It’s just disgusting to me to see him publicly reveling in another person’s death. It’s not like Obama was giving high fives to the press corps after bin Laden was killed, but Trump would probably tweet something like:
(ETA wow, Discourse totally mangled those emoji… paging @codinghorror)
Well, I’m sure the 1 in 5 people who were struggling with food insecurity (20% of them children) and working 50-80 hours a week just to survive will be happy that Castro… Oh wait, damn, that’s America.
Judging from the way half of America behaved when a centrist-democrat like Obama took office, I’m not so quick anymore to condemn Castro.
Please do go on.
For the moment, as an American I’m perfectly willing to condemn Castro and any other leader (communist, fascist, theocratic, whatever) who prevents the citizens of his country from emigrating or travelling abroad. That said, I’m already seeing worrying early signs of the next administration’s inclination toward putting in border exit controls and restricting transfers of funds out of the country, and will condemn such measures just as strongly as I do the Castro regime’s if the administration follows through.
Castro was certainly a major figure who instituted a lot of good programmes when he displaced the brutal Batista. But as liberals and progressives we really shouldn’t be making excuses for any authoritarian regime based on a cult of personality, even if it is a geopolitical underdog.
No, now we’re going even more macro. We are back to holy war.
In his 2016 book, The Field of Fight, Flynn characterized U.S. counter-terrorism efforts as “a world war against a messianic mass movement of evil people.” In a speech earlier this year, he called Islam “a cancer” and “a political ideology. It definitely hides behind this notion of it being a religion.” On Sunday, Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, was asked to respond to Flynn’s remarks.
“Is he in line with how President-elect Trump views Islam?” asked Martha Raddatz, the interviewer.
“I think so,” Priebus replied. “Clearly there are some aspects of that faith that are problematic. And we know them. We’ve seen it.”
World War 3 was Korea. I’m always amazed that the whole “wall-of-cobalt-to-stop-the-communists-and-holy-shit-everyone-is-OK-with-that-what-the-actual-fuck” thing doesn’t even register on our collective cultural zeitgeists.
As far as I can work out, we are on WWX v5.*
I think Korea was a front in WW3 - despite involved us, the Soviets, and the Chinese, it was contained. I could be persuaded that the Cold War itself represented WW3, with years of moving fronts, sometimes at the same time. that would certainly hit the mark for globalized warfare which intersected with globalized interests.
But maybe we need a coherent working definition of a “world war”? We normally think of the Great War and World War 2 as canonical examples, but what about the couple of centuries of conflict between imperial powers, often through proxies, like the aforementioned Seven Years War?
[ETA] Also, this is excellent!
It seems you’re right. If he helped the regime at all it was apparently under duress.
I’d describe the Cold War as more analogous to The Great Game rather than counting it as a low-intensity WWIII.
A geopolitical contest using all tools available, frequently featuring proxy wars, but not an actual world war…
…and, up until fairly recently, the Middle East was not a high-conflict zone. The idea of “this is an aeons-old irresolvable tribal conflict” is just plain wrong.
I’mma disagree with you, there. I think the proxy wars, given their breadth and depth, could indeed constitute something of a world war. I’d say if you’re only looking from the global north (Europe, the US, Australia/New Zealand) the view is a starkly different view of that period of time.
Again, I think we need to think about the definition of a world war in general, as I noted above.[quote=“Wanderfound, post:136, topic:90138”]
up until fairly recently, the Middle East was not a high-conflict zone. The idea of “this is an aeons-old irresolvable tribal conflict” is just plain wrong.
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But on this, I’mma gonna agree pretty strongly. At least after the crusades era, that’s undoubtedly true.
My impression is that the Great Game also featured an Imperial Fucktonne of proxy wars and colonial violence. If the Cold War counts as a World War, why not the colonial era as well?
It is an interesting thought experiment to wonder what an attempted communist country would look like if its creation didn’t happen in close proximity to invasion; I don’t know if that’s ever actually happened.
How common is it for Americans to be aware that the US Army invaded Russia in 1918? Anti-American sentiment in Russia didn’t come from nowhere.
In that case, sure why not. I do think getting out of the notion that a world war requires conflict in Europe might be more helpful in understanding global conflict.
It’s a matter of preference and semantics, but I’d still tend to reserve the title of World War for the classics.
It’s not a matter of European location; I think that a World War (as I use the term) involves a level of conflict intensity that requires at least one major industrialised power to be fully committed on each side. I think that technological intensification of conflict was a more definitive factor than geographic spread in making WWI/WWII into what they were. It’s also why WWIII is commonly concieved as apocalyptic.
I’d be more inclined to view the Cold War and Great Game as a World Skirmish.
Fair enough. I do think we could probably decentralize the notion of world war, especially given the changing nature of warfare in recent years. I do think that the level of conflict related to the war on terror might also qualify, but it’s not eurocentric, so it’s not often considered a world war. Keep in mind also that the old terminology of WW we’re used to is indeed Euro-centric in nature and really ignores the rest of the world, except in reference to the west. I do think that thinking from different locational perspectives on these issues are helpful in thinking more critically about how we label things and why.
