Comments by "bart thomassen thomassen" (@thomassenbart) on "The Truth Hits"
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@grogdizzy5814 I would guess you have never really studied history or even US history and foreign policy, true? If you had you would realize obvious problems with your initial statement.
First, the FFs, but what you actually mean is George Washington's farewell speech, during which he warned of entangling alliances with European powers. This was good advice at the time, given the fragile state of the Republic v. any European state. However, we quickly became engaged in multiple conflicts. The Barbary pirates, then an undeclared naval war with France and finally outright war with Britain in 1812, which did not turn out as envisioned. The rest of the 19th century was also one of conflict. With the Mexican War, threatened hostilities with Britain over Florida and then the Northwest and finally the Spanish American War. So, nobody really followed Washington's advice.
But that was the 19th century. Since WWII, the US has become the only superpower in the world and has reset the international order, trade, reserve currency, toppled the old Imperialism, Soviet Union and has waged a successful war on Islamic Jihad/terror. The result of all of this has been a radical democratization of the world and the end of economic Marxism with a few exceptions. World prosperity has increased exponentially, as market economies emerged and in reality, the world is at its pinnacle in terms of life expectancy, leisure time, disposable income, education, actual liberty/choice etc... That is what an American foreign policy that engages with the world has wrought.
Bolton's view is for a continuance of those policies. He does not advocate for war just for war's sake...that is a trope. He realizes that an American withdrawal, similar to what happened post WWI, would be disastrous for the world and then the USA.
You and folk like you are motivated by very short-term interests and don't know the history or why it is important for the US to continue as the world hegemon. The reality is that whenever the US withdraws from a place a power vacuum is created that is always filled by nefarious and hostile nations. This grows their power and influence relative to our own.
The US cannot pretend the world does not exist and that we can hide behind our oceans and let it all burn. That does not work. We have tried before, with disastrous consequences.
You state, "Every foreign conflict we've been in has done the opposite of that. So, Bolton did not name one thing that advanced American interests. Especially not Afghanistan."
This statement is demonstrably false, He did outline multiple reasons, but you apparently did not hear them. I will detail why these actions were worthwhile but only for the post WWII actions.
The Korean and Vietnam wars, were fought within the bounds of the Cold War, an existential worldwide battle between Communist authoritarianism and Western liberty. We had to win and we did. Both wars aided in doing so. Korea stopped the conquest of S. Korea, which put the USSR and China on alert the US would commit to stop their aggressions. Today, S. Korea is a total success story, the 14th largest economy in the world, an ally and a functional democracy.
Vietnam is often considered a US loss, but I would disagree. the Withdrawal and failure to adhere to our commitments ensured N. Vietnam would conquer the South but even so, the US involvement stopped this from happening in the 50s. Had that been the case, likely the threat would have been in Thailand not Vietnam and the dominoes could have fallen. As it happened, Vietnam is now very much on the side of the West and a good trading partner with the USA and a bulwark against China. That is a good thing.
Panama ended a drug Cartel and imprisoned Noriega....good results.
The Gulf War was an overwhelming success by any metric. Kuwait was liberated, Iraq crushed, Arab allies secured, European allies and Japan aided, given their dependence on oil from the region and aggression halted in the region....All good.
Afghanistan was a direct result of 9-11. The country had supported AQ and OBL with training camps and protection and needed to be taught a lesson. The initial invasion was very successful as the TB were defeated and the country taken within a few weeks. OBL was not captured which is why we stayed as long as we did. We also got sidetracked into nation building. After 20 years, Afghanistan was a vastly better country than when we arrived. OBL and his lieutenants were dead or captured and the people had seen what prosperity looks like. The withdrawal was a disaster and completely unnecessary. I think we have to differentiate between the war and the withdrawal.
Iraq similarly was militarily very successful and achieved its goals rapidly. The deaths of Saddam Hussein and his sons was a huge benefit to Iraq and the region. The ensuing civil war was negative, but it too had been defeated by 2009 with the Surge and Sunni Awakening. AQI was crushed and had to flee Iraq to survive at all but then splintered in Syria to become ISIS. Once again all was well until we peremptorily withdrew, which created the vacuum I discussed above, promptly filled by ISIS. Of course, Trump wiped out ISIS and toppled their Caliphate since, so another win.
So, looking at the costs to the US during the last 20 years we find 15,000 dead Americans, including contractors and three or four times that wounded. We also spent several trillion dollars.
What did we gain? Well, there were no terror attacks on the homeland during this time, excluding the Boston bombing. Given that after 9-11, every Media source believed this was going to be the new normal, I would say stopping that from happening was a very significant win for the USA. Also, these wars crushed international Jihadism at a scale not imaginable before. That too is very important. Not having bombs going off all over the nation is good.
To put the lives lost in perspective. We are a nation of 340,000,000 people and the 15,000 dead over 20 years, from a military perspective, is nothing. More Americans die every year from murder. At Shiloh almost the same number were shot down in two days and those numbers were repeated 100 times throughout the Civil War, to a nation with 1/10th the population. On D-Day 2500 dead on day one, 50,000 dead on Okinawa. 100,000 dead from opioid and fentanyl last year. A little perspective goes a long way.
Also, the money spent was not a great deal over the time span. Our economy is around 27 trillion per annum, so...
I could continue and retrace what the positive results of the 19th century wars were also and detail the CIA operations, toppling of dictators and Communists during the Cold War etc... but I think I have made my point.
If you have not studied this stuff, it is easy to fall prey to emotion and superficial analysis, which is very common among the isolationist crowd, led by Tucker Carlson but it is very bad foreign policy and horrible for the long term. If you want a prosperous USA, you must engage in the world and sometimes that means war.
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