General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums“Mistakes were made”
Richard Nixon was pardoned
America elected Ronald Reagan president twice
The Supreme Court appointed George Bush president in 2000
Lies led America into invading Iraq
The presidency was stolen in Ohio in 2004
Torture was allowed under the label enhanced interrogation
Cheney/Bush et al have not been prosecuted for war crimes
The Supreme Court said that money is speech
The Supreme Court gutted the voting rights act
Thats about 40+ years of mistakes. How many more can we survive?
(And I'm sure you have plenty more "mistakes" to add.)
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)Operation paperclip
JFK assassination...
gulf of tonkin resolution ...
invasion of cambodia
operation condor
watergate
october surprise
iran contra
nafta
patriot act
Bora Bora......................... yes the list is long and sad
immoderate
(20,885 posts)That is a "root" mistake.
--imm
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/03/mistakes-and-failure/
The evidence is obvious. All one needs to do is look at the winners and losers. Lets do the losers first because thats quickest: the losers are the people, the 99%, in their hundreds of millions their murdered families, shattered lives and ruined countries.
On the other hand the 1% have made vast fortunes from western foreign policy and secured for themselves power and glory. There are all the arms-makers and dealers for a start, the scum of the earth who have always showered themselves with riches by selling death and destruction to anyone wholl buy it and theres never any shortage of customers. Ideally these subhuman monsters sell their death and destruction to both sides in a conflict. Then there are the bankers who, as a species, are not very much further up the food-chain than arms-makers. Their vast profits come from arranging loans mainly to puppet governments in the form of aid, aid which must be spent buying from approved one percenters, obviously. There are a whole multitude of other corporations the creatures of the 1% drooling in the wings of western foreign policy initiatives, waiting to sink their fangs into juicy aid contracts: the construction companies profiteering by jerrybuilding infrastructures shattered by the products of the arms-makers; energy and utility companies poised like vultures to monopolise control of ruined energy supplies and communications; security companies ready to protect all the assorted scavengers; mining companies and agricultural monstrosities ready to loot any natural resources and so the list goes on.
Then, of course, there are the mighty organs of state the military and so-called intelligence services, organs of state which have absolutely no interest or desire in seeing a peaceful world. No general in his right mind wants a smaller army or less of the planets real estate to spread out over and seek new wars in. No spymaster worth his salt ever pointed out the fact that his trade serves very little practical purpose whatsoever (certainly not as far as the 99% are concerned), or bothers to remind anyone that todays great empire somehow managed to grow to such an extent that it could take over the world without the need of any formal intelligence services at all. And there is, of course, the mainstream media who love nothing more than a war, and have never in their entire history let the truth interfere with a good story. The very last thing the one percenters who run all these great corporations and institutions want to see are foreign policies which would allow the 99% to quietly run their own spaces in their own quiet way.
If all this were not quite enough evidence of why the mistakes and failures of western foreign policy are not, in fact, mistakes and failures at all, we could always pose the question about secrecy. If the foreign policies of our trusted leaders were for good and noble reasons, why do they need to maintain such secrecy about their actions? Why do they need to ensure their records must remain hidden for decades into the future? Why do they have to victimise those who would try to spread a little light on those actions people such as Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden? Why do ordinary citizens have to have their every movement tracked and their every conversation spied upon whilst those who would try to reveal to us the actions of our trusted leaders must live their lives as political prisoners or persecuted fugitives?
Saying that western foreign policy is mistaken and a failure fails to recognise the real nature of western foreign policy. Our great trusted leaders are not interested in acting in the best interests of people living in foreign countries, and they never have been; theyre not even interested in acting in the best interests of their own people, let alone those living thousands of miles away. Calling these things mistakes and failures suggests previously held noble intentions, intentions which have sadly failed to materialise this time intentions which, in fact, never existed.
lpbk2713
(42,696 posts)And we should never forget JEB BUSH was Governor of Florida at
the time and he wants to run for President of the United States.
Botany
(70,291 posts)..... emergency kill switches for their deep water rigs.
Or that the Lousiana National Guard was in Iraq w/their amphibious vehicles when
Hurricane Katrina hit.
Mistakes were made.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)eye-opening.
I don't mind mistakes - they are necessary to progress and accomplishment.
Not learning from them, denial. Well...
https://books.google.com/books?id=vZkGNIpAsTEC&lpg=PP1&dq=mistakes%20were%20made%20but%20not%20by%20me&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=mistakes%20were%20made%20but%20not%20by%20me&f=false
Seemed germane to your subject.
Response to jtuck004 (Reply #6)
iscooterliberally This message was self-deleted by its author.
iscooterliberally
(2,849 posts)One huge mistake was the controlled substances act of 1970. The entire world could have done without that, and without the DEA.
1939
(1,683 posts)LBJ's unified budget which permitted looting of the trust funds and which disguised the real problem of deficits for a couple of decades.
Failure to index the income tax brackets for inflation which gave enhanced revenues in the short term but which killed the consensus for a graduated income tax over time as inflation and the advent of the two income household drove ordinary Americans into tax brackets designed for the wealthy.