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Comment by edblarney | Hacker News Reader

+ "It's in control of the state, " - actually, it's in control of the Army directly.

+ The US sprayed 'agent orange' on trees near their firebases, and the vast majority of the 'victims' were American soldiers, not Vietnamese. Obviously, they didn't know what it would do.

+ The 'embargo' is 100% the fault of Fidel. He put nuclear weapons 40 miles away from florida, from those who backed by the credible threat of using them, thereby putting hundreds of millions of lives at risk. That's why the embargo started - he had ample time to wind it down. Jimmy Carter, Clinton, Obama - and even Bush Sr. would have made a deal of Fidel agreed to have elections.

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> the vast majority of the 'victims' were American soldiers, not Vietnamese.

That's straight up false. Between 3-4 millions Vietnamese suffered from it[1], and its devastating effects are still very relevant today. Concerning US soldiers, "By April 1993, the Department of Veterans Affairs had compensated only 486 victims, although it had received disability claims from 39,419 soldiers who had been exposed to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange#Effects_on_the_Vi...

What do you think about the wisdom of putting nuclear weapons 160 miles away from the USSR in Turkey? The Cuban deployment was a direct response to American provocation.

What's notable about Castro's conduct during the missile crisis is that whilst it was actually Khrushchev that made the decision about locating the missiles in Cuba as an arguably proportionate response to America's own missile locations, it was Castro's private correspondence that urged Khrushchev to be prepared to actually use them.

(Khrushchev, not known as one of the Cold War's more pacifistic figures, responded that he found Castro's suggestion quite disturbing)

Could you add references? Not accusing any credibility, I'd just want to learn more details.

> He put nuclear weapons 40 miles away from florida

And the US isn’t putting nukes into NATO states? Italy and Turkey already have had some before Cuba got some, so what’s next? Estonia?

No, the US is definitely not putting nukes in Estonia.

Original comment was:

> And the US isn’t putting nukes into Estonia?

Honest question: Where is this coming from? I'd hate to call this war-mongering and spreading misinformation, but this is a great way to polarize a conversation in one fell scoop.

The problem is just that you have to see it a lot more nuanced.

It was the cold war, and the US had already put nukes into Italy and Turkey, well within range of Moscow.

In such a game-theoretical standoff, the USSR had had to react – to keep the balance of power.

It’s a completely crazy situation, and I’d consider both sides of the conflict as Evil, but I’m not sure why so many people try to claim the US was Good, while the USSR was Evil. Both stood for some good, and some very bad principles.

I edited the comment to reduce the conflict potential, but keep the general idea of it.

Please keep in mind I was responding only to the original comment, which I quoted in its full glory. It had nothing to do with what you assert above, just a mistaken assertion that US is keeping (now was implicit in what you said) nukes in the Baltic States.

Given Russias interest in toying and more with its neighbors, misinformation like this goes a long way of "normalizing" those conflicts. It prepares whomever is reading your comment to say, "huh, the both sides here are shades of gray" and just accept that conflict as normal.

So yeah. There are no US nukes in Estonia. If there are, please back up your sources.

> US was Good, while the USSR was Evil

Objectively? They were both Evil. If you compare them, the USSR is hands down the evil one. I really hate this whitewashing of USSR's history just to put down the US. I'm pretty sure nobody here defending Castro or Cuba ever had to live under a communist dictatorship.

It's as simple as:

Ask anyone from Eastern Europe or even Cuba on whose sphere of influence would they had rather been. I'm willing to bet everything that 90% of the answers will be NATO.

Most of that is true.

But comparing the US and USSR isn’t nearly as easy. Both were (and are) horrible to non-citizen. And while the US was mostly okay to the white citizen, minorities had to suffer for quite a while. And nowadays, the US mistreating its own citizen is getting extreme.

> Ask anyone from Eastern Europe or even Cuba on whose sphere of influence would they had rather been

That question isn’t nearly as easy either.

In Germany we’re having a huge group of people who lived under communism – and want it back. In some states (those which lived under communism), up to 20% of the people.

(This also answers the "I'm pretty sure nobody here defending Castro or Cuba ever had to live under a communist dictatorship" question, I guess? I didn’t live myself under communism, but I know quite a few who’d want it back, because they had it better)

> But comparing the US and USSR isn’t nearly as easy. Both were (and are) horrible to non-citizen.

Go ahead and compare how the United States treated the citizens of, say, France, with how the USSR treated the citizens of, oh, say, Czechoslovakia. We'll wait.

> And while the US was mostly okay to the white citizen, minorities had to suffer for quite a while.

It's telling that you are attempting to draw an equality between segregation -- which was legally ended in 1957 as part of an open and democratic process -- with the USSR's extensive gulag system, intricate controls on freedom of expression and freedom of thought, and general lack of civil rights for everyone, which lasted right up until the day it disintegrated.

> In Germany we’re having a huge group of people who lived under communism – and want it back.

If Communism was so great, why did you have to build a wall to keep people from running away from it? That's the unanswerable point here.

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