zimmerman

[JayC]

As somebody already said, the Marshall Plan after WW2, and we did pay a high price in US soldiers even after the war 'ended' during that process.

 

Just curious, what was the 1 attempt that succeeded?  The rest of this thread is way too long and pointless to bother reading anymore...

[Jonnin]

The only way we will ever successfully build up another country is when we can install a democracy that the people in that country approve of and will continue to vote for and defend.   We can't force extremists to not vote for an extremist who will then take over as dictator.  We can't even do that HERE.   That means the only way we can succeed are examples like S korea, which I would argue is a success story --- the people there want a decent lifestyle and have worked hard to maintain what we gave so much to create.  

 

The good news is that such a country that would remain free would not need a constant presence of our forces or constant infusions of "aid" to pay them off to remain our ally or remain quasi friendly.  

 

I can count on one hand the number of countries that would be worth bothering to save.  None of them have natural resources that we would fight to protect like oil, though, so we instead try to do things in the oil rich countries that we "need" to be "stable".   Like almost everything else in the world, follow the money (or oil) and suddenly our idiotic foreign policy makes more sense....