TripleAgent
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- Jun 21, 2010
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R. Shackleferd and I have recently been engaged in an argument on my thread in the welcome forums, so I have decided to move this to a better-suited location. The argument is, as put by Shackleferd,
and, my response,
We did discuss some more, and Shackleferd is more than free to put his rebuttal posts into this thread as well.
If you wish, list why you support or oppose American non-interventionism.
Why do many non-interventionists oppose war and only give the absence of formal declaration as reasoning?
Would you support any of the wars after World War II if they did have a formal declaration?
and, my response,
Well, firstly, I give that as reasoning because in Article I, Sec. 8 of the Constitution, it states that it is the responsibility of the Congress to declare war. This is a failsafe so that the President, as Commander of the Armed Forces, cannot send the armies willy-nilly to rule the world. Without a formal declaration clause from Congress, we would undergo "military excursions" all the time.
Secondly, I would not support many of the wars after WW2 even if they had been declared.
The Korean War was the the result of our division of Korea after World War II, without the permission of the Koreans themselves. ( Korean War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) Even if there had been a civil war, the people of a country would be able to accept or reject their government if they liked or disliked it. Revolution is the foundation of many a state.
In the Vietnam War, we supported an autocratic, possibly genocidal dictator, Ngô Đình Diệm, a man who controlled his people with secret police and violence, while suppressing and discrimination against the Buddhists of South Vietnam. How can you say that an alliance with a man such as that would be a good idea? It sacrificed every American ideal for the notion that "an enemy of my enemy is my friend." Furthermore, we entered the war under false pretenses, a la the "Gulf of Tonkin Incident," in which the government lied to the people of America about an attack by the North Vietnamese navy in order to gain popular support for a military excursion.
In Iraq, we attacked Saddam Hussein, another autocratic dictator that we had actually assisted in the Iran-Iraq War in the 80s. Now then, I hate Saddam Hussein for what he has done to the Kurdish people of his country. But it is the responsibility of the people of Iraq, not America. The people of Iraq should rise up themselves for freedom, not wait for others to do it for them. They should have attacked Saddam's government, attacked Saddam himself, and create a new government. Look at the occupation today: the people of Iraq were not ready for freedom; they are a disorganized, decentralized mess. The burden of a revolution is what best unites a people to form a free government.
And we come to Afghanistan. There, we fight the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. A little known fact, we supported bin Laden and the Mujahideen, or "freedom fighters," during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. We assisted in the training of many of the current Al-Qaeda members. If we had not interfered in world affairs as much as we had after World War II (the above-mentioned events, Operation Ajax, numerous excursions in Central America, etc.), the Muslims of the Middle-East would have no reason to view us as a threat, and therefore no reason to hate us.
I hope that answers your question.
We did discuss some more, and Shackleferd is more than free to put his rebuttal posts into this thread as well.
If you wish, list why you support or oppose American non-interventionism.