You’re right, Mandlestam. Nobody would think something so stupid as that the defeat in Afghanistan was the straw that led to the Soviet Union’s back breaking.
I posted before reading your most recent comment, Mandlestam.
IMO, America’s enormous mistake was not who we supported in Afghanistan during their war with the USSR, but how we dropped them like a bad habit after they had pushed the Soviets out.
If we had helped them rebuild and democratize (in a way not dissimilar to what we did in Japan and Germany), who knows what an influence that might have had, not only on the young, educated religious zealots that became the Taliban, but on more radical Muslims elsewhere.
It’s hard to consider somebody The Great Satan when they are building you hospitals, schools, and places to live.
But then again, I hear the Taliban is threatening to kill Western aid workers providing food and relief to Afghans if they contact anyone outside the country right now, so who’s to say with these people.
The best answer, I think, is that, while Pinochet was worse for Chile than Allende, he was better for the US. I don’t know that morality played a role in our decision at all, really, to be honest. It seems a constant in international affairs that nations act according to what they understand as their best interest, and that if a country is strong enough to be able to dominate its neighbors, it will make sure that its neighbors are led by those who will support its interests.
No, to establish that you are a liar, I must demonstrate that you mis-stated my position.
Your inference from your statement was that I believed that any though to human right was damned foolish.
I have stated at several points in this and other threads that I believe that giving only thoughts to human rights is damned foolish.
Therefore, you have mis-stated my position, and done so in a way as to associate me with bin Laden.
Thus, my charge of “slander” and “lie” still stands.
What is the main function of our government?
Is it to provide for the safety, security, and liberty of its people, or to export freedom to the world regardless of the conditions of its own citizens?
You and Guin seem to be of the opinion that Americans should export human rights and democracy even at the cost of their own well-being and survival. I disagree.
But to be naive is to be ignorant. I’ve already explained why reality doesn’t work the way she wants it to. If she wishes to ignore reality, then she is no longer naive because she is no longer ignorant. Therefore, she is foolish.
I did not realize “damned” involved doing violence to body.
I consider a son of a bitch a son of a bitch be they male or female.
The question being, would such an approach have succeeded at all, or would the Communist Parties and insurgents in those countries used those freedoms and liberties as an open road for staging revolutions and coups?
Democracy and liberty, I’m sorry to say, do not merely flourish wherever they are laid. We’ve seen plenty of that across the world- unless the populace is ready for democracy, by which I mean having an educated and informed work force, democracy quickly falls into demagougery and coup. Especially when resistance to it is well funded by a powerful foreign government providing arms and money.
I fully expect that we could force the Taliban out of power and replace it with a constitutional republic.
And I fully expect that five years afterwards, said republic would have completely fallen apart in civil war, with some dictator or fundamentalist group reestablishing control. Without traditions of democracy, without education, the state has no backbone and will quickly fall.
So why can’t we TRY To bring in education? Nutrition, etc etc?
I’m sorry, I don’t see myself as ignorant. I understand that’s hard to do. But that doesn’t mean we give up and just bomb the shit out of someone. That’s not an answer either.
Cite?
Chile under Allende was engaged in a civil war in which many people died. Even before the civil war begn, the economy was tanking.
Under Pinochet’s leadership, the government killings stopped (eventually) and a prosperous free market economy was created. Pinochet voluntarily resigned his position and re-instituted democracy.
Pinochet was far from perfect. However, he deserves a lot of credit for the currently well-to-do, democratic status of Chile.
Compare him with Castro, whose country remains an impoverished dictatorship, with no hope in sight for improvement. It’s impossible to porve, but I think it’s quite possible that Chile under the communist Allende could have developed like Cuba.
The left hates Pinochet because he successfully overthrew a leftist government. They are an unreliable source on evaluating his achievements.
december, I’ve had this argument with you in the past. Please explain to me why then the man was one of the first leaders ever arrested for crimes against humanity on foreign soil?
Shut the fuck up. The government killings under Pinochet, if anything, increased.
I’ll find a source, yes I will. But I doubt that will be enough for you-you’ll just claim they’re leftist and biased.
:rolleyes:
Here are some I found just now, I haven’t had time to go over them:
http://www.lakota.clara.net/index.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/special_report/1998/10/98/the_pinochet_file/
http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/intcam/pinochet/
But I suppose those are all leftist sites, so they’re wrong, right?
Find me one place where I said we couldn’t.
Find me one place where I said, “human rights can’t be our only focus, therefore it can’t be any focus at all.”
In fact, I’m currently shouting at Madelstram for characterizing my position as such.
I am not advocating an end to humanitarian aid, or an end to economic aid. I never have, and I never will. In fact, I have always felt we don’t send enough aid.
But I do not feel that we can abandon strategic allies because they don’t come up to snuff on their human rights records. I do not feel that improving human rights in other countries should come before ensuring the safety and security of our own populace.
If you wish to see things in black and white- that either we’re completely out for human rights, or we’re completely self-serving bastards- go ahead, that’s your right. You’ll be an idiot, but that’s your right as well. I’ll stay here in my gray, where we do our best to help, but there are certain areas where it is best for our country if we don’t rock the boat.
No. I don’t think it’s either we send in human rights or we don’t. I’m just saying we shouldn’t turn our backs and call people freedom fighters when they aren’t. Or back up people who are assholes and turn around and say they’re great…
Or organize coups and military regimes and such.
Guin- and where are we doing that now?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Guinastasia *
**
Your sources indicate that a number of people in Chile were killed under Pinchet’s rule, particularly during the civil war that came before he was fully in control of the country. Nobody disputes that there were many killings.
However, none of your sources compares Chile under Pinchet’s leadership with Chile under Allende’s leadership. You made a comparitive statement, so its support needs to consider Allende as well.
I didn’t say we were doing that right now, as far as I know. Just that we’ve done it before, and it’s wrong.
You’re right, I’m being stupid…it’s just that…I guess I’m just a big softie. I HATE reading about anyone suffering…it makes me angry. It makes me want to scream. Believe me, I am NOT putting myself on the cross, just trying to explain my point. It’s like, I read this stuff…and it makes me angry…and I want to do something, to change something, anything, but I don’t know what to do!
I think that it happens, but I wouldn’t want to be in their place, and I guess I get preachy, and on a tangent…I KNOW I can’t be the savior of the world. I KNOW suffering and injustice aren’t going to go away over night. My mother’s like, “well, stop reading it if it upsets you.” But I can’t. I can’t stick my head in the sand and ignore it, but I feel so useless…
I’m not asking for pity, I’m just frustrated. I want to bang my head against a wall and scream sometimes. I’m sorry if I come off so holier than thou…but, oh fuck, I don’t know!
Or, of course, you may be talking about what was done during the Cold War.
Congrats, Guin! You get to criticize from a perspective of pure 20/20 hindsight! You get to know that the Soviet Union would collapse!
We didn’t.
Please, find me any sources- speculative fiction, government documents, T.V. shows- which thought in the mid 80’s that the Soviet Union would collapse in five years. For each one you find, I’ll go find ten more that assumed the Soviet Union would still be strong and still be fighting the Cold War well into the 21st century.
You get to know Gorbachev as a reformer whose reforms opened a can of worms which eventually pulled Communism down.
We first knew Gorbachev as the Soviet leader who refused to admit to anything bad having happened even as Sweden and other countries were talking about the massive amount of radition that was sweeping westward. Eventually, they admitted to an accident at Chernobyl.
We heard Krushcev say he would bury us. We watched as Soviet leader after leader poured money into funding Communist rebellions across the world. Gorbachev gave a nice smile and seemed trustworthy, but his being friendly didn’t stop the checks from going out to Cuba or the Phillipinos guerillas. It was four years with him in office before the war in Afghanistan was finally ratcheted down, and then abandoned.
You can talk about what we should have done, how we should have only fought for the absolute right people and only worked for true good and pure democracy. We saw a world where we had to fight for survival, where the Soviets made no bones about being out to convert the world to communism.
So you can sit around and while about how we didn’t play perfectly, how we got mud on our uniforms and made some really nasty plays.
But keep in mind that had we lost, you wouldn’t be allowed to say anything at all.
My apologies. I hadn’t seen Guin’s last post when I began composing my last message. I withdraw the point, and will let this matter rest.
I wrote: "As to “lying”, well to call me a liar you will have to demonstrate that Osama bin Laden doesn’t believe that “regarding human rights is ‘damned foolish.’”
John: "No, to establish that you are a liar, I must demonstrate that you mis-stated my position."
Strictly speaking, I think not. Though, to be sure, it makes very little difference to me whether you think of me as a lying piece of shit, a distorting piece of shit, a shitty maker of invidious comparisons, or, if you like, a libelous piece of shit ;).
More to the point…
*"What is the main function of our government?
Is it to provide for the safety, security, and liberty of its people, or to export freedom to the world regardless of the conditions of its own citizens?"*
Again, you offer a Hobson’s choice. First, insofar as providing safety, security and liberty of its people involves a foreign policy, the United States ought to practice what it preaches. Second, if government policies begin to create a climate rife for terrorism, then the goal of providing safety and security is undermined. (Have you read the link I provided yet? It is, as I’ve said, the review of a book written a couple of years ago by a foreign policy expert who predicted an outbreak of terrorism as a result of cold war era CIA “blowback.”)
“I did not realize “damned” involved doing violence to body.”
I was referring to your offer to provide me with an additional asshole…
“I consider a son of a bitch a son of a bitch be they male or female.”
Fair enough. I rather fancy gender-bending myself ;).
I wrote: “I simply say that what policies it had ought to have been towards extending the freedoms that we Americans enjoy, and not towards fighting one kind of totalitarianism with another.”
John: “The question being, would such an approach have succeeded at all, or would the Communist Parties and insurgents in those countries used those freedoms and liberties as an open road for staging revolutions and coups?”
It’s difficult for me to follow your logic here. When I refer to “freedom” I refer to functional democratic institutions. There is no reason to suppose that a functional democracy is any more prone to coups and revolutions than is a police state, a theocracy or any other kind of totalitarian regime. Hence, there is no reason to suppose that the US would be any less successful in preventing such coups by backing democratic leaders than it would by backing the Saddams, Shahs, Pinochets, Noriegas and Talibans of the world.
*"I fully expect that we could force the Taliban out of power and replace it with a constitutional republic.
And I fully expect that five years afterwards, said republic would have completely fallen apart in civil war, with some dictator or fundamentalist group reestablishing control. Without traditions of democracy, without education, the state has no backbone and will quickly fall."*
And this justifies our having indirectly helped the Taliban to get where it is in the first place? Please do not misunderstand me: I’m not suggesting that it would be easy to turn the impoverished Afghan nation into a new Geneva or ancient Athens. And I have reservations about “us” “forcing” anything, even democracy, on another nation against the popular will. What we could and, IMO, should do is to encourage what is most consistent with our principles in the status quo. And if, as in Afghanistan, the status quo is highly problematic, then we should work very closely with neighboring countries, and through international institutions such as the UN. What we should under no circumstances do is pursue half-assed policies that appear to be in our immediate our short-term political and economic interests at the expense of indiginous people, and, ultimately, our own long-term welfare.
On the matter of China–a subject too large to be subordinated in a Pit thread–let me simply say that there are a lot of things we could do to put pressure on the Chinese to bring their labor practices in line with internationally recognized standards of human rights. We could refuse to purchase goods not produced under basic standards. And we could penalize US companies for employing Chinese labor under these terms. We could also do this in collaboration with other G7 countries. Although this might produce some short-term bumps for certain sectors of our economy, in the long-term we would benefit from a better paid Chinese workforce; able to consume more of our goods and services and thereby to alleviate our enormous trade deficit. Moreover, if any of these things were even seriously proposed the Chinese would be threated with an economic disaster. Again, this is something that the US should approach with international cooperation.
As to alternative energy: wind power is already successfully in use in European countries where privatized utility companies are not, as they are in the US, lobbying against it. I can provide many citations for you on this as well as other ways in which the big oil and dirty utilities industries have deliberately thwarted the spread of cleaner, safer and less politically volatile energy sources.
Just out of curiosity, has anyone thought about what would have happened had we not trained mujahedeen warriors to shoot down Soviet helicopters and such? I mean, if you take the position that we shouldn’t have trained bin Laden, you’re either proposing that we should have left Afghanistan on its own or magically known which ones would be dangerous to us later on.
As best as I can figure, Afghanistan without our aid would have been hit harder by the war, would be more littered with landmines, and would have eventually lost. Assuming that the whole operation did not hasten the fall of the Soviet Union (which is silly, but a best case scenario), it would have had a power vacuum around 1990, followed by civil war. Eventually, it’s most likely that the wackos come to power anyways. The country would have even less sympathy for the US than it does now (according to CNN’s correspondant in Afghanistan, the people there are actually somewhat pro-US due to the help we gave them). And we’d just be hoping that the Soviets didn’t leave any nuclear missiles there when their country collapsed.
Osama bin Laden would still hate the US, and would still be a nut, and would still have had a substantial fortune to support action against the US.
I really don’t see how this (which ignores the benefits of any effect aid to Afghanistan had on the fall of the Soviet Union) would be a better scenario.