How about this one? How do you know the Sandinistas would not have given up power? To quote you…
Please show me a non-biased informed opinion of you statement above.
or how about the one I originally quoted
What I was pointing out is that in the space of eleven years the Sandinistas overthrew a dictatorship, held two national elections (won the first and lost the second) and after losing the second election, passed on power to those who won. Thus we have a Marxist government that so representative of the people that when they lost an election, they were willing to step aside and let democracy take its course.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Satisfying Andy Licious * There are many people who consider the United States the Great Satan for supporting Israel.[/bquote]
So, pardon me for asking, what? Morality isn’t a popularity contest; it’s not a vote. If you want to establish moral equivalence between Pinochet’s Chile and modern Israel, you need to do so with facts, rather than statements about what “many people…consider.”
Then you’ll need to show how Israel’s policies are the least bit relevant.
The only question I have left is whether you’re deliberately distracting from the evidence, or whether you don’t realize what you’re doing.
If I’m on trial for bombing an abortion clinic, it’s no defense to say, “But animal liberationists bomb buildings all the time!” You’ll get laughed into prison.
And that’s basically the defense you’re offering Helms. It’s absurd.
This is contradictory. “If left to themselves, they wouldn’t have given up power.” The only evidence we have here is that, when they were voted out, they gave up power. Eh?
They were voted out of power because the United States sponsored a decade-long terrorist campaign in their country, in which health-care facilities and schools were primary targets, as symbols of Sandanista “oppression.” The United States funded the bejeesus out of the Chamorro campaign.
It’s possible that without the spectre of indefinite US terror against Nicaraguan government facilities, the Sandanistas would still have lost the election. It’s possible that without the United States’ funding of one candidate in a foreign election, the Chamorro campaign would still have won. And it’s even possible (though you’ve offered no evidence to support it) that, absent US intervention, the Chamorro campaign would have won the election but the Sandanistas wouldn’t have ceded power.
Due to the US campaign of terror and election subversion, we’ll never know.
Note that I’m not defending the Sandanistas here: I don’t know enough about their government to know whether the government that the Nicaraguans elected to power in 1984 (in an election certified “Free and fair” by virtually every non-US-government observer) violated human rights. That’s beside the point, unless you agree with Reagan and North that terrorism comprises an appropriate response to government oppression.
Care to get back to the issue at hand, now – namely, whether Helms has any moral excuse for defending the murderers of Pinochet’s regime?
Well, in that it took the Sandinistas 5 years to hold elections the first time, and that Ortega, after winning them, declared martial law and suspended the constitution and civil rights, elections probably weren’t high on their agenda.
Because when confronted with (apparently irrefutable) evidence that Helms supported vicious regimes in Nicaragua, Andy decided to change the subject. And some of us, regrettably, lack the willpower to resist a hijack, a smokescreen.
Sorry it all started with Satisfying Andy Licious’s (SAL) insistence that people do not give blanket statements about Jesse Helms but instead provide nonbiased examples of why people dislike him. Fine, although I suspect agreeing on what “non-biased” sources are will be a futile task.
However, in my opinion SAL is not playing by his own rules and is tossing out blanket statements of his own. I asked him to back up his statement using the Sandinistas as an example and here we are.
I think that inability of folks to agree on something as simple (at least to me) as “Because of the efforts of Sandinista regime, Nicaragua experienced its first democratic election since the 1930s” gets at the futility of agreeing on “non-biased” sources insisted upon by SAL.
Grr. I’m having real trouble posting in this thread. Make that “vicious regimes in Central and South America,” and hope that that’s the last major goof I make in this thread.
Obligatory Disclosure - I loathe almost all of Jesse Helms’ political beliefs, and am glad he no longer is a senator from my former state.
That said:
Those of you wishing a slow, painful, tortured death upon Jesse Helms should know that he didhave some humanity within him, at least at the end of his political career.
It also may interest you that he did an amazing thing in his personal life in 1962
Thanks, Sofa King. The first and third items sound pretty bad. Not nearly death-wish bad, IMO (though maybe I just have stronger criteria for wishing death on someone), but still bad. The second one, though, is somewhat ambiguous. He made a disparaing remark about some man who was the father of some person who had AIDS. That, in and of itself, tells us little. Was the person a child born with AIDS, whose father was an unrepentant crack-addict who had contracted AIDS through a dirty needle? While still insensitive, Helms’ comment would then be at least defensible (and I would likely agree with the sentiment).
Basically, Helms sounds like a bigoted insensitive prick. But if I wished death on every insensitive bigot I knew, the populations of certain areas in Northern California would plummet. rjung:
While that still doesn’t sound like a death threat, it certainly qualifies as at worst hateful, and at best colossally stupid. Thanks for the cite, btw.
Jeff
Speaking of, U2 has a song called “Mothers of the Disappeared” on The Joshua Tree. Mothers of the Disappeared started in Argentina, but this was written for the El Salvador branch.
I mistakenly assumed no one would be so endearingly naive as to argue that Marxists truly believed in multi-party systems. But the world teaches you that there is no lie to big for some people to swallow, and Spudbucket looks in need of one giant Bromo-Seltzer right now.
Crack books not cocaine and you’ll learn something. Since online resources are valued here, I’ll provide this link.
Spudbucket, this way to the Chamber of Apologists. Go on in, sit down, put on your propeller hat and strike up a conversion with all your peers who think Che Guevara looks really cool in a beret. I hear they’re showing Oliver Stone’s latest tribute to Fidel Castro.
The room looks a bit like a dust heap – but that’s history.
I wasn’t aware that animal liberationists were hurling rocket-propelled grenades at the homes of abortion activists or burning down their villages, but there you are. You learn something new every day.
Actually, your comparison is silly even by internet standards, so let’s return to planet Earth where the actual conflict took place.
U.S. support for these regimes did not take place in a vaccuum. U.S. involvement was predicated on the enemies the regimes were facing. The U.S. has had minimal to no involvement in many struggles all over the globe – the Tamils, the Ibos, the Sikhs, the island of Cyprus, the Armenians, the Hutus and Tutsis, et al. You cannot discuss U.S. support for these regimes without discussing the opponents of these regimes. The U.S. got involved because of the specific nature of the enemy.
We are debating why support for these regimes is supposedly “evil.” It makes all the difference whether we:
A) Supported a bunch of greedy landowners who just wanted to strangle all forms of human rights, or
B) Supported undemocratic military juntas fighting communists.
The loony left will always say that what we were doing was choice A. And a hallmark of the loony left is the refusal to admit that the extreme left could commit any sin.
It is an outrageous smear on your part, though I’m confident that people who can both think and read will see through it.
I’m not comparing Chile to Israel. I’m comparing the reactions to our support for these nations. Some people condemn us for supporting Chile. Some people condemn us for supporting Israel. The “evil” label depends a lot on your politics.
Obviously, I support Israel while being concerned about some parts of its human rights record.
Crack a history book. Their main support came from the Soviet Union. Do you recall something going on in the Soviet Union at that time?
I’ll give you a hint: i-t c-o-l-l-a-p-s-e-d.
Here’s the part of the loony left that is truly scary. And I’m not talking about the ordinary, folks-next-door, vote-on-municipal-improvements left. I’m talking about the loony left, for whom Marxists are always sweathearts bringing freedom and never, ever ever run “terrorist campaigns” and certainly didn’t conduct terrorism as “a response to government oppression.”
Sigh. There really are people who think like this, folks.
As for us never knowing that the Sandinista would have left without international pressure: Daniel, you just won’t let the facts of the Khmer Rouge, North Korea, communist China, the Iron Curtain and Cuba get in the way of your convictions, will you.
You do know about the Sandinista’s horrible conduct toward the Indians, don’t you?
Daniel, why are you defending and supporting people with such blood on their hands?
Of course you don’t know, Daniel, because you don’t want to know. One minute you’re citing all sorts of facts about the Sandinistas Nicaraguan, and the next minute you claim you don’t know about the Sandinista’s human-rights record! There’s something damn fishy about that. Apparently you have studying everything but their record.
Either you are unaware that Nicaragua is in Central America, or you’re trying to say that the Sandinistas are irrelevant to discussing U.S. support for their opposition.
Hee Hee…this is beautiful Andy. This is a great tactic that will serve you well. Whenever someone is able to provide you with a clear example that goes against your core belief…discount it by arguing that they are an idiot and naive. I mistakenly assumed that you were being honest when you said that you wanted people to concentrate on the facts. The fact is (no matter how much you deny or discount it) is that the Sandinistas brought free elections to Nicaragua. I again ask you to prove me wrong.
Take a few moments and try to realize that the world doesn’t revolve around your opinions and just because you assert something, doesn’t make it true. And insulting people simply shows your ignorance and inability to form a rational argument against their point.
btw, next time you include a link it wouldn’t hurt to make it something else besides someones random writings. You are arguing that this link is proof and non-biased? Who the hell wrote it? No information what so ever.
There’s a third possibility: maybe I meant to say that the US supported vicious and reppressive regimes ALL OVER CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA, not just in Nicaragua.
Overally, however, you argue deceitfully: when confronted with evidence, you change the subject, twist my words, claim I’m defending the Sandanistas (when I explicitly said I wasn’t, and mentioned that I wasn’t educated enough about their human rights abuses to defend or support them one way or another). You seem to think that calling the contras “undemocratic military juntas fighting communists” is in any way relevant to the discussion of whether their acts of US-sponsored terrorism were morally justified.
You’ve gotten your answer to the OP, and at this point you seem determined to insult and slander people who try to engage you in honest conversation. I don’t need that. Enjoy.
