Who here can name ONE democracy that we have facilitated after the Marshall Plan

[Luminous Animal]

‏@mrlv426 now
The Afghan girls are all educated, Iraqis all have peace & democracy, Kurds all safe, Libyans all free. Yep, on to the Syrians.

[Clown is Down]

1. South Korea?

My dad served and I think we did OK there.

[cthulu2016]

2. You win this round, Mister Bond, but you haven't heard the last of me

[Clown is Down]

4. Ernst Stavro Blofeld

Your new tentacle look is just Fab. How do you manage to look so evil and yet so young?

[MisterP]

3. that they did on their own after 1989...

[Clown is Down]

7. The post did say "facilitate"

I was not trying to argue that the US rebuilt SK from the ground up. I was mostly being a smart-ass and showing off my love of history.

[Gravitycollapse]

5. Does it count if the US was responsible for the tension that led to the war?

They placed the Japanese back in power with their Korean lapdogs because they were afraid of the PRK as a possible communist front. So, you know, we kind of created the conditions necessary for the war.

[Clown is Down]

8. "their Korean lapdogs"?

Japan and Korea have hardly been friendly before, during or after the Korean War.
As late as 2010 168 South Korean citizens lost their property due to their ancestors being "Friendly to the Japanese"
[link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/7890316/South-Korea-targets-Japanese-collaborators-descendants.html|

The East and the West were going to clash horns somewhere. Korea just happened to be ultimate loser in that lottery.

BTW, does every post require a 5 min wait or is that only for newbies?
Thanks

[Gravitycollapse]

9. The Korean lapdogs were the Koreans who aided the Japanese...

Hence, being lapdogs. This is a fairly well understood condition of post-WWII allied occupied Korea. Out of fear of a potential communist regime, the Americans took the former Japanese and Korean (lapdog) leaders and essentially placed them back in power.



Why would there be a wait period between posts?

[Clown is Down]

13. Still confused about the lapdogs issue

Are you saying that Korean leaders were Japan's lapdog, or that both Korean & Japanese leaders were lapdogs under the US?

I would agree with the second statement.

I still argue that East & West were going to duke it out eventually.

The US may have helped set the stage, but it takes two to tango and the North did invade first.

[Gravitycollapse]

19. It's rather more complicated than "takes two to tango." And the North was not unprovoked...

The US abandoned an agreement to 4 year occupation partnered with the USSR, held "elections" in the South and instated a rather terrible authoritarian regime. That right-wing Southern regime attempted to purge themselves of all leftists. Which pushed many Koreans sympathetic to the PRK up north into the hills where they either formed militias or joined others.

The South was not a fairytale land of magical US democracy. They had internment camps for leftists and committed several massacres against leftists and communists which they then blamed on the North.

What was left was two strongly nationalist regimes North and South who hated each other for some rather legitimate reasons. Each wanted to take back the other's territory and it just so happened that the US left South Korea unprepared for a strong North Korean push. The North Koreans took advantage of the opportunity with the aid of Stalin.

If you remove the romance affiliated with the conflict, you will begin to realize that the Korean War was perpetuated as a proxy battle between the US and USSR and both the Northern and Southern regimes were generally tyrannical.

[Clown is Down]

24. Have to agree with everything you just said.

The OP was asking for anything positive after the Marshall Plan and I think South Korea qualifies. It wasn't immediate and it wasn't pretty, but I think the end result is pretty amazing.

[Luminous Animal]

10. From the Korean war and through the 1980s it was a military dictatorship

[Clown is Down]

15. And it is now a democracy

and the US did facilitate it's growth.

[Luminous Animal]

16. Growth? What do you mean by growht?

[Clown is Down]

20. Economic, International trade & relations, just the usual stuff.

Not to mention having thousands of troops there to secure the border etc.

I must say this "must wait 5 mins between posts" is VERY annoying.
I don't want to lurk, I want to jump in and mud wrestle with you all.

[Gravitycollapse]

23. Not really. South Korea was subject to several coups and assassinations over the years...

For 40 years, it was a pretty terrible place.

[Clown is Down]

27. See Post 24

I think I answered you there.

This is fun. I should have joined earlier.

[XemaSab]

17. Korea was 60 years ago

[Clown is Down]

28. OP asked for anything after the Marshall Plan

Hey I didn't set the parameters, I just jumped into this mosh pit of ideas.

I would have answered you sooner but I am under the torment of being delayed 5 mins between posts.
I suppose the Admins want newbies to lurk more.

[JVS]

6. Israel. Taiwan (ROC)

You could count the expansion of NATO into states shedding their authoritarian past Spain (1982), Eastern European democracies in the last 2 decades as facilitating democracy by providing military security rather than material goods.

[Luminous Animal]

12. Israel is theocratic thus not democratic.

[JVS]

21. How so? Who are the chief clerics of Israel's government?

[BlueCheese]

26. I agree with you.

[cali]

33. ack. Sorry, Israel is democratic and it's stretching it HUGELY to call it

a theocracy.

[FarCenter]

35. Taiwan was not democratic until recently

For decades the Kuomingtang ruled Taiwan. The Parliament seats represented their old districts on the mainland, and since elections could not be held in those districts, the membership was permanent.

[struggle4progress]

11. I think Clinton was right to help reinstall Aristide

[Luminous Animal]

14. Never happened. Wikileaks proved that Clinton was a big lying fucking asshole.

[struggle4progress]

18. Really? I remember clearly the Reaganites hated Aristide back in the 80s, and I remember

that after winning Haiti's first free election, he was deposed under Bush I. Then I remember Clinton helping him get back into office. And I remember that when all the old Reaganite and Bush I thugs got back into office under Bush II, Aristide was forced into a plane in the middle of the night and flown off to the Central African Republic, while all the neanderthals cheered. What part of that story are you claiming never happened?

[joshcryer]

29. Poster probably thinking of Aristide's second ouster (2004).

Not the first (1991).

[joshcryer]

22. Libya is no Somolia.

And it's improving gradually day by day.

I seem to recall us having slaves after we got our democracy. For decades. Oh and women couldn't vote. Neither could blacks. Took us several hundred years to figure that one out.

And to this day we're passing laws to suppress the vote, gays don't have equal rights, the drug war is still insurmountable, oh, and our politicians bomb other countries.

By that metric I think Libya is off to an excellent start.

[BlueCheese]

25. Kosovo. Taiwan. South Korea. Panama.

Let's not toss the baby out with the bathwater, even if there's a lot of bathwater.

[NWHarkness]

30. The Phillipines

The one situation the Reagan administration handled correctly was the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos.

[Douglas Carpenter]

31. with all their flaws - South Korea and Taiwan did eventually evolve into functioning democracies

with relative stability and viable economy

[Donald Ian Rankin]

32. Kosovo is a very obvious one. N.T.

[Diclotican]

34. Luminious animal

Hey

I think You have to read some history, as the marshal plan helped most of what become west europe, And the whole program was also used To rebuild most of the horrible damage from world war two. It Also helped in making what become west germany And GRD a stable, Democratic republic Who from 1949 Also took more responsible action to at least sort out some of the horrible war crimes committed in thats country name.

For many in western europe the marshal plan was a savior for them all, as the first winters after the war was cold and hard an often lasted longer than usual. Without that program europe would have been Devestated for a long time, and the resentment from the Different country would Ended in a new war -as WW1 Did

My granddad had a gift from that time, given to him by the program here in norway. It was a beast of a multi tool machine who at the time was amassing for a man Who all his life had worked manually, now he could do 3 times what he usually Did in a day.
This machine Also had a sign on the side Who it sad. This is a gift from the united states of america to the people in norway.

I'm not sure where that machine is today, but i do know that This beast was started last in 2002-2003, after some cranking it started and was av live..

[gopiscrap]

36. Canada?