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

To: aladin who wrote (110992)	8/11/2003 7:25:06 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 281500

<...tell me a county where we have deposed a leader, supported a despot etc. as achange in policy from previous administrations.> No "change in policy" was needed, for the NeoCons to continue to support a large collection of undemocratic unliberal regimes, because the same people in Washington had supported the same warlords, Emirs, Shahs, dictators, etc., for the entire Cold War. Only the enemy changed (Islamism now, communism then). Nothing else changed. <As far as Kuwait and the Saudi's go - they have lots to do to be free societies...> That has my nomination as Understatement Of the Year. It takes some fine hair-splitting, to see more freedom and liberalism in Saudi Arabia than in Cuba. Me, I can't see much difference between next-to-nil and just-about-zip. At least Castro lets women drive cars and learn to read and write. The list is long, of tyrants (and policies that destroy freedom) the NeoCons support today, with money, arms, loans, political support. Or just do directly, ourselves. Just a few of the most egregious examples: 1. The prisoners at Guantanamo have as many rights as Castro's political prisoners. None. Again, it takes some fine hair-splitting to see any difference between the treatment of those two groups of prisoners. 2. When a political detainee was murdered recently, while in the custody of Iran, it took exactly 10 days for the Iranians to arrest the murderers. I am still waiting for anyone to be arrested for the murder "by blunt trauma" of those 2 prisoners in U.S. custody at Bagram Air Base. 3. The warlords of Afghanistan. Go to the websites of Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, and you'll find a huge amount of documentation on suppression of rights, torture, etc., by warlords the U.S. gives money and weapons to, so they'll let our soldiers hunt Taliban on their territory. A classic "lesser evil" bargain with the devil. 4. Indonesia. The soldiers who did Timor and now Aceh, are our close allies in the War on Islamism. 5. Saudi Arabia. Because of our failure to pursue any Energy Independence policy, we have no leverage to force Saudi Arabia to stop their funding of terrorism. They fund thousands of programs, all over the world, preaching hatred of America, hatred of every principle in our Constitution, and we are powerless to stop it, because of our short-sighted energy policies. 6. Israel. Our support and funding for Israel, and our tolerance for the way they treat the 5 million non-Jews under their rule, violates every principle the U.S. is supposed to stand for. My basic belief is that, to win this war, the U.S. has to stand for something other than naked self-interest. It is not good enough for us to say the right words, about freedom and democracy. Actions have to match the words, and today, they don't. The power of the U.S. in the world cannot come entirely "out of the barrel of a gun".

To: aladin who wrote (110992)	8/11/2003 8:05:04 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

<Do you really want Charles Taylor in power?> No, I do not want Charles Taylor in power. Which is not the same thing as saying I want U.S. soldiers to do Regime Change and Nation Building in Liberia. Regime Change, without effective Nation Building, in Liberia (or Iraq, or anywhere, it's a general principle), is futile. A waste of money, lives, and prestige. If we do regime change, but don't change the reasons why somebody like Charles Taylor came to power there, then someone very much like him will come to power, the day after U.S. soldiers leave. From the 1840s, until Taylor killed it off, Liberia was a nation where freed slaves from America re-created the society of Jim Crow Alabama. The only difference was, in Liberia, those freed slaves assigned themselves the role of the whites in Alabama. They were 3% of the population, and they held a total monopoly on all political, military, and economic power. They ruled by force, and kept the other 97% of the population in a permanent state of poverty, ignorance, and powerlessness. That system (supported by the U.S. for 140 years) deserved to die. If you want to see what the result of U.S. military intervention in Liberia will be, look at the example of Haiti. In Haiti, we have sent soldiers in, over and over, for the last 100 years. Every time, we go in with good intentions, lofty goals, and the results are nil. Liberal democracy has yet to take root. The U.S. marines are not the right tool for this job. My position is that of Kant: Message 19011639 Liberia will be a peaceful, prosperous democracy, when the Liberian people make it so. And nothing the U.S. marines can do, will bring that day any closer.