Philip Agee has to be taken with a little salt. He has been an ardent supporter of Castro from the beginning, and runs a travel agency in Cuba. With respect to Cuba, Batista was a bastard, and Castro was a bastard. Latin America has an unfortunate tradition of strong-man leadership. They were like that long before the US got involved in convertly assisting one bastard against another. The hey-day of that was the 50's-60's. After Nicaragua either we got better at it or we quit, because I don't hear about it anymore.
I've got Jay Chen arguing that the US picked the wrong bastard in China, so apparently it's not helping bastards that's the problem, it's picking the wrong one. Anybody figure out how to pick the right one, let us know.
I'm not real thrilled about intervening in other governments, personally. And I am also not real thrilled about strong-men governments sanctioning mistreatment of Indians. But Communism has a terrible track record world wide. The only option, IMO, remains helping build an educated middle class and democracy through free trade and humanitarian assistance. Not swapping one bastard for another by violence.
Most Americans don't know diddly squat about Latin America and the Caribbean, and couldn't tell you anything about the history, government, or politics of any of those countries unless they are Hispanic. And a lot of the Hispanic ones are very uneducated. So there's a very few educated Americans who even know what's going on. In other words, Philip Agee doesn't speak for America. |
