American/British Assassination of the Leader of Iraq

POSTED BY: Ghoulman
UPDATED: Friday, June 25, 2004 02:25
VIEWED: 14132
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RUE

Saturday, May 22, 2004 2:26 AM

What I get out of Finn's proposals is that as long as it's America doing the killing, it's OK, 'cause it is killing blessed with **righteousness**. But at the same time it's painted under the rubric 'the realities' of this world. So, Finn, is US action righteous and pure or compromised and sullied?

On a more practical note, the US has been careless about the friends it picks.

Saddam Hussein was a friend since he was bleeding Iran; the Taliban was a friend b/c it was bleeding Russia ... or, as what pointed out to me after a long list of murderous dictators the US installed/supported - "Sure they're dictators, but they're OUR dictators!"

RUE

Saturday, May 22, 2004 2:56 AM

Just so you all know where I'm coming from:

IMHO, the last thing the US wants is democracy around the world. Democratic countries might just - well, nationalize resources for the betterment of the people. Demand fair trade agreements. Deal with other countries we're in competition with. Join together for better economic leverage.

On the other hand, dictatorships provide guaranteed economic forms. The dictator has a vested interest in maintaining the system. And since dictators need guns and military support, the US, which supplies said capability, retains a level of control over the dictator.

It's the only thing that makes sense out of all the dictators the US called/calls 'friend'.

HKCAVALIER

Saturday, May 22, 2004 1:58 PM

Yes, Rue, I've come to very similarly sad conclusions about "the realities" of our American system. What we export far more successfully than democracy is capitalism. Unfortunately, capitalism is not an ethical social system. It is not an unethical social system. It is not even a social system. (Maybe it's an anti-social system?) It is merely a very successful mechanism for perpetuating itself because it makes the people that run the system very, very rich and because it fosters the illusion--the dream--that those at the bottom can rise to the top. The system is chaotic enough for such a "rags to riches" story to happen every now and then. This is how capitalism gets associated with democracy, not because it is actually populist but because it creates populist dreams.

Our government's long standing opposition to communism is driven far more by capitalism than democracy. Communism is far more a capitalist nightmare than a democratic one. The communistic state is definatively a closed system, one less market for capitalism to exploit, and capitalism can't stand that. Far better for capitalism to trade with a dictator than to get nothing from the communists.

When I look at Firefly, I see what I would call "End Game Capitalism." What I'm seeing more and more is that capitalism requires two things: constantly expanding markets and desperate (therefore cheap) foreign labor. Left unchecked such a system advances like a terminal disease until all markets have been exploited out of existance. So the Earth got used up and they terraformed a whole galaxy of earths with a limitless supply of poor desperate workers.

Of course, one way to slow the process of utter depletion of the earth is to engage in wars. In a war you destroy existing infrastructures which starts the cycle over with poor desperate people and a lot of rebuilding which will make the capitalists rich. It's just the grimmest picture I can think of.

So, it seems that globally, socialism just doesn't fire the imagination of enough people for it to catch on and stick. Capitalism is extraordinarily seductive and very profitable for a lot of people. So how do we curb the natural tendancies of capitalism, reign it in, so that more people can experience its benefits and the planet doesn't get used up? Is it even possible? Is it possible to impose ethics on a system that is so seductive, profitable and amoral?

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Saturday, May 22, 2004 5:10 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
What I get out of Finn's proposals is that as long as it's America doing the killing, it's OK, 'cause it is killing blessed with **righteousness**. But at the same time it's painted under the rubric 'the realities' of this world. So, Finn, is US action righteous and pure or compromised and sullied?

So because the US cannot be said to be perfect any comment no matter how out of context that vilifies the US must be taken as true? What you are trying to do is force the argument into proving that the US is “righteous,” which is hard to do. And then you’re going to say that because someone can’t prove that, it means the US is the bad guy.

Well let’s try turning this argument around and see just how valid it is. How righteous are you? Have you never made a mistake? Have you never trusted someone you shouldn’t have? Have you never done a single thing in your entire life out of greed or fear or less then righteous reasons? Are you prefect, rue? Are you righteous? And if not, I guess that means that all you’re good intentions, all the good things you’ve tried to do, and all the reasons for why you did what you did are meaningless, because you can’t prove you’re perfect.

Just because the US may not be perfect does not mean the US assassinated someone, when what they really did is support a rebellion against someone, or that only 5 Americans died in wars following Vietnam, or that unfounded accusations of racism are true or that the US prefers dictators to democratic regimes, or anti-capitalist rhetoric is true.

RUE

Sunday, May 23, 2004 3:08 AM

Here 'ya go Finn. This covers through "C" in the western hemisphere. Dominica through Venezuela are up next. After that it's on to Africa, then Asia.

I sure hope you don't believe this all happened by accident as the US was just tryin' to do the right thing.

http://www.cyberessays.com/History/88.htm
In 1823, President James Monroe enunciated the first US policy on Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine warned European nations against interfering in the affairs of independent nations in the Western Hemisphere. In 1904, Roosevelt's Corollary said the US would act as a "policeman", intervening militarily when US interests were at risk.

Argentina
http://www.guardian.co.uk/argentina/story/0,11439,1101122,00.html
"Henry Kissinger gave his approval to the "dirty war" in Argentina in the 1970s in which up to 30,000 people were killed, according to newly declassified US state department documents."

Bolivia
http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/SouthAmerica.html
"in 1970 ... President Juan Jose Torres nationalized Gulf Oil properties and tin mines owned by U.S. interests and tried to establish friendly relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union. The coup to overthrow Torres, led by U.S. trained officer and Gulf Oil beneficiary Hugo Banzer, had direct support from Washington. When Banzer's forces had a breakdown in radio communications, U.S. Air Force Major Robert Lundin placed the U.S. Air Force radio at their disposal."

Brazil
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_1375.shtml
"WASHINGTON (IPS/GIN) - A newly declassified audiotape and documents released Mar. 31, 40 years after the 1964 coup that installed military rule in Brazil, show that then-President Lyndon Johnson was directly involved in the decision to back the uprising. Also, the CIA had a heavy presence in Brazil at the time, and was implementing a number of covert operations designed to bolster the opposition to left-leaning Brazilian President Joao Goulart."

Chile
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8i.htm
"September 11, 1998 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. The violent overthrow of the democratically-elected Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende changed the course of the country ... because of CIA covert intervention in Chile, and the repressive character of General Pinochet's rule, the coup became the most notorious military takeover in the annals of Latin American history."

Columbia
http://www.progressive.org/comm999.htm
"You are unwittingly complicitous in some of the worst mass murders in the hemisphere today," says Carlos Salinas, Amnesty International's advocacy director for Latin America and the Caribbean. "If you liked El Salvador, you're going to love Colombia. It's the same death squads, the same military aid, and the same whitewash from Washington."

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Sunday, May 23, 2004 11:45 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Here 'ya go Finn. This covers through "C" in the western hemisphere. Dominica through Venezuela are up next. After that it's on to Africa, then Asia.

I sure hope you don't believe this all happened by accident as the US was just tryin' to do the right thing.

So what is your point now? That the US may have had an interest in coups against dictatorial regimes? That seems a little superfluous, doesn’t it? Since no one is denying that. I think you mihgt be a little bit naive, rue. The world is not Sesame Street. Dictators and oppressive regimes really do exist and coups really do happen in them. In fact, in most of the countries you mentioned coups happen like most people change underwear. And the US has an interest in many of these countries which they do not want to see fall apart because some crazy dictator wants to be the next to push into power.

COWARD

Sunday, May 23, 2004 1:20 PM

Quote:
That they achieved them was sufficient. If that seems cold to you, it is probably because you are unfamiliar with the 100-150 million innocent civilians killed within Soviet Gulags, starved to death by Soviet politics/economics or simply taken out, shot and buried in mass graves by the Soviets. And that’s just the people they killed in Soviet Russia.

Yes, those pesky Soviets... killing off their entire population in death camps, 'tis truly horrible. Maybe, Finn, you should get your facts straight. Russia today has around 120 million citizens, I don't know the exact population the Soviet Union had, but trust me, they did NOT kill 100 million people.

Yes Stalin was a brutal son of a bitch, yes he deserves to rot in hell. But maybe you should read up on what happened after his death. Maybe you should also read about Soviet foreign policy in the post-Stalin years and you might find that it was a lot less expansionist than you think. Which is not to say that they played nice, surely they didn't, but just as they were "exporting communism" the US was "exporting capitalism". The US was definetely NOT however "exporting democracy", there have been examples of this named further up in the thread.

If you think the Soviet Union was more ruthless in the Cold War, may I suggest you look up the day it started: a simple plot to minimize Soviet power in China post WWII, this is well documented. The date was August 6th 1945.

Coward

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Sunday, May 23, 2004 3:36 PM

You are right. My apologies. I got a little carried away with the numbers. Let me rephrase that comment to be more accurate. (The population of the Soviet Union was 272,000,000 in 1985 and 208,827,000 in 1959.)

The Soviets along only killed some 60 million people, of which Stalin was responsible for about 40 million. The total world wide killed by communist regimes in all its varied forms is over 100 million, which is almost 3 times the number of combat deaths in all the wars since 1900. That doesn’t include the famines, which occur in unprecedented levels in communist nations, even in temperate fertile regions.

So I thank you for bringing that mistake to my attention, but it makes little difference to my argument. Communism was the greatest threat to modern civilization the world has ever seen, and preventing its spread was or should have been the foremost important principal of US foreign policy throughout much of last century.

As far as what the US was “exporting,” I would like someone to explain to me, how one, strictly speaking, “exports democracy” in the modern world? Basically we are attempting to do that very thing in Iraq and obviously one can image that if it were the US policy to, strictly speaking, “export democracy” there would be no end to the wars. Now I support the war in Iraq, because it is, strictly speaking, an attempt to export democracy, but it’s messy, as anyone would predict. And somewhat hypocritically, many of the people who criticize the US for not, strictly speaking, exporting democracy are the same people who throw fits when the US tries to, strictly speaking, export democracy. And not surprisingly they are against the war in Iraq, and one of the arguments that I frequently hear from these people is that the Iraqis should be left to choose their own form of government. So what the hell is the point with “exporting democracy” then? Obviously, this whole not exporting democracy criticism is a red herring, and the real intent is to attack the US or the administration.

The US exports democracy indirectly through encouraging a free market (i.e. capitalism). Free markets open up societies, both through the introduction of goods and information; this in turn is expected to promote free political enterprise and democracy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And even when it works, it generally takes time. China is a good example of that. Once a closed Stalinist regime, it has begun to open up because of the encouragement of free markets by the West. A great deal of work has yet to be done, who knows what the final outcome will be, but short of invading China and replacing their current Communist government with a republic, that’s the best we’ve got to work with. One thing is for certain, no matter what the final out come will be, certain people will always claim that the US is either not exporting Democracy, and when we are exporting we will be criticized for “forcing” “our” version of democracy.

SIGNYM

Sunday, May 23, 2004 3:54 PM

Finn, those "regimes" weren't "dictatorial". They were democratically-elected governments that had an interest in land reform and in not being ripped off on their main exports. (bananas, copper, tin, oil). Apparently the USA just couldn't go for the idea of breaking up huge mostly unused estates (acquired by Spanish conquerors and handed down through military/ land owning oligarchies.)

http://www.zompist.com/latam.html
Talk about getting your facts straight! Why do you always stick up for the big guy?? Where would YOU be in the FF 'verse?? Sheesh!

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Sunday, May 23, 2004 4:45 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Finn, those "regimes" weren't "dictatorial". They were democratically-elected governments that had an interest in land reform and in not being ripped off on their main exports. (bananas, copper, tin, oil). Apparently the USA just couldn't go for the idea of breaking up huge mostly unused estates (acquired by Spanish conquerors and handed down through military/ land owning oligarchies.)

Well, that’s the Communist argument.

You have a screw loose if you think those countries were democratic. They might be or approaching that today, hopefully they can sustain that momentum, but the last hundred years is not encouraging. South and Central America have, throughout most of the last 100 years, been hotbeds of political turmoil, coups and civil wars. In Bolivia alone there have been almost 200 coups, and the country hasn't even been around for 200 years. That's like having a coup every 10 months. It's pretty difficult to export democracy to a country that unstable, particularly when anything we try to do will be taken out of context and used against us, by people with shortsighted ideological beefs.

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Talk about getting your facts straight! Why do you always stick up for the big guy?? Where would YOU be in the FF 'verse?? Sheesh!

I stick up for the facts as I understand them, not some socialist wet dream. I don’t really know where I would be in FF ‘verse. I know where I am in the reality ‘verse, and I'm happy with that.

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