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

To: h0db who wrote (133875)	5/22/2004 10:30:18 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Bullshit. That's how we sold it. Vietnam was about containing the Soviet Union. I see... just a black and white analysis there h0db... Just Machiavellian power politics.. Nothing about why what the Soviet Union represented, and was ITSELF trying to inflict upon the Vietnamese people, was worth "containing". But we apparently had no desire to try and create a democratic and modern society that might be allied with us via vested self-interest? Is that all they taught you in the military? Or is it that we apparently served in different militaries? Is that why we're going through great pains to try and help the Iraqi people, merely because this is a pure "power play"? Cannot you not possibly accept the principle that the REAL POWER in opposing totalitarian regimes like the Soviet Union, and now Islamic militancy, is possibly to EMPOWER the people in those countries to decide the course of their own lives and have some say in the government that leads them (as opposed to ruling them)? We must have had different instructors. Because I didn't just learn your version of myopic "realpolitik". Same in Afghanistan, where we withdrew after the Soviet withdrawal and sat passively--under Bush I and Clinton--while it degenerated into the Taliban-Al Qaida haven that spawned 9/11. Buddy, we didn't even advance far enough to withdraw. All we did was support the Pakistani intelligence service, WHO then trained and equipped the Afghani resistance ACCORDING TO THEIR AGENDA (not ours). This was a true Machiavellian "power play" and we have payed a major price FOR NOT HAVING ADVANCED OUR VALUES and creating prosperity and politico-economic change in that country. Hawk