n0el wrote:@
Dolan Capitalism has killed way more people than communism, it’s not even debatable.
You mention Afghanistan, that’s recent history and nothing to do with the question that @
princeofcarthage posed. What about Iraq? What about Korea? What about Vietnam? What about funding the contras? What about funding Al Qaedato fight the Soviets? The example are endless. Clearly Stalinism was bad, but how can you say that it’s in its own league when it’s not. American abuses are endless.
Can you prove that capitalism has DIRECTLY killed more people than communism? No indirect, "morally responsable" bullshit. Directly, as in Reagan ordering the killing of 1 million people or sending them to starve in a polar region in a prison camp. That's what Communism did. If you aren't familiar with the subject, I recommend you not to read more, but visit the countries, talk to the people, see how many of their families have been sent to die in Siberia, how many summarily executed, how many sent to prison for just a JOKE. Yeah, that's right, if you made fun, if you only just cracked a joke about Ceausescu during Communist Romania, you were sent to prison. Show me similar examples that happened under a democratic regime, not capitalist regime, because capitalism is not a political regime, let's get the terms right.
My uncle lived in Brasov, a city in Romania where there has been a short-lived revolt against the Communist regime. After the revolt was stifled and people who participated sent to prison, people were afraid to talk about it even in their homes, because you never knew where Securitate, the political intelligence service, planted any mics. Phones were bugged and monitored, your workplace was crawling with informers, even members of your family might have been coopted by the regime as informers. There were plenty of cases in which family members turned their own relatives in, sending them to prison, only for the crime of criticising the regime.
Iraq was a mess, no doubts about it, but it wasn't a system killing its own people, there's a big difference here. It was your country's political and military establishment overreaching its legitimacy and making a mess of another country's internal order, in the name of, you know, the same cause you were quoting as a basis for having a global movement: making sure there are no authoritarian regimes, among other things. And I say "among other things" because the official reasons why they invaded Iraq was a long list, actually. But this "moral" reason of removing an authoritarian regime was part of that list. They were basically putting into practice what you wished for, making sure Saddam couldn't oppress his people, spreading democracy and human rights and stuff.
Legally, the US has justified its involvement in Iraq in 2003 by issuing the so-called Iraqi Resolution (Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002).
https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ ... ubl243.pdfWhereas Iraq persists in violating resolution of the United NationsSecurity Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population thereby threatening international peace and security in the region
They needed something much scarier than just the fact that Iraq broke some UN Resolutions or was acting abusively against its own people. That's why they came up with the weapons of mass destruction BS. But if you ask them now, when the WMD motive has been exposed as a fabrication, they will continue to defend it on moral grounds, they will claim it was an authoritarian regime that was suppressing its own people. You know, they were part of a global movement against authoritarian governments...
What about Korea and Vietnam? Those were proxy wars between the USSR and the USA. Vietnam was divided between North and South, same for Korea. There have been military conflicts there since the 50s, when the French were involved in the First Indochina War. The Korean war started when the North, supported by the USSR and China, invaded the South. Same in Afghanistan. The USSR basically sent their army to invade the country and suppress a popular rebellion against the Communist party that was in power. You can't say that China or the USSR had any excuse here to invade those countries and get involved in their internal affairs, not any more than the US had when they invaded Iraq.
The big difference is, though, that back home, the US government wasn't sending people to prison for speaking their mind. While the USSR, China, Communist Romania were doing just that.