The US overthrew popularly elected presidents and brought in leaders who murdered and starved and stole from their own people. Those decades may make a difference to you, but not to people in the countries who suffered and still suffer.
[[Finally, between the Shah of Iran and the Ayatollah, I’ll take the Shah any day, thank you very much.]]
Sounds a little to me like you’re thinking the Shah came along to save the world from the Ayatollah. Of course it was the other way around.
From: A Timeline of CIA Atrocities: “Iran – CIA overthrows the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in a military coup, after he threatened to nationalize British oil. The CIA replaces him with a dictator, the Shah of Iran, whose secret police, SAVAK, is as brutal as the Gestapo.”
The people were outraged and along came the Ayatollah, so we can take indirect credit for him, too.
This thread has been badly hijacked. Sorry, mods! Do whatever you gotta do.
Jill
(edited to fix link)
Your fixation our past misdeeds might be relevant if the acts that provoked our impending response had anything whatsoever to do with the Shah/Pinochet/Nicaragua/etc. In fact, for the sake of argument, lets assume that we were in the wrong on every one of those instances you identify. Well then the people of those countries would have been justified in attacking us. Stupid, but justified.
Now either explain how the 9/11 attacks were justified by our actions or explain how we should modify our response due to our unrelated misdeeds.
Do we have any knowledge that the CIA has stopped backing “freedom fighter” groups? Or can us cynics assume that they’re still doing this?
And I’m fully aware of the circumstances of our support of the Shah and the eventual Islamic revolution in Iran. We were wrong to support the Shah in the 70s, if not in installing him in the first place. The Shah was still better than Khomeni.
Do we have evidence that they are supporting groups engaged in terrorism? I would think that the burden of proof lies with those who assert we’re still doing such things.
I don’t think I’ve said anything about what I think our response should be. Does anyone have an intelligent, informed opinion about this?? You asked for a cite about the US training terrorists, and I gave you some. These examples may have happened in the past, but they have ongoing repercussions for many people in the world. Nothing justifies the horrible attack on the US. But it behooves us to at least try to understand how other parts of the world view us (and maybe even why they hate us). The U.S. people, god bless us, aren’t very good at this for the most part.
I just read a great interview with Noam Chomsky, who summarizes some of the recent history that led up to the recent attack. I don’t know that I should copy it here, but I’d be happy to email it to anyone who is interested.
Jill
If your comments above weren’t related to our potential response, I’m afraid I misinterpreted. Since this started as a response to somebody’s facetious question about whether we should respond to our “harboring” these terrorists ( :rolleyes: ) by bombing ourselves, I hope you can see how I thought this related to our current course of action.
I’m all for understanding. I’m also all for killing every one of guilty SOB’s we can get our hands on. These are not mutually exclusive.
So, Minty, you’re saying you don’t have any more of a frigging clue how the US should specifically respond than I do. That’s kind of a relief, as I haven’t heard one national/international expert who does. I have not ever claimed that the attacks were “justified” or weighed in on exactly what we should do. And my original point (I think… it was awhile ago) was that Bush seems to take advantage of how little most of us really know about what led up to this. It’s all Good Guys and Bad Guys and nothing in between.
Here’s Noam Chomsky’s interview. Have at it history buffs. I’m no expert.
[Edited by JillGat on 09-24-2001 at 01:39 AM]
Who said I don’t know how to respond? That would be “kill every one of the guilty SOB’s we can get our hands on.” Everything else is just details.
However, I fail to see how pointing out alleged and actual past U.S. misdeeds has anything to do with your asserted point of Dubya taking advantage of our ignorance. After all, those past misdeeds are irrelevant to the current situation, aren’t they?
[[After all, those past misdeeds are irrelevant to the current situation, aren’t they?]]
Oy.
Jill
(that’s the first time I’ve ever said that.)
Then explain precisely how they are relevant.
Or better yet, explain what any of this has to do with the OP.
What riserius1 said.
With obvious reluctance I put my toe back in these dreadful waters…
JillGat, the post I responded to said nothing about past mis-deeds of the U.S. It said that if we are going to go after every country who has harbored terrorists we must consider that “many of the hijackers were living in the U.S.,” creating, in my mind at least, a distasteful link between what happened on Sept. 11 and our own government–our own people. No grievance, no matter how legitimate, can explain or justify what the terrorists did.
That we should appreciate history and try to understand why some people hate us, of course.
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The CIA has sponsored terrorist/freedom fighter groups in the past.
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AFAIK, the CIA has not issued a public statement of a policy change stating they will stop sponsoring terrorist/freedom fighter groups.
Can I then conclude that the CIA is still sponsoring terrorists/freedom fighter groups today? Or shall I just assume that they’ve stopped and are now a bunch of nice guys because doing otherwise would offend your ideals, minty?
This of course has been a gut-wrenching hijack, and I regret it terribly. I pointed it out to Gaudere and she said she didn’t care as long as we kept fighting, because she likes that. Anyway, to connect it at least back to the part about Bush’s address… I have been discussing some my take on this with my father-in-law, who teaches a class at a major university on Science and Religion. This is what he said (and I liked it, so I’m copying it here):
[[I too was sorry that Bush did not feel he could talk straight to the American public about how some of our past errors in foreign policy set the stage for our present situation. Most people must know that foreign policy is much harder to do well than domestic policy and that we will continue to pay a price for the Cold War and our dependence on Middle East oil. But, as I told my class on the afternoon of 9/11, “the first casualty in war is always the truth”.]]
And now I will leave this thread. I just noticed there are several other threads covering this same ground in Great Debates. If someone wants to copy this link over to another ongoing one, or start a new one and let me know, that’s fine. And you guys can get back to dissing Hillary and Bill!
Cheers,
Jill
Sorry, King Rat… let me respond to this, too. The reason I brought up the fact that many of the terrorists were living in the US was because it pointed out the absurdity, I thought, of what Bush said. That was my question, too. If we bomb everyone who harbors terrorists, will we bomb ourselves, dubya? And will we bomb the countries where the US has financed and trained terrorists (even if our support was in the past, they’re carrying on…)?
Of course we need to be more selective about who we punish. And of course I am not trying to justify what the terrorists did. I just think it is critically important that Americans know where all this is coming from and can openly examine our role in the world and how others perceive it. - Jill
That’s fine, and will serve America well in the very long term (10+ years) – but I think this current situation is one of those rare ones in which being hypocritical is also being right.
So what if the U.S. trained folks abroad who turned out to be anti-U.S. terrorists later? It wasn’t intentional, so why should we willingly carry around that albatross now? They weren’t terrorists (against the U.S.) then, but they are terrorists now – go after them now. Circumstances change, and adjusting to those changes should be considered right.
I’d argue with your rhetoric, but not the basic point.
Nor should it. Otherwise, we can’t very well support the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, can we?
Fine, so your bias against the CIA based on past misdeeds is all the evidence you need to convict them of contemporary terrorism. Pardon me if I don’t join you on the witch hunt.
Jill: I was actually thinking of starting a new thread on our, er, discussion last night. Unfortunately, my computer is about to be on its way to Dallas with the rest of my stuff, so I wouldn’t be able to participate for a few days. Nevertheless, I really would like to know what relevance the alleged U.S. misdeeds you identified last night have to the 9/11 attacks. They’re only causally related in the most superficial of ways, and I just don’t see how they have anything to do with how we should respond to 9/11.
Also, Noam Chomsky is a total schmuck for stating Osama bin Laden is opposed to the “corrupt and oppressive regimes in the region.” Yeah bin Laden is opposed to them–he thinks they should be even MORE oppressive. :rolleyes:
[[Nevertheless, I really would like to know what relevance the alleged U.S. misdeeds you identified last night have to the 9/11 attacks. They’re only causally related in the most superficial of ways, and I just don’t see how they have anything to do with how we should respond to 9/11.]]
Minty, I don’t really know how we should respond. Whatever we do, in ridding the world of the bin ladens and others like him, we need to avoid creating more death and suffering among the Afghani people who are also victims of the Taliban. I just think that, along with our outrage, we need to try to understand some of the world problems that the US contributed to and exacerbated that may have led up to this. And why SOME Palestinians are dancing in the streets. It may have some bearing on how we respond, I don’t know. I just think it’s important that we try to understand it.