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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (96800)	3/1/2005 10:26:40 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I must have really explained my position badly. I considered the USSRs debacle in Afghanistan to be very positive for us (and stabilizing- for the US), because the islamic militants had another focus. That's the kind of stability I have in mind there. The USSR was a nice fat target, and for a good long time. I wish the USSR had stayed there indefinitely- if they had stayed there, we probably would never have had 9/11 HERE. Saddam- one could argue he was quite useful in distracting (and punishing) Iran (and the evil Khomeni). I think Saddam proved his usefulness to us- and that's why we have photos of of hugs and kisses between our leaders and Saddam. I also think the Kurds were a concern for our government, because they could have organized and given Turkey some severe problem. I think our government tacitly condone the slaughter of the Kurds- because I think it probably did serve our interests. Saddam's war against Iran was far from "unnecessary" as far as we were concerned. The Kuwait affair appears to have been a colossal misjudgment on his part, led by very poor diplomacy on our part. If Saddam had better understood our position, the war would never have happened (imo). I agree that this war was destabilizing, and bad for us- but I would also suggest that had it not been for our errors in communication, it would not have happened, and Saddam would have continued to be useful in the ME as a bulwark against the radical Islamicists. Now you might disagree with me about what serves our interests, but I can point to historical evidence that leaders of our country (republicans, too) have seen the benefit of Saddam. Whether they understood the value of the USSR, I've no idea. But I'm not the only person to advance this sort of argument. Your facts were interesting though. Thanks for putting them together. I would argue that many of the ethnic conflicts in the republics were much less severe when all ethnicities had the Russians to hate. Now that the USSR no longer exists, there is no unifying force. There were always conflicts between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, and there are lots of independence movements among Tatars, Chechen, Ingush to name just a few. As for the problems of Russian military technology- I generally agree with this: cfrterrorism.org Ukraine Belarus and Kazakhstan were major sites of weapons production- Kazakhstan being the biggest, if I recall. Now supposedly Nukes have been transferred back to Russia- but I would feel safer if the USSR was still the USSR so that things weren't so in flux. I prefer one large known enemy, to many less predictable ones. I don't think you can argue that the USSR did not keep the republics under control- at least as far as we were concerned. There was one foreign policy coming from Russia, instead of - how many are there now? I lose track. When the republics did get fractious they took out their anger on the USSR proper. It's my opinion that this was a postive for the US.