The US should have given scholarships to smart young Nigeriens to study STEM and social sciences in the US. With the same amount of money spent, the US could have sponsored literal thousands of students. These students will return to Niger and gradually uplift their nation. This is what the British Commonwealth is still doing today. Merely training their military will result in such coups.
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Why wouldn't these students just stay in the US.
Okay so let's say they don't train these guys, their training was in counter terrorism, so what happens when Boko Haram or one of the many other militant groups comes calling? STEM folks aren't generally going to stop marauding assholes murdering people over religion, or ambition, as a matter of fact they will probably be some of the first victims.
There's a reason why society has law enforcement officers and soldiers, because criminals don't give a shit about the law and don't respect other's, and militant leaders and tyrants don't give a shit about society and sovereignty.
Currently Society needs both soldiers and STEM grads, as well as a slew of other professions, and that's not changing anytime soon.
I don't think that person was saying that soldiers need to be wiped out of existence, just that the US should train people how to make their countries better instead of how to kill people better. Or that's what I got out of it anyways.
Sure but the point is that nations have hierarchies of need just like people do. If you don't have the equal rule of law, a military that is dedicated to the people (in America that's "We the People"), a civil service that is relatively corruption free, peaceful transfers of power after clean elections, and probably some other stuff (free elementary education? contracts? intellectual property...?), it's foolish to TRY to establish STEAM (including the arts) programs and higher social goods.
So countries that have been ravaged by colonialism need to be repaired from the bottom up. That really does start with a well trained military dedicated to the people.
If you don't have the equal rule of law, a military that is dedicated to the people (in America that's "We the People"), a civil service that is relatively corruption free, peaceful transfers of power after clean elections, and probably some other stuff (free elementary education? contracts? intellectual property...?), it's foolish to TRY to establish STEAM (including the arts) programs and higher social goods.
It's also really foolish to give the officials in ~~that society~~ a society lacking all those things a bunch of guns and training on how to use them because they said they saw Boko Haram in the bushes, which is what we did
e; better phrasing
I wasn't privy to the details of the training, but the US military is very much couched in the military serving the people, so I would hope and expect that's what any training we provided included. Maybe you have specialized knowledge that we just went in and gave them guns and taught them how to use the guns and fucked right off so they could start shooting bushes...?
just that the US should train people how to make their countries better instead of how to kill people better
That's exactly what they were being trained to do, they were being taught how to fight the very real terrorist threat that exists in and around Niger.
Also soldiering is a whole lot more than just the "killing people" part, especially for NATO and NATO trained soldiers, hell the war fighting portion of a good logistically sound military like the US is only around 25% of that military, the army, air force and navy all have doctors and nurses that pitch in to help with any crisis, the same with the engineering corps, and most other portions of the military including infantry who get to do stuff like fill sandbags and other grunt work necessary to help.
Also just for you and the other person commenting, the US helps train and fund doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, they help feed these countries through shipments of food and farming supplies and equipment, their diplomatic corp works tirelessly to resolve situations like the one Niger is in, how much more do you want them to do?
It's just ridiculous how much some of you people don't even realize the US is doing constantly to uphold global security, and the only time we have stopped doing it in this century is when Trump chose his isolationist policies, which absolutely let those terrorist and militant groups grow and fester.
Soft power is the key to global security, far more than armies, but armies are unfortunately still very necessary.
Sometimes lemmy is a care bear circle.
It's like an incredibly predictable consequence of the same mistakes U.S. officials have been making over and over since the 1900s
The US was literally training these guys to fight Boko Haram and ISIS, not for taking over other countries, militant groups and threats from unstable neighbors are a very real threat for the people of Niger, so by your logic just let a bunch of marauding assholes continue to be a plague upon the continent and Niger specifically?
Doctors and teachers and election administrators we teach can't turn around and shoot the hospitals schools and community centers you gave them at you, can't say the same about soldiers and weapons.
Also, our military presence in the area drew in/recruited way more terrorists to the region than we were ever able to neutralize
Also, our military presence in the area drew in/recruited way more terrorists to the region than we were ever able to neutralize
GTFO, lol, so by that logic the US had a military presence in Rwanda during the genocide? What about Sudan (whom is not US allies but Russian)? What about all of these many other examples? You might as well have just commented "US bad" and it still would have been as factually correct.
Doctors and teachers and election administrators we teach can't turn around and shoot the hospitals schools and community centers you gave them at you, can't say the same about soldiers and weapons.
Oh the US doesn't help train and assist doctors and teachers in Africa? Election Administrators?
As an American you should be embarrassed at how little you know about how your tax money is being spent to help the world grow to become a better place.
Neo-Colonialism. The U.S. isn’t just doing it for “freedom.” They expect things in return. Whether profits from resource extraction, or just to prevent Russia/ China gaining a foothold.
Also, when the US trained soldier tells the US trained doctor, "We've gotta look like we're fighting terrorism if we want to keep getting money from the US, so hand over anyone who comes into your hospital from the wrong neighborhood and we'll practice those enhanced interrogation techniques on them," the net effect for the US's image is a negative one. When we go looking for terrorism and say we're handing out lots of resources to anyone who will help us find terrorism, we just end up finding a lot of "terrorism" and creating a lot of terrorists.
"I taught them how to use guns and they used guns"