To: Keith Monahan who wrote (2023 ) 4/14/2001 2:18:11 AM From: Abner Hosmer Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 24758 By the way, what was the reason for the U.S. support of the bloody and corrupt Somoza dynasty when it started in 1933? Must of been the Communist hoards back then too; it certainly was not our business interests. Keith, I have a hard time appreciating the relevance of that to our current stance on China. Yes, we can dredge out all of the dirty little deeds, but why be so meticulously selective, then. Let's drag them ALL out.. everyone's, our's and the Chi-coms and everybody else's, and weigh them against the good each has done. Then maybe we can start to decide what is right and good at present. According to your logic, I suppose that since we pulled that nasty deed in 1933, we had absolutely no right to complain about Hitler, or the Japanese "inroads into Manchuria" (as their history books still so antiseptically phrase it), or about Stalin and the Soviet police state, with its decades-long quasi-religious attempt to foment worldwide instability as the first giant step into the glorious Worker's State of the future, or Mao and the "Cultural Revolution" and the millions murdered and starved, all of this while we struggled for our lives with one hand against these raging madmen and murderers, while building with the other a sphere of peace and prosperity, built upon law, fundamental human rights, free elections, and self-goverment. Yes, I suppose it is all equal, in some obscure and hypocritical relativistic sense, since we, too, have done wrong. Why is it so easy for you to overlook the glaringly obvious lessons of the past 100 years of history when they are staring you in the face every moment, every day. One need only look at the wide umbrella of freedom, prosperity, and security stretching across Europe, the Atlantic, and into East Asia under the Aegis of the current Pax Americana and compare it with what might have been , and what has been throughout human history, even into the present. Are you really trying to sell me on the moral equivalency of our history during the past century, and that of the Chinese Communists? Start over.