“The U.S. cannot treat Colombian migrants as criminals,” Petro wrote. Petro said even though there were 15,660 Americans without legal immigration status in Colombia, he would never carry out a raid to return handcuffed Americans to the United States. “We are the opposite of the Nazis,” he wrote, in a jab at Trump. Mexico also refused a request last week to let a U.S. military aircraft land with migrants.

    • wewbull@feddit.uk
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      4 days ago

      Since WW2, when has the US ever fought anyone for Europe?

      Korea, Vietnam, Libya, Iraq 1 and 2, Afghanistan, Syria. All US incursions. A number of them had European countries backing up the US. Even today it’s the US giving Israel unwaivering support (when it really should be waivering) that’s dragging NATO countries into a conflict it really doesn’t want to be a part of.

      Europe has backed the US again and again so that it wasn’t seen as acting as unilaterally (even if it was).

      The only European operations I can think of Bosnia and Serbia, both of which were NATO operations with multinational forces.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Korea, Libya, Iraq and Syria I will concede. However:

        Are you not aware that the Vietnam War was directly precipitated by the First Indochina War, in which the French failed to maintain control of their colony and the US stepped in when they pulled out?

        Are you not aware that the US initially got roped into intervening in Afghanistan by the British in the 1970s, continuing a British-Russian rivalry/series of proxy wars going all the way back to the “Great Game” in the 19th Century?

        (Also, re: that previous Libya/Iraq/Syria concession: let’s be honest, the whole current Middle East clusterfuck is the legacy of European colonialism, including shit like the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the various Allied-controlled protectorates formed from previous Axis colonies (e.g. Libya) after WWII. I’m conceding those points because I can’t be bothered in a Lemmy comment to do the research to trace exactly how the US involvement was rooted in a need to clean up messes left by the British and French, but I’m pretty darn confident the link is there.)

        • wewbull@feddit.uk
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          3 days ago

          Yes, a lot of the areas are post European colonialism. Most of the world is post European colonialism, including the Americas. Vietnam wasn’t fought for the French though. The French were expelled in the first Indochina war and the North and South Vietnamese had independence. The French lost and went home. The US never tried to re-establish French rule.

          You might argue that the US fought in Vietnam for the South Vietnamese, to maintain their independence from the North. However I think we all know that the US fought in Vietnam to block Russia and China getting more influence in the area. It was a choice the US made for it’s own reasons to do with the cold war.

          Now, the US might feel that because nobody else had the military might to stand against “communism” they had no option but to get involved. They did it to protect their own interests though.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      4 days ago

      Spoiler alert: we’re not going to start taking care of ourselves.

    • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca
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      4 days ago

      All that’s going to happen is that the US will continue spending the same or more of the military, while others will also build up theirs and the relative strength of the US will diminish. You will definitely not be saving those billions.

    • Obinice@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      you guys need to get your shit together and police your own continent.

      We do? Increasingly we’re having to secure it against US threats and meddling, though. And of course our actual police aren’t as corrupt and murderous as yours, and our legal system offers far more basic human rights and protections than yours does (I’ve heard you don’t even get the most basic rights like mandatory holiday and sick pay? Wild. You need to start fighting against your government for your basic rights).

      we can start to take care of ourselves and our needs instead of blowing billions on places we destroyed

      Have you tried not destroying places? You might not have to spend quite so much on reparations if you pace yourself a bit.

      The world doesn’t revolve around your country, and all of your nation’s current major problems (oligarchy, late stage capitalism rot, poor citizen rights, poor/absent social services, poor education system, large class gap, poor environmental protections, etc etc) come from within, not - as your fascist self-proclaimed Dictator would have you believe - the evil foreigners trying to oppress/abuse you.

      Nobody’s country is perfect, mine isn’t, yours isn’t. We all have problems, and it’s difficult to admit that our problems are more often than not of our own society’s making…

      Don’t believe the oldest fascist trick in the book though - being told it’s all somehow the fault of foreigners - to rally the people against a common foe whilst stripping away your own rights and building an authoritarian state bit by bit, destroying your own freedoms and eroding the moral core of your nation, all in the name of fighting that foe.