I mean.. we do all the time no? Hitler tried to make Germany great and made it shit. Mao tried to make China great and killed tens of millions. Stalin, Pol Pot.. the list goes on.
If we attribute accidental evil, why should we not attribute accidental good?
If Hitler was trying to find a gold mine under Germany and instead found a bomb there that killed a bunch of people, we wouldn't blame him for murder, it was an honest mistake.
Murdering millions of people wasn't exactly "accidental evil", it was very deliberate. Which parts of what these guys did do you think were accidental?
Mao's campaign to kill sparrows was a result of a belief that they were a net loss for harvests.
Stalin's support of Lysenko was a result of thinking Lysenko was actually able to drive agricultural growth.
Both mistakes led to mass deaths.
We still tend to attribute those deaths to those leaders, because their brutally authoritarian rule was what allowed those mistakes to go unchallenged and get fixed before they caused that level of harm.
Both of them also killed a lot of people maliciously and intentionally, but a large proportion of their death toll as a side-effect of their oppression, not the goal of it.
> We still tend to attribute those deaths to those leaders, because their brutally authoritarian rule was what allowed those mistakes to go unchallenged and get fixed before they caused that level of harm.
What is the analogue here for attributing the rise of alternative energy sources to Trump? Being too incompetent to avoid harm isn't the same as being too incompetent to avoid benefit, because your job is to create benefit.
It's Trump's job to create positive outcomes. If he creates positive outcomes by accident while trying to create negative ones, he should get panned for trying to create negative outcomes.
Trump's stated goal of regime change in Iran would (likely) have been a positive outcome if it has actually happened. The problem is that it hasn't.
> Trump's stated goal of regime change in Iran would (likely) have been a positive outcome if it has actually happened
The number of Americans still believing this is baffling and saya everything about their history education.
"The previous 20 times we forced regime change ended up a net negative for the people in those countries, but surely this time it would've been different!".
> previous 20 times we forced regime change ended up a net negative
Plenty of counter-examples, too. WWII. South Korea. Potentially Venezuela, mostly because we constrained our objectives.
I also don’t think it’s fair to constrain OP’s statement to “the people in those countries.” Regional impacts matter, too. An Iran that isn’t funding terrorist proxies everywhere could still be a net positive even if the average Iranian is no better off afterwards. (To be clear, I’m in no way supporting this stupid war.)
> Plenty of counter-examples, too. WWII. South Korea.
To even hint at those being in the same category of "regime change attempt" as Iran (2x), Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Congo is really desperate. Come on now. Not comparable and irrelevant.
> the same category of "regime change attempt" as Iran (2x), Chile, Iraq
…why are Japan and Germany not comparable to Iraq? We’re talking methods and outcomes, not motivations. All involved a wholesale invasion, occupation and supervised restructuring followed by disarmament.
This is off topic for what we're discussing (whether his accidental positive changes can be attributed to him), and agrees with my general point.
No, it doesn't, because you're asserting he is "trying to create negative ones".
We were clearly talking about the context of energy sources, where he's trying to push something he calls "clean coal". What's the positive outcome there?
> It's Trump's job to create positive outcomes
For whom?