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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (68377)	3/9/2003 10:04:11 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 70976

> maybe, you can produce body counts! No thanks, it would be too depressing and I wonder where it would lead. The cold war was used as too much of an excuse for supporting atrocities both inside and outside of America. None of which were excusable in my opinion. The world is too complex and too dynamic to rely on shortsighted "self-interest" policies. Otherwise we would not be fighting the same dictator that only short while ago we were giving funds and weapons to. National policies should be based on principles rather than profits. BTW, there were 3 consequences from removal of a democratically elected government in Chile and replacing him with military dictator. The first was removal of a socialist government who had no hostile intentions towards US but just wasn't friendly enough with a dictator who killed and prisoned thousands but gave millions American businesses. The second was creating the belief among the left that democratic path to government was not a viable option because in the end you get to be forced out anyway. As a result terror and violence in LatAm increased and CIA is just as responsible for that as the Soviets were. And thirdly, it contributed to the image of US as a country which uses democracy and freedom as a ruse to get whatever it wants. So was all this worth it? Was removal of Allende really in our self interest? Was it right to replace democratically elected and popular government in Iran with Shah so as to sell a lot of arms only to make the Iranians think of America as the Great Satan? Similarly, I could ask, was selling chemical weapons to Saddam worth the price paid by his victims and by the image we created of ourselves in the middle east? There is a solution to all this; behave in an ethical manner and you will not have to face such headache's and embarrassments later on. I'd like to say I only know of a handful countries in the world who were truly ahead of their times and significantly contributed to humanity (or at the very least to the humanity as it concerned their future generations) and US is not one of them. Real contributions are in the form of structural change and paradigm shifts. As are real damages. Cyrus the great abolished slavery and legislated the freedom of religion and belief. He brought about a system in which the legitimacy of the King was based on his tendency to see justice and fairness is upheld within the kingdom. This is so much more significant given that he did so some 2500 years ago where most kings considered themselves to be literally the manifestation of almighty on earth. In contrast Cyrus declared that he just the same as common people and his political position does not make him superior. Tibet, after introduction of Buddhism, transformed itself from a militaristic and somewhat savage society to one of the most compassionate nations in the world. This was not a forced change (although introduction of Buddhism was done by decree of the Kings who considered the neighboring Chinese kingdoms more culturally advanced). No where else in the world has a nation come to truly understand that expansion of compassion and tolerance makes the military obsolete. The ancient Athenians brought about a radically different view on government. They created elected "kings" and a process called democracy. Since democracy relies on gathering support from the people, this led to creation of many schools of thought to which we are still indebted. Relative to our power and perhaps more importantly, relative to humanity's understanding of right and wrong in our times, US has not come even close to the above. I doubt that after "liberating" Iraqis Bush's name will be incorporate in sacred texts the way Cyrus' name was when he invaded Iraq. Sun Tzu