Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (9317)	5/21/1999 1:05:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

OK, legitimate challenge on the "we" issue. By "we" I meant the US government, acting though the appropriate agencies, which in turn acted by sending advisors to the countries in question, and bringing members of the military and security agencies of these countries to the US for training. Many of these advisors were veterans of the Vietnam war, in many cases veterans of units that had seen some of the ugliest actions in that war. Many carried serious scars from that conflict: an intense hatred of communists generically, intense frustration at what they believed to be unreasonable restraints imposed on their actions there. They tended to see the challenges purely in military terms - such was the nature of their profession - and to ignore the political and economic groundwork. Many of them believed absolutely that the answer to insurrection was simply more aggressive and more thorough repression; the methods used to select their trainees ensured that they would be thrown together with men of like mind, so they reinforced each other. Unfortunately, the people who came into their grasp in practice were almost never the hardcore ideologues, who were off in the mountains and inaccessible. Many were on the fringe of the movement, often with aboveground fronts that they in many cases didn't know were fronts. Many were merely suspects. Others were tagged and pulled in simply because it suited someone's purpose; an ideological crusade is always a convenient excuse for settling personal scores. But for every disappearance, every torture, every ravaged body found in a ditch or a garbage dump, a few more people that were close to the line slipped over it. It didn't intimidate people, didn't cow them into submission. It made them angry. I do believe that the bureaucrats that were responsible for these programs knew what was going on, or if they did not know they were voluntarily blinding themselves. Absurd language was used to sanitize and rationalize, and as the news went up the chain it began to sound downright proper, save for occasional expressions of regret at the necessity of "harsh" measures. It's not just that it was wrong. It was horrendously ineffective, and it left us with enemies all over the world.