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Atilim87 t1_iur303s wrote

Reply to comment by Peter_deT in When it comes to Cuba's military victory at the Bay of Pigs, does Che Guevara deserve any credit or should it be assigned exclusively to Castro's leadership? by Anglicanpolitics123

Then”we will be treated as liberators “ is a justification countries used for centuries and for some shocking reason it never holds up.

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Grahamshabam t1_iur4udr wrote

people really hate being invaded

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blahbleh112233 t1_iur91dc wrote

Also doesnt help that us backed regimes in south america have a nasty habit of gross human rights abuses

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ezrs158 t1_iurarvx wrote

US backed regimes in South America everywhere have a nasty habit of gross human rights abuses. Cuba, Nicaragua, Egypt, Iran, Panama, etc.

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blahbleh112233 t1_iurbtou wrote

Dont disagree. But from a propaganda perspective. SA mattered more. Pretty easy to tell the population that things will be much worsen when the US is in charge when you dont need to lie about it

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Grahamshabam t1_iurcocn wrote

that’s not very relevant here. Bay of Pigs was 7 years before Operation Condor, and it also ignores Soviet influence on Cuba. not judging the merits of communism but any country that aligned with the soviets isn’t likely to treat the capitalist invasion as liberators

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CanuckPanda t1_iureiw7 wrote

It doesn’t, however, ignore the entirety of the Monroe Doctrine.

The US government had treated the Americas as its personal political sandbox for 140 years by the time of the Cuban Revolution. South and Central Americans already had generations of experience with “American interests” in their lands.

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Grahamshabam t1_iurmur2 wrote

Along with generations of experience in spanish influence, french influence and were in the midst of soviet influence

the united states obviously has caused huge problems in south america but you’re being overly simplistic. the biggest thing that gets left out of these discussions is that while the us-backed coups were against democratically elected leaders, there were also large parts of the populations that supported the coups.

to this day you can talk to older chileans who have complicated feelings about pinochet because of how much they disliked allende. allende’s party didn’t even have a congressional majority at the time when they were still a democracy. these countries aren’t ideological monoliths and those leaders may well have seized power without the US’s help. switching to my personal belief is that the big issue is that we messed with the right of south americans to self determination, and the actual political outcomes are way too complicated for outsiders to talk about confidently

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alekk88 t1_iut1i2p wrote

They had no need to look south to figure out what being in a us-backed regime is like. They just had to remember what it was like for decades before Fidel reached Havana

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Flavaflavius t1_iuspikx wrote

Regimes everywhere have a nasty habit of human rights abuses; we don't call them that if they don't.

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ComradeGibbon t1_ius65di wrote

I read a paper on the difference between NGO's and the military doing non military projects in foreign countries. Turns out locals tend to just grumble if an NGO does something unpopular. The military no matter what it is results in hard resistance.

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rockrnger t1_iurj8qo wrote

Castro invaded cuba with 50 guys and boat. And the first thing he did was sink the boat.

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Davebr0chill t1_ius4308 wrote

Castro was cuban and actually popular with the lower classes. This is fundamentally different from another country invading

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alekk88 t1_iut2580 wrote

And then he won against a national army supplied by the United States

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anarrogantworm t1_iurcrxv wrote

In the War of 1812 American warhawks were saying they would be welcomed as liberators of Canada and Jefferson said it would be 'a mere matter of marching'.

It did not hold up.

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Painting_Agency t1_iurhi68 wrote

We welcomed the opportunity to burn Washington DC 🤷‍♂️.

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BaronCoop t1_iusaor5 wrote

Oh come on! We JUST finished painting everything!

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recycled_ideas t1_iuro0mq wrote

> for some shocking reason it never holds up.

It doesn't never hold up, it happened quite often during WW2.

But it requires

  1. That the people you're liberating feel in need of liberation.
  2. That they believe that your intention is to actually liberate them.

The US view of Cuba is heavily distorted and doesn't match the experience on the ground and the US was 100% intent on returning Cuba to US investors not to the people of Cuba.

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Containedmultitudes t1_iut4yz4 wrote

I feel like liberating a people from a different foreign occupier is the sticking point with WWII. Even the Nazis had some of that good will in their invasions of Eastern Europe (although the people quickly realized the Nazis had no liberatory intentions).

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ItsAlwaysSmokyInReno t1_iurvqjk wrote

It always true. Vietnamese soldiers were seen as liberators by the Khmer peoples when the Khmer Rouge was deposed by them and a puppet state was put in their place. But you’ll tend to side with anyone who wants to fight the guys genociding your family

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Raging-Fuhry t1_iusnmha wrote

But Vietnam was fighting a defensive war, they didn't need it as justification.

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24111 t1_iuthvlh wrote

Didn't help the sanctions from piling on though. That chapter of history gets buried way too deep from public consciousness given who the supposed "democracies" were supporting.

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Kered13 t1_iuv298y wrote

He's not talking about the Vietnam War, he's talking about the Third Indochina War, in which Vietnam invaded and occupied Cambodia. Vietnam was very much not fighting a defensive war there.

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Raging-Fuhry t1_iuv2hxo wrote

I know lol, why else would they be fighting the Khmer Rouge.

They were fighting a defensive war against an aggressive and probing Cambodia that was in kahoots with China, Vietnam's long time nemesis.

I'd say it was defensive when the Khmer Rouge starting killing Vietnamese villagers on the border.

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Kered13 t1_iuv4tj0 wrote

The Khmer Rouge started the war by raiding Vietnamese villages, but the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia, which was the vast vast majority of the war, was not a defensive operation. I don't know if maybe you're taking this as some kind of moral judgement, because it's definitely not. It's just a fact that an invasion is inherently offensive.

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Kered13 t1_iuv2c4l wrote

Cambodians were happy to get rid of the Khmer Rouge, but they were not happy with the Vietnamese puppet government or the Vietnamese soldiers who remained for years. There is a reason that the Third Indochina War lasted 16 years and ended with Vietnam's withdrawal.

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24111 t1_iuthnrb wrote

Up until the end where the occupation turned extremely unpopular, and afaik plenty of Cambodians don't see that favorably today.

They still had a way better justification than the US got anywhere hilariously enough, but that didn't stop the sanctions. And Polpot were pretty much alive and well still at the end of the occupation, supported by Thailand.

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mikechella t1_ius31z2 wrote

>for some shocking reason it never holds up.

Except when it does.

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Zimmonda t1_ius03ih wrote

Ehhh its worked quite a few times

Napoleon is the most famous but coups and regime change rarely require the "full consent of the populace"

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BartholomewBandy t1_ius71ol wrote

France in 44? South Pacific, same time? Never?

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Teantis t1_iusj9pk wrote

Being treated as liberators wasn't used as a 'justification' because the allied side didn't need a justification, they were fighting a defensive war to begin with. It was the Japanese who actually used the liberators line saying they were throwing out the western colonizers to create an Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Nazis, of course, used next to no justification. Their whole ethos was based on having the will to take what you want.

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Liutasiun t1_iustues wrote

You're very wrong about the nazis. Their justification for all conflicts of the appeasement were about the people there veing Germans or the territory being rightful 'German' territory. Austria, then Sudetenland, then Danzig. So that is pretty much the "liberator" justification, just liberation by adding them to their country. They even did a false falg ooeration where they pretended Poland was invading them to muddy the waters further

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Teantis t1_iut71bx wrote

Initially, only because they were using the language of the western allies to leverage them into not acting. All the ones you cited were before any of the allies joined the war. Beyond those initial gains it was their actual motivation of pure conquest, Barbarossa and onward they dropped all pretense.

Japan kept up their Asian co prosperity sphere messaging throughout.

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Liutasiun t1_iutilez wrote

I'd hardly call it just 'using the language of the western allies' considering it was always used extensively in terms of inward propaganda. One of Hitler's major promise was reversing Versailles, which included the territorial loss Versailles represented.

You are right that after they were at war with the Allies they didn't use that justification anymore, but that was probably in part because at that point they already occupied all of the territories they could even possibly claim as belonging to Germany. I still am not sure I'd say they had 'next to no' justification. They of course used the "Lebensraum" bit were they argued Germany needed more territory for the 'Arian' race. But they also used standard red scare tactics. The official justification for Barbarossa was that the Soviets were planning to attack the nazis (which, given a couple more years, very well might have happpened).

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Meritania t1_iusznk5 wrote

Napoleon was shocked that when the coalition entered France there was no guerrilla war against the foreign invaders like there was in Spain.

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Chenksoner t1_iurhp5f wrote

Rarely, wouldn’t the Ukrainians when being invaded by the Nazis be an example?

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Containedmultitudes t1_iut4ju1 wrote

> The most extravagant idea that can take root in the head of a politician is to believe that it is enough for one people to invade a foreign people to make it adopt its laws and constitution. No one likes armed missionaries; and the first advice given by nature and prudence is to repel them as enemies.

Robespierre, unsuccessfully lobbying against the French revolutionary wars.

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