For instance: Switzerland has maintained permanent political neutrality since 1815 as they refuse to join military alliances (not a member of NATO), avoid participating in foreign wars and treating warring parties equally under international law. Even though Switzerland has their own military, they rarely get deployed outside their borders (not invading a ME country to commit war crimes) & definitely don’t have over 800 military bases worldwide.
Has blowback caused the death of someone with the power to do anything about it or is it just the death of the citizens? Blowback killed about 3000 people in 9/11, but Bush was not only fine, he was put in a better position to do whatever he wanted.
When the rich wage war in the US there’s very rarely consequences for them–it’s the poor that die.
Famously. Just off the bat, you can point to the Kennedy Assassination as blowback from his first term interventions during the Cold War. But there’s a myriad of countries who turned from US-neutral/friendly to perennial thorns in the side of State Department policymakers and US global business interests alike. Iran would be the most obvious instance.
History is replete with bankrupted millionaires and dead rich idiots. The socio-economic system mints their replacements. But we’ve got a line from Steve Jobs to Paul-Henri Nargeolet to Yevgeny Prigozhin can be counted among the dead. The 2008 Housing Collapse bankrupted hordes of petite bourgeois investors. The 2001 terrorist attacks decapitated entire businesses in a matter of hours. Jamal Khashoggi was kidnapped and dismembered while alive. Jeffery Epstein was murdered in prison.
Rich people are insulated, but they’re far from immune.
Pointing at Kennedy’s assassination as blowback for US’ non-neutrality is certainly one way to frame that event, though I hesitate to believe it is the consensus historical opinion.
Wealthy losing their wealth because of internal policies and the wealthy dying because of some crackpot distrust in doctors are not examples of blowback from US’ non-neutrality.
While you could reasonably construe the conflicts in the ME and the rise in strikes on US bases in the region as blowback, they don’t affect the higher up power brokers. Trump, despite his cratering public support and starting a war with Iran which lead to the deaths of several US soldiers, is still president. The blowback doesn’t touch him. Even if he’s somehow removed from office after the midterms, I’m not sure that would be considered blowback from the US’ non-neutrality vs just his whole himness, and he’s still moved from ambiguous possible billionaire from before his term to unambiguously multibillionaire after his term.
Blowback kills kids that wanted healthcare and education, it doesn’t touch the people that caused there to be blowback in the first place.
I’m not sure how you read the assassination as anything other than Blowback directly against a sitting President.
Is historical consensus that Lee Harvey Oswald was aiming for someone else and missed?
Eating information from your own misinformation machine and bankrupting yourself off your own regressive economic policies doesn’t count as blowback?
That’s four people in an organization of tens of thousands. But Jeffery and Ghislaine aren’t fine. Bob Menendez and Michael Flynn weren’t fine. Anthony Weiner and Duke Cunningham weren’t fine.
Even folks like Diane Feinstein and Mitch McConnell haven’t ended well.
It kills kids that don’t want it, too.
But it’s also coming from Saudi Princes and Israeli Commanders. It comes for Russians and Ukrainians alike. These foreign policies all have domestic consequences.
As best I can tell, the consensus is that Oswald was a troubled person with a troubled past who, upon recognizing he had nowhere to go but down decided he wanted to go out with a bang and so chose a high profile target, not on the merits of their international policy, but on the status of their profile. That is not blowback.
We’re in a thread talking about spankings delivered as consequence of international interventionism. So no, poor national financial policy and the exercise of individuals within the broken system trying to make a buck and failing miserably is not blowback from international non-neutrality.
You forgot the “many others” mentioned. I was primarily alluding to presidents who, by and large, where not victims of blowback from their international policies as evidence by the fact that most of them died of old age. So no, they aren’t victims of blowback or even of their own making.
Legal consequences for sex crimes are not blowback for the US’ imperialist endeavors
Legal consequences for financial crimes are not blowback for the US’ imperialist endeavors
Legal consequences for campaign finance violations are not blowback for the US’ imperialist endeavors
Bruh, are you serious right now? The insurmountable march of time is not blowback for the US’ imperialist endeavors. Iraq did not oldify these peeps, and they got pretty much everything they wanted in life.
Yeah, obviously. But that’s not what this thread was about.
Dude, your in a thread about why the US can’t be internationally neutral like Switzerland. The top comment we’re chatting under is about the lack of consequences for the US if they just do what they want and aren’t neutral. That is strictly a topic of international relations. Internal failings, people growing old, and bad decisions leading to losses of personal wealth have absolutely nothing to do with international politics.
Yes, there is blowback for US interventionism, but it doesn’t touch the people deciding to intervene. It only hurts the pawns. If you’re not a pawn then the answer to “why doesn’t the US be neutral” is very well “because we don’t have to be, nothing will happen to me,” and if you’re not a pawn then you’d be damn right.
What did 9/11 do for the elites? Some insurance companies lost some money, and some companies had to hire new positions and find new office spaces–but we also got a blank check for surveillance and military companies.
What did Iran do for the elites? Some line items were stricken off the pay ledger when soldiers died. There’s nothing Iran can do to hold the people responsible accountable. They can strike the US’ bases and cost a bit of money from an organization that just makes up their balance sheet each year–that’s blowback, and or doesn’t hurt the elites at all.
Bankrupted millionaires and dead idiots aren’t the ones diving foreign policy. Mostly anyway. Some specific rich dead idiots obviously still have us by the balls but it’s the living ones who call most of the shots
Not once they’re bankrupt or dead, no. But the idea that Tim Cook has influence but Steve Jobs didn’t? Come on. Same with guys like James Cayne and Richard Fuld Jr. Enormously influential, until they weren’t. Shit does eventually catch up to some of the people some of the time.
But then you get a new generation of Gregory Beckers and Sam Bankman-Frieds and Elizabeth Holmes. It’s not that they never face any kind of backlash or consequence. It’s that there’s a conveyor belt of these people. When one falls, a dozen more scramble to replace them.
The line to sell your soul and half your brain for infinite wealth goes around the block.