i kinda need help.....im not that good at history and i have this discussion bout imperialism of U.S.A. and phillipines, and im on the "against" it side. and i dont really know what to say bout that, cuz i wanted to be on the "pro" side.....can any of u help???tell me what could be bad bout that imperialism???please(and dont get too fancy worded)

Why do you want to be on the pro side? I think you need to answer that before you go any further.

Imperialism is used to describe how a nation expands it's influence through economic/cultural assimilation and/or military conquest.

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Well... The usual justification for imperialism in the past was that one country (the imperialist's) was naturally superior to the lands about to be conquered. The Western European powers expanded into the African continent and into the Far East in the 18th and 19th century with little trouble. They had very powerful navies and the most effective weapons.
The USA won the Philippines (and Hawaii and other spots) because we beat Spain in the Spanish/American War at the start of the 19th century. Spain had to give her colonies to us as a part of the terms of surrender. But there was trouble.
The Filipino people had been fighting with the Spanish, too. They wanted to throw off their colonial masters just like we did when we had our Revolutionary War. The Filipino people thought we had come to give them freedom but they were wrong. We turned it into and American colony and the revolution the natives were fighting against Spain was redirected against us.

You just described U.S. Imperia. Don't forget, genocidal mass murder of "savages", colonies, protectorates, and all the wonderful U.S. military bases perched all over this planet of ours. Some call it American Hegemony. I call it Eugenic Hegemony as it's a superior belligerent arrogant attitude. Also Eugenics was gotten from the U.S., and it was the foundation for Hitler's superior race. Makes sense, since American capitalist industrialists fueled Hitler's war machine. Oh, the tangled webs they weave when they make policy to deceive.

Good job Sadistic.

As for the poster. Imperialism is a bad scene, and is an aggressive act of supreme dominance. Always was, and it always will be. There is no justification for imperialism. (none). If you have an Empire it needs imperialism to sustain itself. That's why it was always called "Imperia". After U.S. industrialists built Hitler's war machine, he then had to imperialize to sustain his industrial complex. You should really read up on history, and not come on forums looking for a quick fix. You can get false information. I have found that not many on this site have a clue about much of anything.

Good luck

http://www.politicalcrossfire.com/fo...867&highlight=

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Morality has (no) bearing on real life

I didnt. As I said in the other thread, we were not a true democracy until the 20th century. That version of America was imperialistic, oppressive, and inferior to us in every way that matters.

Call it whatever makes you feel better. The end result is that the nations that are subordinate to us are subordinate by their own free will. They are not enslaved by the US.

Cultural and economic imperialism is acceptable to me. Because it cannot succeed without the cooperation of the "conquored".

If it is from the US, why did Hitler use it and not us? Can you give me a reason?

Thanks. I gotta be me.

Resistance is futile. Threaten us at your own risk.

Spreading democracy is sufficient justification IMO.

And yet, you continue to post here. It must be nice to have so much time on your hands.

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in general america today is not imperialist(except for the conflicts in iraq and afghanistan) because every country who had a superior economy (and every country who will have) will control the world's economy...it's totaly natural.

This is a half truth. Does the The Jim Crow laws mean anything to you. The US was very oppressive into the 1960s. Ofcourse the progressive movement of the 1920s did make America more of a direct democracy. We also support opressive regime that kill their own ppl, so in that sense we still do whatever means necessary to achieve our goals just like what we did with our protectorate nations and colonies. Nothing has changed, it just were smarter about it now.

Not true, we control the IMF and Worldbank, so any third world nation needs money to borrow as to go through the IMF and Worldbank, in turn basicly kiss up to the US and do what America asks of them.

I do believe you, but we aren't do this for their benefit but for ours. You justed state were are doing this for their benefit( spreading democracy) and now you say it b/c we want to conquer them?

Its true in a historical sense. During the 1600 the white planters of Virgina started to teach the poor white farmers racism so that the poor white farmers wouldn't revolt against the planter elite.


We aren't spreading democracy now, we are just making countries more pacifistic so corporations can take advantage of their resources. Ex. Iraq, Chile, Panama, etc.....

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Which does not conflict with what I said. Please read my quotes more carefully:

Even so, by 1960 ALL women and minorities had the right to vote. So their voices were heard. We were officially a democracy by then.

We have installed democracies in Japan, Germany, South korea, and Afghanistan, and are in the process of installing a democracy in Iraq (I am sure there are more, but those are the ones that come immediately to mind). And that is not counting the democracies we TRIED to install, like Vietnam and North korea.

That is not something we did prior to the 20th Century. I disagree with your conslusion that "nothing has changed".

Are we holding a gun to their heads and forcing them to borrow money from us?

If not, they are doing it of their own free will. Holding them accountable to their own contracts is hardly enslavement.

Am I being enslaved by the credit card companies?

You imply mutual exclusion where none exists. It is possible to do it for their benefit as well, even if our main motivation is OUR benefit.

No, I did not say that. That is projection on your part.

Spreading democracy is beneficial to us in a variety of ways. It helps them, but it also helps us at the same time. You are implying mutual exclusion where none exists.

We do not intend to conquor them...we already have plans to leave. if conquest was our goal, we would not be handing power back to the Iraqi masses.

What makes you think both things cant happen at once?

Corporations are at the mercy of any government they exist in. They are essentially parasitic. If Iraq voted to outlaw corporation in the first election, explain to me what the hell any corporation could do to stop it.

Corporations do not make policy. All they can do is try to beg the masses (via advertising) to allow them to do stuff. But the masses have the final say in a democracy. Corporations cannot overrule them.

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On a historical note, our most cruelly imperialistic actions were those taken against African Americans and Native Americans, but as S-S pointed out, the ideas used to justify such actions have, thankfully, long been out of the mainstream in our country. Our current foreign policy does not truly amount to imperialism. Afghanistan gave us no choice. Bin Laden started a war on American civilians and the Taliban harbored him and funded his organization (Al-Qaeda). Despite the fact that I would not have invaded Iraq, I would consider our invasion to be misguided rather than imperialistic. Bush doesn't have expansionistic aims, but I disagree with the neoconservative idea that military force is the best way of spreading democracy. Democracy is certainly the best form of government, but human lives come before voting rights. As tragic as putting numbers on lives is, my criteria for going to war would be this: Will I save more lives than I cost? Given Osama bin Laden's goals of obtaining nuclear weapons and killing 12 million Americans, as well as the ongoing actions of Mullah Omar, whose government was arguably worse than Saddam Hussein's, we undoubtedly saved more lives than we ended by going into Afghanistan. With Saddam Hussein's limited scope of power, the revelation that he had no weapons of mass destruction, and the wave of violence that we have unintentionally caused, however, I believe that we have cost more lives than we have saved by invading Iraq. That stated, it would now cost more lives than it would save to withdraw from Iraq, so we need to stay until the situation stabilizes. I almost detest myself for writing in this way about human lives, but that is the horrible reality of warfare.

Saddam was already killing people though. So doing nothing would have resulted in lives lost as well. Observe:

Would you like to venture a guess as to how many of those people might still be alive today had we invaded sooner rather than later?

People died due to our invasion, but a lot of people would also have died had we done nothing (nevermind the risk to ourselves). The difference is that now there is an end in sight where there was not before.

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