Imperialism (Strong nations Striving to Conquer Weaker Nations)

An overarching argument Pro makes on every one of these points is that imperialism would have solved for all of them. He provides all of one warrant for this point, which I'll get to on that particular position. He provides 0 evidence in support of these claims. Pro never cites a single example of any imperialist venture that ended in a net benefit across the nations involved. He likes "if only..." arguments. If only we'd invaded Iraq 10 or 20 years earlier... If only European powers had stayed in African nations... If only the U.S. had stayed in Haiti... all would be well! Every one of these nations would be a rich, peaceful democracy with a stable leadership and great international relations! It's all bare assertion. Pro returns to the topic of Iraq, citing the number of deaths cased during the Iraq-Iran War, by Saddam personally in his genocide against the Kurds, and his general killings. Multiple responses. 1) Pro's entire argument here seems to be for intervention on the behalf of populations being abused by their leaders. This doesn't support Pro's argument in the slightest. What it shows is that intervention in the nation to remove a dictator can be beneficial. This doesn't require any act of imperialism. A targeted assassination would have been sufficient, or perhaps even a full-scale war, followed by a full-scale removal of troops. Long term presence isn't required. 2) We did intervene. It's called the Gulf War, a 6 month effort where occupation was limited at most, deaths were kept to the low thousands, and Saddam was left toothless.[1] All of Pro's harms inflicted by Iraq occurred before this war, and therefore this war was sufficient to end suffering cause by Saddam without even removing him from his seat of power. 3) Prior deaths don't justify the acts of the U.S. to add to the death tolls, nor does it make our occupation reasonable. The fact that those deaths occurred before the invasion doesn't make future death certain " only our invasion made those deaths certain. Pro mentions that we would have saved lives if only we could go back in time, invade, and occupy the country. He says the same for Afghanistan. This is a warrantless assertion, a complete "what if?" statement, and not conducive to this debate. We can't go back in time and save those lives. Pro then mentions that the deaths that occurred were simply "an unfortunate side effect of war, and not America's intention." Irrelevant. It doesn't matter if it was our intention or not. Those deaths resulted directly from our invasion. The remaining 450,000+ deaths resulted during our occupation. Whether we wanted those deaths or not, they occurred in large part because of our presence in the area. He then goes back to the "if only." If only "the US [had] taken over the nation's government and taxed the people" themselves, "things would have been easier financially on us. We could've created a supplemental Iraqi Army that the U.S. controlled and we could get our own soldiers out of Iraq." Again, multiple responses. 1) This is one possible form of imperialism, but I don't know how Pro would plan to enforce it without any U.S. troops in the area. It's absolutely nonsensical. We'll control their country with a supplemental force of their own citizens, which for some reason will continue to abide us after we've trained, armed, and funded them. Optimistic, aren't we? 2) Aside from the taxation portion, we essentially did this. We forced them to adhere to the principles of democracy (albeit it's about as dysfunctional and corrupt as it could possibly be),[2] set up and outfitted an Iraqi Army (which is not doing too well against the Islamist insurgents),[3] and our military has left the country.[4] And they're still struggling to deal with a surge in bloodshed and not at all economically stable (and that's in the absence of taxation!)[5] Mind telling me how your idea improves upon this? Our getting tax moneys only destabilizes their economy and ruins all that we've done well before we ever get fully repaid. He says we can do the same thing for Afghanistan. Of course, that's no better, especially considering their dependence on nearby nations in the status quo.[6] Pro also ignores the fact that, in both countries, the locals have wanted us gone completely for quite a while.[7, 8] Pro then moves onto African nations, again asserting that things would have been better " only this time, saying that it would have worked out only if they'd stayed longer, with a military present continuously to intervene. This contradicts Pro's earlier points about how we can remove our military from Iraq and Afghanistan, first of all, but also provides no solid idea of how long these countries would have had to remain there to prevent the harms. Does occupation now have to be permanent? These occupations were often ended because the nations were no longer profitable to the imperialists, they started demanding independence, and continuing to hold them became dangerous.[9] Pro never says how they circumvent these problems, providing 0 incentive to continue them. More importantly, these examples show the long term harm of their imperialistic policies. Pro gives his sole warrant here, saying that European troops could have prevented genocides and civil wars. Of course, this ignores the numerous brutal crackdowns that European nations engaged in across their empires, which were all too common. It also ignores my point about how it destabilizes their leadership, preventing any sort of stability in the country as a direct result of imperialism and leading to those very civil wars and genocides. This also ignores the fact that many European nations used these countries to fight their battles. Not all of them were controlled by England, and in fact, these imperialist strategies even played a large role in bringing about WWI.[10] Pro then proceeds to dismiss loss of life in Panama as unimportant. I wasn't aware that lives stopped mattering when you get below 20! That's a new one. But hey, if that's not enough, over 100,000 casualties resulted from the Thousand Days' War![11] And 25,000 died building the Panama Canal![12] But no worries! Someone whose question on Yahoo! Answers was asserted that it earned them money! And if we were still there, we'd be the ones earning that money! I guess those lives stop mattering when we see dollar signs. The response to Haiti is flippant. He ignores the resultant death and poverty that have plagued the country ever since we set foot there, as well as the lax infrastructure we left behind and its impact on the death toll for the earthquake in 2010. But hey, if only we'd stayed behind, for only Pro knows how many years, investing billions of dollars in maintaining and building new infrastructure, things would be great! Of course, that would likely have led to a number of other deadly revolts and more guerrilla warfare, but what's a few hundred thousand lives and billions of dollars when we could have forced them to engage in more unpaid labor to build roads and railroads they didn't want in the first place! If you need more examples, how about Nicaragua? We intervened to prevent countries from constructing a canal through the country (so that we have it made for us alone). We then proceeded to intervene in a number of conflicts.[13] The destabilization that resulted led to several major revolutions thereafter, which resulted in 10's of thousands dead.[14] These are all examples of imperialism gone wrong, all upholding my burden of proof. Pro has not upheld his, as none of his links have specifically proven that imperialism has benefited previous nations. Back to Pro. 1) http://en.wikipedia.org... 2) http://www.theatlantic.com... 3) http://en.wikipedia.org... 4) http://www.washingtonpost.com... 5) http://www.nytimes.com... 6) http://www.bloomberg.com... 7) http://www.aljazeera.com... 8) http://www.theatlantic.com... 9) http://thinkprogress.org... 10) http://en.wikipedia.org... 11) http://alphahistory.com... 12) http://en.wikipedia.org... 13) http://thesilverpeopleheritage.wordpress.com... 14) http://en.wikipedia.org... 15) http://en.wikipedia.org...