From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Wed Oct 31 2001 - 01:57:55 MST
Technotranscendence wrote:
>
> On Tuesday, October 30, 2001 12:11 AM John Clark jonkc@worldnet.att.net
> wrote:
> >> We haven't given a rat's ass for the democratically elected leadership
> >> of other countries
> >
> > Samantha has the childish idea that the man on the street is basically
> wise and
> > trustworthy so if something is a democracy it must be a good thing and we
> should
> > support it.
>
The point is that it was not our country to meddle around in and
we had no legitimate reason for such meddling. We have
performed assasinations, raised up insurgents, destablized
economies, supported puppet regimes and so on too many times and
in too many places. Some of those countries were not remotely
that bad by our own lights. In some cases the democratically
elected leader was pro-progress, pro-free trade and just left
leaning enough to have a welfare state not much different than
our own. Yet if the leader was to independent to play along
with some of our interests he was still ousted, sometimes at
horrible cost to the people of the country.
Is it childish to expect us to leave up to the ideals we
expouse? Is it childish to expect us to refrain from molding
the government of other countries to our liking by violent,
illegal and yes, terrorist, means?
> Not being a supporter of democracy myself, I don't see the point of
> supporting oligarchies or military dictatorships either. Again, the US
> government should just disengage...
>
> > Well, I don't want a democracy in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Pakistan and
> > perhaps not even in Iraq because however unsavory the dictators of those
> countries
> > are in a free election they would be replaced by something far worse,
> religious zealots
> > aiming at martyrdom.
>
> The regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia helped to make al Qaeda possible.
> Most of its members and its leadership are from -- you guessed it! -- these
> two countries. In fact, one of the best kept secrets -- from the American
> people -- is that Egypt creates some of the most militant terrorists in the
> whole region.
>
The Saudi government is massively corrupt. Billions are
funneled straight into the account of members of its royalty.
Even its great wealth has now hemorraghed away as far as the
average citizen is concerned. On one hand they have play the
protector of the faith. On the other hand they have played at
being very business-wise and open with and mostly supportive of
the west. They are quite schitzy now and tettering dangerously.
> Also, the Pakistani government -- of course, after the coup it's much the
> same -- helped to put and keep the Taleban in power!
>
> The pattern has been repeated. If you ignore Jimm Carter's cry not to look
> at "ancient history" -- in other words the 25 years before the Islamic
> Revolution of '79 -- you'll see that the US support of the Shah of Iran
> helped him to [unwittingly] radicalize the Muslim population there. Surely,
> neither the Shah nor his US supporters intended this, but his repressive
> policies basically destroyed the Iranian middle class and what hope there
> was from the 1950s to 1979 for a secular, open society. (Today, Iran is
> starting to move back in that direction.)
>
Actually the Shah started getting too independent for our liking
so we helped support the fundamentalist and other uprisings and
protests against him. When this proved a really bad idea we
supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. When that proved a bad
idea we ultimately got Desert Storm. On and on it goes, where
it ends...?
> >> do you think the CIA was prohibited from being in the assasination
> business
> >> in 1981 for no reason at all?
> >
> > Fortunately it looks like the CIA will soon get back into the
> assassination business,
> > we all know who number one on the target list will be.
>
> And it's about time! Once such assassinations begin, hopefully, war will
> turn into leaders being killed -- as opposed to civilians or drafted
> soldiers. If war returns to being a specialized affair of the elites, then
> the masses will, hopefully, turn away from it and we can approximate and
> hopefully improve on the the pre-Napoleonic view of war as just the affair
> of kings -- and not of whole societies against one another.
Once assasination starts it will not be restricted to nations we
are at war with. It will be used wherever it seems convenient
for any of our interests. Nor will it necessarily only be done
in foreign countries. Talk about a cowardly act.
- samantha
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