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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (112775)	8/25/2003 10:04:27 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "And will remember this post of yours the next time I hear any criticism by you of US support for these dictators [Somoza, Pinochet, and possibly the Shah], and the ultimate blowback that US foreign policy suffered as a result." Uh, I'm on record many times over on SI supporting most of what the US did during the Cold War. I'm not a "goody-two-shoes" who argues that everything we do is (or should be) moral, LOL. From my point of view, the Cold War was a serious conflict and we were perfectly justified in trampling on little countries in order to maintain our power against the Soviet Union and China. I don't deny that we trampled on them, but I hold that we were justified in so doing. The shitty little countries complain about our helping turn them into battlefields, but just take a quick look at the world. We've had peace on our borders with Canada and Mexico for what, 155 years? In that time Europe and Asia exploded 3 or more times. There's hardly a border on the planet that is as peaceful as ours. And it's not like we are forcing Canada or Mexico to give up money or land or follow our foreign policy (like Finland or Austria and the USSR). Those are truly peaceful borders and have beent that way for years. My complaint about Vietnam was that it was a waste, not that it was morally wrong per se. That is, if we could have won it at a low enough cost, it would have been moral to fight it. What was immoral was the waste of getting shot up while stuck in a quagmire and ending up killing Vietnamese that should have been killed by the Communists. Now take a good look at those dictators you just named, Shah, Pinochet and Somoza. *How many tens of thousands of American boys died keeping those guys in power???* That's right, the nasty guys you named came at a very cheap price for us. And in the conflict with the USSR, every ally helped. That's what foreign policy should be based on, bang for the buck. The Shah, Pinochet and Somoza were cheap. Korea and especially Vietnam were expensive. Iraq is not at all expensive, but it is making regress instead of progress. Bush, instead of taking every ally where he can get it (as your examples of those dictators illustrate), is instead pissing off the most powerful countries on the planet, and failing to win hearts and minds in Iraquagmire. -- Carl