Here is a letter from a former Latin American president. He is concerned about a new appointment by our Resident in Chief. I’m concerned too. Being relatively stupid about how much arms dealing we do, I’d only had a clue just recently about Taiwan.
*Now a new Drug Czar appointment looks like it will continue to promote a military style approach to this problem in Latin America.
*And a missle defense system that we probably don’t need.
Is this corporate whoredom (Seeing to it that Lockheed/Martin gets it grip on the balls of a few other countries besides ours.) or a case of “let’s play cowboys and indians”. Why does this current administration seem to be preoccupied with weapons and creating tension.
Oscar Arias is correct that Lockheed Martin should not be selling F-16s to Chile. However, N2K, I hope your rabid, unreasoning hatred for President Bush does not blind you to
the fact that President Clinton approved more than $299 million dollars worth of weapons sales to Chile since 1993, including 16 Boeing MD-530-F attack helicopters and four (French) Aerospatiale Super Puma attack helicopters as reported in Mother Jones. Was he also playing “cowboys and Indians”, as you put it? If you’re going to lambaste Bush, then Clinton deserves even worse criticism from you.
President Bush’s comments on proposed missile defense systems as reported in today’s Washington Post are extremely disturbing. Scrapping the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and the mutually assured destruction (MAD) that have kept the peace among the nuclear powers for the last half-century in favor of an untested Star Wars program that every reputable physicist and weapons specialist has denounced as expensive and impractical reaffirms Bush’s reputation as a policy dunce. (I’m agreeing with you here, N2K)
We should at least spend a lot more effort at research and development of anti-missile techology before announcing sweeping weapons policy changes based on a system that doesn’t even exist, let alone been proven to work.
Or to express the previous paragraphs in N2K’s sophisticated political analysis terms, “Georgie Porgie is a warhead.”
I’m all for the reduction or elimination of arms sales, but your attitude seems paternalistic. AFAIK, no one’s holding a gun to the Chilean government’s head and saying “buy these fighters or we’ll kill you.”
While Bush may have some fault for allowing these sales, the larger fault lies with Chile, for wanting these sales.
How very devious of Mr. Bush to announce this change in defense policy while America is distracted by the news of the tax cut. Maybe this guy is smarter than we thought.
I’m also a bit disturbed by his views on missile defense. Right now, he doesn’t seem to have any of the specifics nailed down, he hasn’t decided what model of missile defense we’re going to pursue, and there’s no reliable estimate of costs yet. It seems ridiculous to me that we should completly cast aside ABM treaty for a system that probably will never work properly. The idea that we need such a system to protect against “accidental” missile launches by the Chinese is totally absurd.
Maybe this is what Bush meant when he said that he supported faith-based programs.
I admitted that I’m stupid about this stuff. Of course I had a clue that such policies were part of the Clinton administration too, however there does seem to be an slight escalation going on with such policies right now.
I don’t really question any one administration and our arms/policeman of the world policies, I question the policies period! And of course Clinton had more time to sell a few guns, he was in there for 8 years. Georgie Porgie’s only been the resident warmonger for 100 days!
OK I’m dumb of course, and I’ll listen to my political BS tonight on the tube…But can Bush just decide he wants to buy a new Star Wars Lite system without legislative approval? He can be thwarted in this inane effort can’t he?
Oh and BTW…just because Chile wants bigger a better guns does not mean we have to be the ones to sell them to them. Can we not at least once take the high road on such issues instead of making excuses and worrying about stuffing another dollar in a corporate pocket? I guess we can’t.
Acording to the Mother Jones article I cited, Clinton OK’d arms sales to Latin America in 1997, and lockheed Martin has been negotiating this sale for two years during You-Know-Who’s administration. Get over your prejudices.
In addition, please stop writing comments such as, “…I’m stupid about this stuff” and “OK I’m dumb of course.” Those are excuses for not doing your homework. If you are smart enough to operate a computer and maneuver around the Web, you are intelligent enough to find proper citations for your posts and use information, not blind prejudice, in forming opinions.
I also stated that I did not care which administration promoted this policy. I don’t. But for the most part the American people do not really know how much we deal in arms. Yes, I can operate a computer. Often I cannot find what I’m looking for specifically. Many times all I can find on a particular subject is biased information one way or the other. (The abortion issue is a prime example.)
Definately I need to learn more about this subject because it bothers me. I has less to do with GWB than it does with our own history of promoting war throughout the globe. I, like a few others, were hoping that when the cold war ended with the Soviet Union we would be able to adopt more peaceful policies.
As for you goboy…I have no desire to hear your opinions about what I should and should not be saying or doing. Go pontificate to your Log Cabin Republican buddies. I never have liked your politics.
It’s true I don’t like Gilligan or his ham-handed foreign policy. Hell, I don’t like his arrogant dismissal of the wishes and needs of half the population of this country.
So our government has a long history of sticking it’s nose in the conflicts of other countries. But this guy stuck his cowboy boot in his mouth this week, and threw 50 years of diplomacy with out the window. Everyone was shocked, not just me. Now he’s gonna spend how many billions of dollars on a program that they might get to work. (They can’t get the Osprey to work yet either. Tell it to the 24 Marines that have died testing that thing in recent years.)
He’s a warhawk. I didn’t say it first. I’m just questioning how he’s gonna get away with it. And why? What is the motivation? I’m sorry I just can’t believe that he’s actually acting in the best interest of the country.
I know it’s not in the best interest of the country for us to scale up this insane War on Drugs. That “war” isn’t a war on drugs it’s a war on people. Some of them innocent as evidenced by recent events.
Look I ran across this nice little letter from the L.A. Times this morning and it spoke to me. Here is this former president, obviously a decent and caring man, pleading with our new dumb-ass in chief not to use his awesome power to make things worse in his little neck of the woods. Actually it’s a little pathetic. Pathetic from the point of view that these countries often have to depend on our big, powerful, influential country to do the right thing by them.
And where do you get this? I have said elsewhere that I voted for Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and I voted for Gore in 2000. However, just because I vote Democrat does not make me blind to their faults, and it does not make me demonize the Republicans as you do. Grow up, N2K. Just because the Republicans disagree with you doesn’t make them evil. And I am in no way sympathetic to the LCR. Again, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Again, you post uninformed opinions, not facts. You say we have a history of promoting war throughout the globe. OK, in this century, we sent troops to fight in WWI in 1918 four years after the war started. We declared war on the Axis in 1941, * two years* after Germany invaded Poland. The US fought in Korea as part of a multinational UN force to repel North Korean invaders. In Vietnam, we intervened in a civil war after the French were expelled from their former colony. While it was badly managed, I don’t think you can say we promoted that war.
Grenada? Saving American civilians caught in a civil conflict.
Panama? While our actions there were dubious, Noriega richly deserved arrest and imprisonment.
Gulf War? Saving Kuwait from Iraqi invasion
Where did we “promote war?” And it may come as a shock to you that the Soviet Union was not the only threat to world peace. Have you ever heard of North Korea, Iraq, or the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis? Did you really think that whne the Soviet Union collapsed that there would be no more despotic states that might want to harm US interests and kill Americans? It astonishes me that you have such firm opinions when it is painfully evident that you know nothing of history, political science, the military, or the world outside Richmond. It’s especially shocking when so much information is readily available on the Web.
I already agreed that Bush’s embrace of the discredited “Star Wars” anti-missile system is a huge mistake. His upset of the careful diplomatic balance between the PRC and Taiwan is also alarming. I come by my opinions because I actually take the time to look things up and know what I’m talking about. There is no excuse for your not checking your information and doing your homework.
And I hate to break it to you, but George W. Bush didn’t come up with the War on Drugs. I guarantee you that the insane mandatory maximum sentencing we have now didn’t spring into being the day after Bush was inaugurated, so why are you pillorying him over it? Blame his predecessor.
A. I already pointed out that Clinton was the guy who OK’ed arms sales to Chile, not Bush.
B. Oscar Arias is a Nobel Peace Prize recipient who doesn’t deserve your condecension; “little neck of the woods,” indeed!
You may not want to hear my opinions about what you should and should not be saying or doing, but you will find that your substitution of willfully ignorant opinions into fact-based debate and your demonization of anyone who disagrees with you are annoying many on this board.
Go to the Pit thread I opened and read Manhattan’s comments and think about them.
Andros, I’ll take you up on your offer the next time you hit DC.
Actually, Grenada was a major fiasco from the word go-we never should have been there in the first place.
Oscar Arias is definitely NOT some backwoods hick. :rolleyes: Actually, my advisor met him once when he came to our campus to speak. Costa Rica is the most democratic country IN Latin America, no thanks to us. We were too busy supporting the right wing thugs in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, etc etc.
Good lord, is Bush trying to be another Reagan? Cut taxes, raise military spending, huge arms races, threats of nuclear war? This fucking SCARES the shit out of me, pardon my french. This just leaves me cold. I’ve been reading old Times and Newsweeks from the 80s. Iran Contra. Nicaragua. Oliver North. Gorbachev. Reagan. Star Wars. Nuclear War.
I never said Arias was a hick. But obviously he has some concerns about this new administration and the direction it is taking or else he would not have felt the need to publish his appeal. Because quite obviously when all is said and done Costa Rica, and many of the other Latin American countries are not in any kind of position to set policy in this hemisphere, we are. So he must, this Nobel Prize winner, publish in essence a plea to our new president. I have no doubt that Bush probably doesn’t hold a candle to Arias many departments. But once again that is where the privledge of birth comes in to determine who must beg favor. A little sad isn’t it. Make the scenerio even more pathethic. Thanks for pointing that out to me.
And now if we can get off Clinton…who I’m sure I don’t need to remind you is no longer president and has no say in what we do here for the next 4 years…(Can we please refrain in the future from bringing him up EVERY time someone questions the operations of this new administration. It just isn’t relevant.)
Damn, I’ve had to look at so much vitriol from certain people here that I’ve lost my train of thought. Is there anyone out there that is interested in some of these more obscure appointments? Do they have to pass Congress?
You know, it almost seems like a form of Blitzkreig…appointments, bills, budgets, blocked mandates, new mandates, all at once. It must be very difficult even for the legislature to keep up with.
Does it matter to anyone what is going on in South America anymore in relation to anything other than the drug trade?