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Not a fan of Harry and Meghan, but in retrospect, if we had headed down the path that Canada and Australia took, things might have turned out better.
Actually I agree; but I think before Harry married Meghan, he was a decent fellow. Fought in Afghanistan, seemed to avoid loco political statements. Meghan corrupted him.
The British did learn lessons from the U.S. fiasco; they tried to protect the native populations, gave the colonials in Canada more autonomy, and exercised more control over immigration.
An interesting thought experiment: what would Canada be like, had they also declared independence and adopted a U.S.-like constitutional government? I'll bet they'd be a much bigger, wilder country than they are. Maybe even bigger than the U.S.; they have more land area, though some of it's above the Arctic Circle.
It seems that we cannot produce great leaders anymore; once upon a time, we did. I believe stronger educational standards are the key, though we need strong families and parental buy-in, neither of which exist anymore. We're skrewed.
The post World War II mandates are the model I'd like to follow. We remade Germany and Japan in our image, and they are both successful, peaceful, contributing members of the world community today. Whereas, our current piecemeal approach toward failed states, where we give aid and take in refugees, but have little actual say in what happens on the ground, is a demonstrated failure.
We often get accused of going it alone, so if it were up to me, I would go before the United Nations with a proposition. If they approve, we go into Afghanistan and Haiti and completely take them over. We set up the institutions of government and society exactly the way we want them. If the local residents complain, we ignore them. After all, they can't even govern themselves, so why should we care what they think? We do all the heavy lifting ourselves (i.e. not under any kind of UN control), and as long as we refrain from human rights abuses, we can do whatever we want. The residents get no say in anything, and they get no special privileges (i.e. no automatic citizenship or permanent-resident status or anything like that). The UN, not the US, pays for the costs of our mandates.
The mission explicitly ends in 10 years. At that time, if the world community likes the progress that's being made, they can authorize another 10 year extension. If they don't, we're done, and we walk away. Oh, and if they do authorize an extension, but we don't want to do it any more . . . well, that's the time we use our veto.
But, what if the collective world community, in the form of the UN, does not give us authorization to do this? Then we completely wash our hands of those two countries. No aid, no support, no in-migration, no peace-keeping missions, no nothing. We turn back any would-be refugees from those places, at gunpoint if necessary. It's either all or nothing, and we do either one only with the world's blessing.
How can you say that the US is a success (in terms of shaking off colonialism) while Estonia is not?
The US is a British-offshoot country that simply cut ties with the country that it came from when keeping those ties became oppressive.
And look how the US has turned out, particularly since 2001: it's sliding away from being a world-leading democracy and its socioeconomic well-being is stagnating. I can't say that was a success, particularly when countries that, conversely, maintained ties with the UK (Canada, Australia and New Zealand) rank higher than the US in so many things, including freedom and socioeconomic well-being.
Estonia, by contrast, was invaded, occupied and oppressed by a despotic outsider, the USSR, after being invaded, occupied and oppressed by Czarist Russia for about 200 years. Despite that, it's a very democratic and very advanced country.
And why would anyone say that colonialism is needed? Colonialism, in most cases, involved a foreign country invading and occupying another country, and ruling it for the benefit of the invader. Nobody needed that then and nobody needed it now.
After World War II, the UN set up a few mandates in which Allied countries were given rights to rule over former Axis colonies, with the goal of putting them on a path to independence. It was supposedly for the benefit of the occupied colony. What is needed is something for the benefit of the people of Afghanistan and the people of Haiti, to stabilize their countries and help them thrive. That isn't colonialism; maybe it's something like the post-WWII mandates.
And I think you're wrong about 2001. I'd say around 2010 is when it started going downhill. That's when "woke culture" really started to take off. We've been on a downward trajectory ever since.
Haiti has more of a legitimate historical case that colonialism messed it up by interfering with its development. After it won independence from France, the world never accepted it into the community of nations because it was a bad example for slave and similarly extractive colonies around the world. It eventually was subject to economic imperialism.
Afghanistan is more isolated. It has been the object of colonialist desire for centuries, and colonial powers have indeed spent much blood and treasure trying to mess with it, but no power has ever succeeded in colonizing it. So what's happenning there is not the fault of colonialism.
Haiti has more of a legitimate historical case that colonialism messed it up by interfering with its development. After it won independence from France, the world never accepted it into the community of nations because it was a bad example for slave and similarly extractive colonies around the world. It eventually was subject to economic imperialism.
Afghanistan is more isolated. It has been the object of colonialist desire for centuries, and colonial powers have indeed spent much blood and treasure trying to mess with it, but no power has ever succeeded in colonizing it. So what's happenning there is not the fault of colonialism.
That was then, this is now. There is no viable way to provide aid to these societies since the governments are hostile, corrupt or ineffective. That is the nub of the problem. Both are subject to irremediable humanitarian catastrophes.
This is a great debate question. It is way above my pay grade; I have NO idea except in my fantasies, I'd like to airlift ALL the women and young children (too late for teens; already corrupted) OUT of Afghanistan.
They seem to hate and want to repress their women so let them live without any and they can destroy each other. I don't see any hope for that country, or that whole area. At least that one cargo plane got out to Qatar, but is that a long term solution?
Haiti is a different story but just as difficult a conundrum. Any financial or supply help will be wasted or line the bureaucrat's pockets.
Sometimes I wonder about the old line about a benevolent dictator....
That was then, this is now. There is no viable way to provide aid to these societies since the governments are hostile, corrupt or ineffective. That is the nub of the problem. Both are subject to irremediable humanitarian catastrophes.
It'd be like abusing a member of your family for most of their lives, then they leave that abusive house last year and we ask why they haven't become millionaires yet.
It'd be like abusing a member of your family for most of their lives, then they leave that abusive house last year and we ask why they haven't become millionaires yet.
Bad link. But what do you mean that "Haiti didn't even have control over its own GDP until the 1950s"? They were independent from France not long after the turn of the 19th Century. Do you mean Papa Doc didn't have it measured?
Bad link. But what do you mean that "Haiti didn't even have control over its own GDP until the 1950s"? They were independent from France not long after the turn of the 19th Century. Do you mean Papa Doc didn't have it measured?
Haiti was a victim of dollar diplomacy and got into a debt spiral, so until the late 1940s its finances were literally in the control of American banks, who housed the funds for "safekeeping." American interests propped up its dictators that facilitated these arrangements. Despite its independence, France also exploited Haiti until around the same time.
Colonialism is basically like an abusive, exploitative relationship in which there's an enormous power imbalance. The same way a person doesn't easily get over that, neither do countries.
The reason why countries under the old iron curtain like Slovenia, the Czech Republic, or Estonia do okay now, is because they were not colonized per se by the USSR. They were more accurately under a sphere of influence or part of a federation with governments that aligned with the USSR's geopolitical agenda. That's different. Yes the Soviets helped militarily put down their internal resistance movements, but they did not precisely colonize those countries. Not to mention that the power imbalance of the Soviets over its sphere was never as disproportionately stark over those countries as the U.S. and European powers were over the likes of Haiti. E.g.: The soviets could barely keep East Germany in line, let alone exploit their resources through domination... and once the population of those countries were no longer interested in the Soviet agenda the whole enterprise fell apart in a few years.
Last edited by redguard57; 08-17-2021 at 05:45 PM..
The United States does need a return to colonialism. I suggest we start by joining the Commonwealth, ask the Queen to name a governor (Prince Harry, perhaps), and put our military under the command of Her Majesty's Armed Forces.
We've made a total mess of our independence and it's time to bring in some competent management to clean it up.
I'm not usually a fan of your postings, but this time I support the point I think you are making.
Americans (and before us, the British, and other European nations historically) always assume that they are the ones who will be the ones to colonize. The British certainly FINALLY learned their lesson about widespread colonialism. And it seems odd that Americans -- part of a nation that fought colonization -- would now want to stoop to the same despicable concept; yet we have from time to time.
The suggestion in the OP seems to fly in the face of America's distrust of an organization like the United Nations. But then again, we don't like it when we're not in control.
The mission in Afghanistan started 20 years ago. There was a good reason for it. But it seemed as if the longer we were there, the less defined the mission became. In recent years I'm not even sure we knew what success in Afghanistan looked like. Between military and contractors, over 6,000 Americans have died in Afghanistan. I'd hate to have to explain to a wife or child why; I'm not sure I could. I wonder percent of Americans who support our presence in Afghanistan could even point the country out on a map of the world.
I'm far from being an isolationist, but this was a mess and an embarrassment for years. It seems as if was doomed to end in fiasco, regardless of who the president was at the time.
I'm not sure that boots on the ground -- at least in this case -- is the way to stop the attacks on Americans and American interests based in Afghanistan. I'd like to think we have more than one trick in our bag of tricks.
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