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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024

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The way I heard the story, a warlord in the somalian civil war attacked UN troops distributing aid – and so the US obligingly went in because they didn’t have anything else to do that day. But you reckon this was a machiavellian exploitation of the third world that now justifies a somalian revenge ?

To be fair, many US nativists are actually in favor of a less interventionist US foreign policy.

Yeah, and they say: 'I don't care if foreigners kill each other, even if we could prevent it easily'. Are you ready to stand by that statement and policy, or were you just using US interventionism as an excuse for foreigners to not be bound by any standard of decency?

I don't care if foreigners kill each other, even if we could prevent it easily

Can you? That was the Libyan operation in a nutshell. Qaddafi was this comic-book villain - Susan Rice announced that he was giving his troops viagra so they could rape more effectively: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/29/diplomat-gaddafi-troops-viagra-mass-rape

It would be so easy to topple him and save the civilians from being massacred and raped! We, the West, started an air campaign that monstered the Libyan Army. Qaddafi ended up with a bayonet in his ass. Then the country collapsed into a second civil war. Arms from now-unguarded Libyan army caches found their way to Syria. Russia and China were incensed that their acquiescence of UNSC 1973 developed a no-fly zone into a bombing campaign. Russia especially was very angry that the energy deal they'd negotiated with Qaddafi ended up going to French companies and decided they wouldn't accept the same thing happening in Syria. All this happened after Qaddafi denuclearized in 2003, sending a very clear signal to Iran and North Korea.

Seemingly simple actions have all kinds of complex, dangerous outcomes. We blew up Qaddafi, Libya is now split in two, Europe was destabilized by the refugee flow and international law took a major blow.

But you reckon this was a machiavellian exploitation of the third world that now justifies a somalian revenge ?

No, not necessarily revenge. However, the US government clearly feels itself largely free to intervene wherever it pleases to in the world and can get away with, so from a moral perspective (not that I necessarily care about the moral perspective) I don't see why foreigners should not feel themselves largely free to at the least move to the US and advance their own ethnic interests.