You can repeat “US imperialism bad” as much as you want but learning the play by play is just absolutely mind blowing. Its always so much worse than you could initially imagine.
You can repeat “US imperialism bad” as much as you want but learning the play by play is just absolutely mind blowing. Its always so much worse than you could initially imagine.
That’s what I’ve been telling folks, like it makes sense why no one talks about the korean war, because there’s almost no way to white wash it past “NK crossed the line”.
Americans have such an easygoing ignorance of the absolutely massive scale of anti-communist massacres that were going on in their zone of military occupation (me included prior to listening to S3). That’s a critical piece of missing information that confuses their understanding of the motivations behind the invasion of the southern occupation zone.
What’s less forgivable is the weird fetishization about the inviobility lines on a map. To the point of being willing to grind an entire people into dust to ensure that the line is respected.
The way people genuinely believe that “War” is something that only happens if you drive a tank across a survey line is infuriating. Just an absolute failure to even consider the possibility of realpolitik, of unconventional warfare, economic warfare. Like bruh if someone is pointing a nuclear gun at your head you do not have to wait for him to pull the trigger before you’re allowed to respond.
Doubly so because so many people will excuse or outright endorse America’s various campaigns of mass murder and desolation.
One of the most effective American propaganda campaigns have been to convince Americans and Europeans that “war” is very specifically when you drive tanks across lines on a map.
Things that are definitely not war include:
“Police action” is the 20th century’s “Lethal aid”
You know it’s funny that libs want to sue gun companies for firearms murders, but don’t seem to have the same energy for acknowledging that we’re responsible for arming and training the Ukrainian armed forces.
“Police action” was invented for Korea
As soon as you learn what was going on in the South before the war started, it begins to make people think stuff like “Maybe they were justified in crossing the line”
More bombs were dropped on Korea than were dropped in the entirety of the WW2 pacific theater is a mind blowing stat. That shit doesn’t go away either. I’m sure they’re still dealing with soil poisoning, uxo, etc
Edit: yep