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Aura7541 on 10 April 2017
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Goatseye said:
Aura7541 said:

However, you also made your fair share of assumptions. You showed that the US had interests that did not include spreading Islamization. However, in trying to achieve those interests, it led to a bunch of nasty side effects. The US's involvement in the Middle East was a series of short-term minded actions with little regard of the long-term consequences.

You also made a mistake of assuming that this is a black-and-white situation. I do not completely dismiss the notion that the US had the intent to spreading Islamization, but the problem is that addressing US collectively is a wide assumption. There might have been certain people in the US government who want to spread extreme radical Islam in the Middle East, but they might not be representative of the general sentiment. Most likely and logically, it's somewhere in the middle. To conclude that the US had nothing, but malicious intent is a rather naive one.

Let me put it this way for you.

   United States WANTED radicalized islamization in the Middle East. It financed it and used it, to oust national sentiments in the locals where they had businesses interests. Middle East after breaking from Ottoman Empire was in the process of democratization and nationalization of their land and natural resources. That process would've gotten in the way of imperial aspirations of colonial Europe and US prominence in world stage.

   Radical Islamization of once moderate religious countries in the ME, is a tactic used by America throughout the world to supress local populace where business booms and threat of cutting ties with the West is real. This was not the only tactic used to achieve their goals though; puppet and bloodlust authoritarian governments were sponsored and forcefully placed in continents such as Africa, where democracy for many countries was an achievable feat and necessary for protection of their common good. Most great thinkers and democracy fathers in Africa were killed off by European colonialists and CIA backed ops. It was a way for them to undermine their hope of sovereignty and appropriate of their riches.

If that doesn't sound malicious to you, then your moral compass is much more flexible than most of us.

Your response is rather similar to your previous one, so I'm just going reply one last time. Using radical Islam as a means doesn't necessarily prove the want of it. Like I said, it's somewhere in the middle because you can't just point your finger at the US collectively. It's not a black-and-white situation like the way you're making it up to be. The US has a history of opting for political expediency over thinking long-term and its involvement in the Middle East is no exception. To simplify the US's thinking process, it's along the lines of "I don't like A, so I'm going to have B take down A even though B is bad". The US has applied this mentality for years and has not learned to stop and think about the long term consequences.

I agree with you that what the US has done is really bad, but it's not advisable to conflate actus reus and mens reas willy nilly.