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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: thames_sider who wrote (34842)	10/22/2001 12:28:54 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

Do you think they had the 'option' of not letting us put tactical nukes there? I don't think so. Puppetry is a matter of degree. If Germany wanted to break away from NATO and join the Soviets in an alliance, do you think they were free to do so? Not. They were very closely supervised and we also gave them almost unimaginable amounts of aid with the Marshal Plan. Good insurance IMO. Buy loyalty with the goods and comforts of America - sounds good. And the good treatment by our forces of occupation. Where is our Marshal Plan for the Middle-East?

To: thames_sider who wrote (34842)	10/22/2001 5:01:30 PM
From: Michael M	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

The main difference, IMO, between West Germany and Zaire/Angola was not the nature of aid (we poured tons of military aid into western Europe but, to my knowledge, did not sell a single F-4 or train a single pilot to fly one in Zaire or Angola). The difference was that West German leaders (and other western European leaders) did not take nearly every penny and stash it in a Swiss bank. As I pointed out to you before,the democratic experiment worked in Japan because it had the support of the old system and because the population was unified. Frankly the chance of a true functional democracy in Afghanistan is nil. Population is too diverse.