this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
402 points (82.8% liked)

Progressive Politics

2220 readers
813 users here now

Welcome to Progressive Politics! A place for news updates and political discussion from a left perspective. Conservatives and centrists are welcome just try and keep it civil :)

(Sidebar still a work in progress post recommendations if you have them such as reading lists)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
(page 3) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (4 children)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

Whether technically correct or not (as I don't know anything about this topic), what's going on right now is insane, and if weapons were being sold to baddies under Obama, that also sounds shitty. So seems like any time is a good time to reflect upon how much power USA's militarily-industrial complex possesses.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

arewethebaddies.gif

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago (4 children)

You can do both. Saying they've supported dictatorships doesn't mean they haven't also supported democracy. It's bordering on being a non sequitur.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The world’s dictators aren’t always opposed by people proposing democracy. For example we armed Syria’s dictator at that time because his opponent was DAESH/ISIL/ISIS/IS.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

ISIS exists because America destroyed functional governments in order to steal their oil.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There were proto-groups that eventually conglomerated to form DAESH starting just after the USS Cole was bombed in Yemen in 1999. If you studied terrorism at the time or knew people involved in counter-terrorism you might have heard about those groups earlier.

That’s not to say the Invasion of Iraq in 2003 didn’t push these groups to prominence only that a version kind of existed before 3/2003.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Why was the USS Cole in Yemen

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It was refueling. Al Qaeda pulled up a small boat and blew a hole in the Cole. Im wrong on the year though it was in 2000.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (5 children)

So the USS Cole was refueling, Al Qaeda appeared out of thin air to bomb the Cole and then ISIS spontaneously existed.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

Dictators are good when they steal resources from the people and share them with us.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Freedom House doesn't label places as "dictatorships." So this is suspect right off the bat. They use a "freedom index."

No doubt the figure from 2015 includes significant support and training to Afghanistan, labeled with a score of 6 out of 100. Does that count as supporting a dictatorship? No.

If we sell weapons to the Saudis to fight Iranian creep, is that supporting dictatorship? Maybe a little. No question of Iran and Saudi, Iran is a much less free and much worse dictatorship. Sometimes that's just how progress looks.

This "fact check" is at best highly misleading, bordering on false.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Why is anyone on Xitter??

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

In any case, you guys need to do better.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Except one does not contradict the other. The United States has supported democracy, it's just that that support is razor thin.

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›