop with this childish pretence of USA as the 2nd coming of Jesus and "leader of the free world". At least Iran's example should give you pause. Iran is part of the free world as long as there is a dictatorship, it is no longer part of the free world if there are democratic elections. The same goes for Chile, Haiti, Guatemala, Egypt - you name it!

The downvote came fast!

It's a consequence of the political system in North Korea and Chinese support. The industry of the north grew faster and was larger than the south after the war. Eventually the economy of South Korea overtook and then greatly surpassed the north. China support = not wanting the Americans to win but wanting to keep North Korea a poor subservient state. Is America as bad? Sometimes, but I think plurality of leadership thought in the West always tempers the worst instincts of their nation states.

The relative poverty of North Korea is far from the only problem with North Korea, though.

The US did worse to Japan. Also South Korea was similarly carpet bombed in the process of re-taking it from the north as almost all territory was lost and the north almost won.

Are you being serious right now? The sorry looks of North Korea has nothing to do with China's support and everything to do with the fact that America has been beating and sanctioning the shit out of it since the day of it's inception.

This kind of behavior followed by this kind of rhetorics is exactly why half-the-world hates you so much. Disgusting, I can't believe you aren't trolling right now.

North Korea's communist dictatorship would have been overthrown decades ago if not for China's support of it.

Your talk of China in relation to North Korea betrays your lack of historic and political knowledge. While China is it's only ally now, it wasn't always the case.

North Korea would relatively peacefully evolve from dictatorship if it wasn't for America's pressure. This is purely Newton's third law of geopolitics. Do you really think people would go like "yeah, please fuck us harder so we can topple our government" instead of consolidating around it against a much larger evil, that fucks with their livelihood much harder (you)?

Look at Afghanistan for example. Why do you think it reverted back to its baseline and why Taliban was able to assume control over the country so fast with almost no resistance just as soon as the US had withdrawn its troops?

Or take a look at practically the whole history of young Russian Federation, from supporting ISIS-like radical islamists during the second Chechen war, to most-recent achievement of turning so many hardcore anti-war people into pro-war just by letting them have a good look at your actions.

Cuba has little to none practical international support, and yet it is still "a communist dictatorship".

Or even a better example, that would probably be easier for you to process: take a look at WWII-period Great Britain. It was a total strict dictatorship shithole. And people were FINE with that, as long as it was an effective protection against Nazis.

To North Koreans (and so many other nations around the world) the US (and by extent, its allies) are the Nazis. Simply because you can't possibly dial your chauvinism down and ask yourselves some hard questions, like how come you feel like you have the right to fuck around on the other side of the globe.

Sadly, I don't even see a realistic scenario how things could change without triggering a WWIII: America + allies (15-20% world population) vs the rest of the world.

It's 100% fair to question the geopolitical morality of any nation, especially the US, that's fine - but - as a South Korean, maybe you should consider for half a second the 50 000 Americans that died so that you would not be living as a slave under Kim Jong-un at this very moment.

Aside from that more 'humanist' element, there is the geopolitical reality that your sovereignty is still depends on the US.

After a war - nations usually have autocratic leaders who oversee a couple of decades of reconstruction, that is normal, and for them to be 'pro American' in the contex that America literally saved your entire nation from being slaves, is understandable.

It's a bit hard to read what you have written, imagine what would happen if the US/West dropped support for literally you, either now or decades ago? Where would you be? Happy unification under democracy? My gosh.

If you can't see that Xi is operating on a different moral level than most of the free world including S. Korea, then I have bad news for you.

Putin invaded Ukraine because he thought it wold be a cake walk.

The best thing we can do to 'avoid war' is to project strength, not ambiguity. Xi is not irrational, and if Taiwan is extremely well defended he won't invade.

In fact, it's relatively easy to deter China if other nations just have some basic political courage and a basic coherent strategy, then we can mostly live happily together.

(FYI I'm not American)

> so that you would not be living as a slave under Kim Jong-un at this very moment.

Leaving politics aside, that's some very flawed alternative history thinking there.

The alternative world in which (say) Korean War era "Domino Theory" wasn't so aggresively pursued with military action and so many former Western colonies in Asia (Vietnam, Indonesia, etc) weren't defended from finding their own path post WWII is a world where factors that created an extreme North Korea, and Pol Pot in Cambodia, etc. are absent.

Who's to say where the world would be had Kissinger and friends not been so hawkish.

In Korea at least:

   Nearly 5 million people died. More than half of these–about 10 percent of Korea's prewar population–were civilians. (This rate of civilian casualties was higher than World War II's and the Vietnam War's.) Almost 40,000 Americans died in action in Korea, and more than 100,000 were wounded.

Five million would still be alive, fewer families would have been torn asunder, and the < %1 of the deceased that were US service personal would not have died.

Not being in the Freeworld might look something like North Korea and not having a forum like this ?

To my knowledge, Taiwan had a similar situation before the end of White Terror in early 90s. The US apparently had no problem with pro-American dictators.

The cold war against the Soviet Union was an attempt to manage a communist power insistent on expanding its borders through coups, annexations, and puppet states. The whole point of a cold war is to stop a country from committing territorial aggression, while preventing an escalation to a hot war. It's a deeply moral thing to do.

In this sense, the cold war against the Soviet Union was profoundly successful. Let's hope this will be the same for the ongoing cold war with China to contain its territorial ambitions in east asia, like for Taiwan (which it is actively threatening with force[1]) and all of the other countries which China is expanding its territory into (illegally, through the use of artificial islands)[2].

1. https://www.voanews.com/a/china-reaffirms-threat-of-military... 2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/21/china-has-full...