Why were American soldiers in Jordan in the first place?
Why were American soldiers in Jordan in the first place?
Everyone is talking about the American soldiers killed in Jordan. But I don't know why they were there to begin with.
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We're a global imperial power, so like all empires we maintain a military presence near resources, allies, sites of likely resistance, etc.
That's a generalization. What is our mission in Jordan? We don't just put people there. They have orders.
That’s a generalization
Yep! Plenty of people here have already talked about reasons we have bases specifically in Jordan. I thought it was worth remembering the big picture, that we dot the world with our military presence to shore up our various imperial interests.
Imperialism is when you conquer a region. If Jordan didn't want us there, they can kick us out. So its really not Imperialism at all.
If this were Roman times or other such actual Empires or rule of Imperialism, we'd be forcing these states to be paying us directly and they wouldn't be allowed to kick us out.
Empires still have allies and aligned interests. It makes sense for Jordan to host a US base because we're the most powerful imperial power on the planet.
The roman empire is a great example because their forts were all up and down their trade routes.
Imperialism is when you conquer a region
Even the dictionary defines imperialism much more broadly:
"1. The extension of a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political dominance over other nations." (American Heritage dictionary - I just typed 'imperialism definition' into my browser)
We absolutely have economic and political dominance - and massive military dominance - over other nations.
My favorite definition of an empire is a military, economic or bureaucratic institution that siphons resources from the periphery to the center. That can be done with a military, like we did in iraq, but it's much smoother to do by offering reasons for local elites to buy in and only deploying force when unavoidable.
The Iraqi Constitution says that Iraq is in charge of the oil, and what US imported we paid a fair price for.
And most of Iraq's exports is oil. So how is this imperialism? Iraq keeps it's most precious resource and we pay a fair price for it despite militarily enforcing the area. In fact, there is a lot of criticism from the Republican base that we didn't take advantage of the Iraqis.
Are you saying that we SHOULD have take the oil??
We overthrew their government and the government we put in power is more friendly toward us. How is that not imperialism?
I'm not denying that we got rid of Saddam. What I'm saying is that the move isn't as self-serving as many critics try to force. The earlier post is trying to argue that we've somehow stolen the resources of Iraq, but no such thing has happened.
Its kind of like sexual assault when there's an imbalance of power.
Technically, the CEO asked for a blowjob, but you still want to have a job on Monday.
But in this case, its Jordan who wants to have its border defended from ISIS, and the USA also wants to kill ISIS, so why not make a deal between us where we can have a military base that does both?
Win-win for both parties. This is more like the CEO wanting to give a pay-raise to the employee, and the employee accepting it. Both sides are happy.
Just because there's a power imbalance doesn't mean that there's any ill-will or problem. US-Jordan relations are very close, and have been great for decades.