Idealistic nonsense. I mean, Americans don't care about history. And they really don't care about WW1. But history classes have to at least pretend to cover WW1. Even long before I was a leftist, the official story taught in schools never made sense to me. The Germans sank the Lusitania, and that made Americans mad. Okay it wasn't great of course, but seems kinda flimsy of a reason by itself. So they add the Zimmerman Telegram. It's pretty silly to take it seriously, but I guess it's taught as this is just something that made even more Americans angry at the Germans?
So the way the history is taught, you are forced to conclude that the US public eventually just got so angry with Germany that they demanded the US enter the way. The problem of course is a.) the US public still wasn't frothing at the mouth angry and I think a majority still didn't want to get involved, and b.) politicians NEVER give a single fuck what the public wants or doesn't want with respect to war. Never have, never will. The idea that US politicians just saw Americans getting angry and thus had no choice but to declare war is ludicrous.
So in steps the REAL reason: if the Allies lost, US investors were gonna lose out big on loans made to support the Allied war effort. Reading Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism, it's just so obvious that that's what was going on. After the war, there was an official hearing or something that determined that was the real cause. But all this gets buried because Americans cannot entertain either historical materialism or the notion that the US gets into wars for less than noble reasons.
Anyways, :amerikkka: , as always.
Man, next you are going to tell me Americans didn't care at all about yellow cake and aluminum tubes. Tell me when America nakedly admitted entering a war on the side of capital.
When they don't bother to gin up an excuse, that's when capital will have finally won.
Tell me when America nakedly admitted entering a war on the side of capital.
The Korean War leaps to mind.
Nah. That goes back at least as far as the Monroe Doctrine. Arguably the Barbary Wars.
the Barbary War the US was violating the environment of international treaty and commerce by refusing to pay off the pirates. Everyone else did.
and the monroe doctrine is funny because its neither a treaty, nor enforced for like 100 years after it was outlined.
anyway the raison d'guerre of the Korean War was expressed through the treaties that created the United Nations, even though the US were the only enthusiastic sponsors (also the Soviets idiotically abstained from the security council in protest of the emplacement of the ROC on it)
US was violating the environment of international treaty and commerce by refusing to pay off the pirates.
:hasan-ok-dude:
And then they did it again in 1812 because the international standard was to let the British press gang you.
the monroe doctrine is funny because its neither a treaty, nor enforced for like 100 years after it was outlined.
It was routinely enforced, with a particular eye towards Euro/African pirates. Hell, the Spanish American War was a very explicit consequences of its enforcement.
i stand by the Barbary even if i'll amend the monroe doctrine to 60-70 years. you dont get to say the western hemisphere is yankee turf with the french army in veracruz
holding north african monarchs as illegitimate for enforcing tax & seizure on trespassers as if that wasn't how all countries operated. a system of treaties with them to ensure safe passage for a country's ships is no different from ones between european countries, except historiography calls north africans "pirates"
you dont get to say the western hemisphere is yankee turf with the french army in veracruz
The Jeffersonians were on better terms with the French than the Spanish. Hence the ongoing dispute over Cuba.
holding north african monarchs as illegitimate for enforcing tax & seizure on trespassers
Oh come on. We're not seriously going to pretend the glorified troll toll to the Mediterranian set up by Morocco was about trespassing. They were doing the same shit in boats that the Europeans were doing on horseback - textbook robbery barony.
a system of treaties with them to ensure safe passage for a country’s ships is no different from ones between european countries, except historiography calls north africans “pirates”
Everyone was a pirate when you were Spanish. Africans didn't have any kind of monopoly on the term.
what about the British extorting south american nations and doing their bullshit all over the gulf? were the yanks friendly with them too or did they just lack the capability to enforce a monrovian sphere of influence?
not sure ive heard anything notably positive about yankee-second empire relations either.
but with "highway robbery"---the europeans did that. on water. you'll forgive me if i dont certify privateering and merchantilist trade controls from absolute monarchies as more legitimate than the barbary lords. its still "we'll shoot you if you dont pay us" if you've got a stamp & document
what about the British extorting south american nations and doing their bullshit all over the gulf?
Ask President Madison why he had to paint his house white.
not sure ive heard anything notably positive about yankee-second empire relations either.
Depends heavily on where you're standing.
you’ll forgive me if i dont certify privateering and merchantilist trade controls from absolute monarchies as more legitimate than the barbary lords
Winning grants a certain degree of legitimacy.
Besides, if they'd lost, you'd be smugly dismissing the North African Empire as the illegitimate scourge tyrannizing the poor Atlantic vassal states.
Establishing a Rules Based International Order doesn't mean you're the good guys. It just means you built the dominant coalition. Which Atlantic Europeans ultimately did.
i dont think we disagree except on semantics lol
imma tap out this was fun tho i like litigating 2 century old policy
I was taught that the Lusitania sinking was a big deal because it killed Americans and disrupted our commerce (so at least there's some acknowledgment of the business interest in going to war). The Zimmerman telegraph was taught as something that probably wasn't that serious (might have even been faked or exaggerated, and Mexico never seriously considered invading) but was used to push the war on the public. Around the same time we were covering yellow journalism and the Spanish-American War, which was much more obviously pushed on the public. There was also discussion of the American Empire in those terms, complete with thosw political cartoons from the era that show an eagle spanning half the globe. Still not as in-depth as "we'd lose a bunch of money if Britain and France lost," but not terrible.
Thinking of how the Zimmerman telegraph and the sinking of the Maine were taught made me think of a professor's comment in a college history course about how we may have essentially sat on intel that a strike on Pearl Harbor was imminent. If any of those events happened today the suggestion that the official narrative might be false would be considered crank shit. Wonder how 9/11 will be taught in 50 years.
Wouldn't surprise me, we needed an excuse to get our troops into Europe and establish a more... business-friendly anticommunism.
We don't get taught anything else and don't have time or energy to read books
the Lusitania is such an easy gotcha but i dont think its as incorrect as the evisionist view. like obviously the war wasn't entered on behalf of a dozen drownes americans but its pretty absurd to think german attacks on transatlantic shipping were at all tolerable
which was a selling point only if the public understood war was a real possibility, i.e. that plausible and somewhat popular justifications existed
Germany was a threat to the Monroe Doctrine, like Germany wanted to establish a naval base on margarita island and had significant economic influence in Haiti and Central American coffee plantations, thats why the US invaded Haiti in 1914. Besides just like the UK, the Americans feared german control over the Ottoman Empire and their attempted to break the Suez Monopoly by building the Berlin-Bagdad Railroad, just like the modern us fears china and their belt and road initiative, which will subvert anglo hegemony over international trade.
