Mr. Zambezi makes an excellent arguement - its “damned if we do and damned if we don’t”.
Best poilicy is to stay out unless you have a very clear understanding of a situation, very clear purpose, and can define the desired outcome.
Check out Kosovo - a mess, ten fold worse than it was when we stepped in. We could not have done much worse - destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, and killed so many people, only to hear a year later (ABC News this morning) that the atrocities being committed now are far worse than anything which went on before we stepped in. The UN now has a full time job protecting Serbs from the very Albanians we defended. Now what do we do? There is just another exaple of the US goverment (and UN?) thinking they can solve a problem, and instead creating a bigger one. Feed the hungry and clothe the poor, stay out of foreign governments.
[rant]Pinochet was a gangster, a kidnapper and a murderer and he may well still be tried as one. The regime he overthrew was leftist, but it was democratically elected.[/rant]
Whilst I agree with tradesilicon that we should be careful in advocating intervention, the Kosovo example is a little misleading.
The real story with Kosovo is that if NATO (not the UN) did nothing, then it had no reason to exist. The humanitarian consequences of its intevention are unfortunately irrelevant.
If one is a cynic, NATO intevened to save its own hide. A less cynical view would be that NATO intervened to show that it would not stand by whilst a part of Europe burned. Almost by definition it is hard to evaluate the deterant effects of this on would be aggressors in the region. It is nonetheless clear that the intervention didn’t solve any problems on the ground. But then, who thought it would?
Newsflash! 99.9995% of American school children were not killed by other American school children while at school in 1998. An even larger percentage of American school children weren’t killed by other American school children while at school in 1999.
As far as banishing disease goes, we tried that, but no other countries wanted the diseases we banished, and they kept sneaking back in. But seriously, folks – the two biggest killers in the U.S. are cancer and heart disease, also known as diseases that people who live to a ripe old age tend to die of. I think the U.S. standing on the disease front is pretty darned good.
picmr, thank you. NATO, not UN was the proper agency.
It is, however, accurate to say that the US had no business in there, since we know so very little about the place. NATO had mostly US air power to do the dirty work, although several other countires did participate. If we are to get involved in these types of operations, we will be the first to get critisized no matter what the outcome. The motivation for NATO’s action was almost certainly self-preservation. What was ours?
This is simply not true. The people of chile (the bottom 90%) are much worse off today than they were under the socialist regime.
Akatsukami,
You make an interesting point, but there is a point where military involvement is simply not worth the results. You have to weigh lives lost by starvation with lives lost by military conflict. This includes not only direct war related death, but also, death for disease, distruction of the environment, distruction of medical facilities, distruction of general infrastructure, etc…
So food for starving people is a good idea, but using the military to get the food to the starving people is going the depend upon the costs.
Chile is doing better financially today than it was under teh socialists. A leftist and a rightist can both look at the same country and make opposite statements about how they are doing. Heck, there is even a debate about how well the citizens of the USA are doing.
I will humbly bow out of this type of argument as my only insight comes from a conversation with a Chilean about Pinochet (he told me that a vast majority of the people support him and felt that he did the right thing) and some NPR interviews in Santiago that said the same.
And yes, a revolutionary capitalist, democrat is better than an elected socialist…in the long term.
That may be so, but that’s not really the debate here, unless you are asserting that General Pinochet was a democrat?
Let’s see -
The General came to power in a coup, and killed the freely elected President because of Allende’s political beliefs.
The General never stood for election in a free and democratic contest.
The General only bowed out after re-writing the constitution to give himself and the Armed Forces immunity from prosecution for killing dissenters, as well as a position for himself as Senator-for-Life.
Where is there any support for the assertion that the General was a democrat? If he truly was a revolutionary capitalist democrat, he would have stood for election against President Allende, campaigned on his beliefs, and let the people decide.
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t pinochet’s constitution call for democratic election of the president?
I don’t think that it is bad that Pinochet wanted to assure that he wasn’t jailed, tortured or executed.
Costa Rica went through a coup in 1943(?) which established a stable democracy. Heck, the US was born of revolution that violated England’s law. What’s your point?
I understand that Pinochet “disappeared” around 3,000 people. But in this case it seems that the ends justified the means.
None of this has anything ot do with the OP. But I was called on it within the framework of whether the US could intervene to help other countries with good results. I will try to stick to the OP from now on.
If we can’t call Chile a success, I say stay the hell out of everything, and let them starve. Call in the troops, sell the excess grain and protect the border.
Just for everyones FYI here is a good link that talks about some of the successes and failures of chile. If anyone wants to start a new thread I’d be happy to discuss it more.
oldscratch, first of all, I will stand by my statement. If Chile is truly the disaster that that article claims, I say we should scrap the IMF and stay the hell out of other countries’ business.
I would like to see a thread on this. I read the article. While I do not have the knowledge to refute it, I found a few red flags.
First of all, the author insists on throwing in jabs at Reagan and using Chile’s experience to refute the economic success created by his policies.
Second, the great disparity of wealth between the rich and the poor that is cited in Chile is less than the dis[arity we have in the US. I would not say that the US is an economic failure.
third, Teh author clearly has an agenda against the IMF.
Finally, the discussion of unemployment and the IMF pinochet conspiracy smacks of some of the socialist protesters at the WTO meeting.
Put it all together and it spells B_I_A_S. And a socialist one at that.
I would like to look at some raw data.
Chile aside, THe G8 are so bad at helping countries, why do we continue to do it?
jtl: If I am to use your logic, then Lincoln was not a democrat either. After all, during his reign many southerners were killed, many were put into what amounted to death camps.
Scratch, start a new thread on what constitutes a good cite.
Holy Cow! I just took a look at the site that that link came from. Here is an excerpt:
So the constitution is a piece of junk and our rights are just teh whim of the current government. Other parts of the site state that the rich don’t deserve their money because they did not earn it.
What did you think these people would say about a socialist economy that went free market? They are socialists!
That is like Asking Robert E Lee if freeing the slaves was a good idea.
Mr.Zambezi, please keep in mind that good liberals and good socialists never let the facts get in the way of their pre-conceived opinions.
To bring one more perspective to the OP, one unfortunate side effect of badly-thought-out attempts to help those less fortunate in places with tyrants running things - if any monetary aid is attempted, it is usually the powerful who get the bulk (through corupted middlemen) making them more powerful, and putting them into an even better position to bring more suffering to those who needed the help.
I was just attempting to reclaim the moral high ground for us foreigners in the light of Akatsukami’s OP.
