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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (36267)	8/7/2002 11:09:22 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Apparently the Chilean people didn't like him either. After all, we only provided political support to his overthrow, the Chilean military did the dirty work and cleaned up the mess he made. And this was only after his policies created 500% inflation and alienation from US markets by the outright theft through nationalization of US corporate property. He didn't like the US, so why should we just "suck it up" and contenance his behavior? Allende created the conditions that led to his own overthrow. He was a disaster for the Chilean economy and political chaos was erupting, precipitating the eventual coup. Previous coup attempts against Allende had been put down by the Chilean military in defense of his election" (after all, he was in power for almost 3 years). But his policies led to his downfall. Thus, US policy was to restore stability and return Chile to economicallly and politically viable and sustainable policies (which Pinochet accomplished despite his brutality and human rights abuses). Allende was putting Chile on the path to becoming a client state of the Soviet Union and Cuba, which would have destabilized Peru, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Bottom line John... The US interest was (is) in regional stability. We were involved in the cold war, and fighting off insurgencies and Urban terrorist movements (ala Guevera and his "focos" revolutionary tactics). Thus, we needed stability in Chile and S. America while we were still involved in Vietnam. We don't particularly care who's in charge so long as there is relative stability and eventual progress towards democratic reforms. Totalitarianism is imcompatible to any form of democractic process, being in effect, a Kleptocratic system for the benefit of the "priviledged few" who hold power. Saddam's palaces are a glaring example of this: usinfo.state.gov Saddam is creating internal and external instability in the region. He is promoting instability in his neighbors and working to create the conditions of regional war with Israel through support of terrorist suicide attacks. He has attacked US aircraft EMPOWERED BY THE UN to uphold the terms of the Armistice, and attempted to assassinate a former US president. And the attacks on US aircraft is an ongoing situatioin which we CHOOSE to ignore. But we also have the right to choose NOT TO IGNORE those attacks. We just have to decide what is the threshold... And whether we're willing to continue to risk our pilot's lives for the sake of short-term stability. And that is the question that is really at hand here... Short term stability which will likely lead to long term instability, or short term instability that has the potential to lead to long term stability. Turkey is a proven example that democracy can work in the Islamic world. It's not perfect, but it creates a far more stable system that currently exists where corrupt monarchs and megalo-manical dictators control the lives of millions of oppressed human beings. And any overthrow of Saddam will be a positive. There will be short-term chaos, but the nation has the economic means to rebuild itself rather quickly and not at the expense of the US taxpayer. They will have a guaranteed customer for their oil and access to US technology for rebuilding their oil industry. This will further undermine OPEC (and thus, Saudi Arabian) control over the price of oil and benefit the entire world economically subverting the monopolistic practices of the oil cartel. And it will create the motivation for the Saudi royal family to finally get its fundamentalist movement under control. So I believe that I am the one who is more justified in saying "please" to your inane analogies. Hawk