<story><title>The pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights</title><url>https://www.economist.com/international/2020/10/17/the-pandemic-has-eroded-democracy-and-respect-for-human-rights</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Zafira</author><text>You can see the failure of American leadership and an inability to engage in global crises in a decisive manner since Vietnam due to our inability to get over our incompetence and total misunderstanding of the political situation during the war there.&lt;p&gt;I have a strong suspicion that American foreign policy wonks still don&amp;#x27;t understand why we failed in Vietnam; why applying the lens of containment and the same policy everywhere was an asinine idea cloaked in arrogance that has haunted us for decades because of our inability to accept our mistakes. I think this refusal manifests itself as a steady refusal to engage in well-reasoned policy engagements and wasted opportunities to exert US influence in a positive direction.&lt;p&gt;You see this in the way we celebrated &amp;quot;liberating&amp;quot; Grenada. You see it with the weak humanitarian effort in Somalia. You see it with the increasing reliance on air power and a failure to have firm policy objectives when we do commit land troops.</text></item><item><author>roenxi</author><text>This has been a consistent theme to responses to major crisis in US has faced in my lifetime - every time, after the crisis the situation is worse than it was before the crisis. Not because of the crisis, but because of the response. 9&amp;#x2F;11, the 2008 recession (QE is still with us) and now COVID.&lt;p&gt;The scars from the first two really should have healed a long time ago. It&amp;#x27;ll be a pretty dire future if the COVID response isn&amp;#x27;t completely unwound, some serious compromises to freedom were made through this.</text></item><item><author>econol0dge</author><text>From the article, it sounds like &lt;i&gt;our response to&lt;/i&gt; the pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights.&lt;p&gt;The virus is not agentic, and what they describe are intentional acts by human beings.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>goodcanadian</author><text>&lt;i&gt;You see this in the way we celebrated &amp;quot;liberating&amp;quot; Grenada.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;A nitpick, but Grenada celebrates the US liberation with a Thanksgiving Day holiday, on October 25:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Thanksgiving_Day#Grenada&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Thanksgiving_Day#Grenada&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Appearances at the time were misleading. It is one of the few interventions that I think the US got right.</text></comment>
<story><title>The pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights</title><url>https://www.economist.com/international/2020/10/17/the-pandemic-has-eroded-democracy-and-respect-for-human-rights</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Zafira</author><text>You can see the failure of American leadership and an inability to engage in global crises in a decisive manner since Vietnam due to our inability to get over our incompetence and total misunderstanding of the political situation during the war there.&lt;p&gt;I have a strong suspicion that American foreign policy wonks still don&amp;#x27;t understand why we failed in Vietnam; why applying the lens of containment and the same policy everywhere was an asinine idea cloaked in arrogance that has haunted us for decades because of our inability to accept our mistakes. I think this refusal manifests itself as a steady refusal to engage in well-reasoned policy engagements and wasted opportunities to exert US influence in a positive direction.&lt;p&gt;You see this in the way we celebrated &amp;quot;liberating&amp;quot; Grenada. You see it with the weak humanitarian effort in Somalia. You see it with the increasing reliance on air power and a failure to have firm policy objectives when we do commit land troops.</text></item><item><author>roenxi</author><text>This has been a consistent theme to responses to major crisis in US has faced in my lifetime - every time, after the crisis the situation is worse than it was before the crisis. Not because of the crisis, but because of the response. 9&amp;#x2F;11, the 2008 recession (QE is still with us) and now COVID.&lt;p&gt;The scars from the first two really should have healed a long time ago. It&amp;#x27;ll be a pretty dire future if the COVID response isn&amp;#x27;t completely unwound, some serious compromises to freedom were made through this.</text></item><item><author>econol0dge</author><text>From the article, it sounds like &lt;i&gt;our response to&lt;/i&gt; the pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights.&lt;p&gt;The virus is not agentic, and what they describe are intentional acts by human beings.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TheOtherHobbes</author><text>Domestic policy is the real problem. US foreign policy is always an extension of domestic policy anyway.</text></comment>