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

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (93947)	4/16/2003 10:00:20 PM
From: aladin	Respond to of 281500

Jacob, I almost don't know where to begin :-) Whats this 'we' stuff? Your example is Belgian, not American, oh wait as an American ally they must have been under our orders, or is it - oh wait some wild web page, or author claims the CIA did it all. Sure, it was the cold war, so we were probably interested and involved. So were the Soviets. There was no US military intervention in the Congo and no attempt at Nation Building. There was some rumors of $100,000 being given to the opposition in 1960, but no substansive investments in the region until 1965 (in then Zaire). At that point during the hight of the cold war we did have special forces units (Green Berets) in Africa as part of the world wide fight with the Soviets. Doesn't anyone else in the world have some responsibility for what happens out there? Were the Soviets total innocents? Wasn't it a Belgian colony? Where was France in this? Ok - lets look out our failed examples of nation building - Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, France, Norway, - oh wait these were our allies that we liberated and helped back to democracy. So lets examine our enemies - Japan and Germany - damn - their functioning democracies as well. So lets get to Korea - well the South is Democratic - we didn't liberate the North. Vietnam - well we lost that one and guess what - dictatorship. So moving closer in time Haiti - you have one there. Remember the previous administration - Papa and Baby Doc. What Western Power supported them and then sheltered them when the rest of us got fed up? Complain to them - they created the mess. More lately Afghanistan - what timeframe are you thinking of? If we use the Japanese or German models your argument is specious unless you give the administration a couple to 5 more years. As for Kuwait - I am not fond of Monarchies, but I haven't read anything indicating there is a major human rights crisis there. Perhaps you could point out all the atrocities? John