From: Chris Taylor (Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 01 May 2003 - 14:01:06 GMT
> Hokay. I would just like to point out that the US had to play dirty pool
> with friendly dictators in order to effectively contend with the Soviet bloc
> in the world arena, where they were doing the same thing in spades.
> Once their totalitarian hegemony crumbled, that unfortunate necessity
> was removed, and our post-Soviet interventions have been mainly
> about toppling despots and providing needed humanitarian aid.
> Virtuous interventions (or attempts at them in the third case, or urging
> and support for them in the last one) since then: Bosnia, Kosovo,
> Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Panama, East Timor. Also notice that
> the majority of these were in assistance to, and not in oppression of,
> Muslims.
Yeah I'd go along with the cold war thing, and the reality of operating
in the era of the 'peace dividend', although the list above is less than
impressive when marks are awarded (true for any nation though). And
there are the agendas to be factored in (like a sex / real estate
scandal, or a pipline from the russian oil fields to the Indian Ocean
through as few countries as possible, or a tame replacement oil source
for a flaky Venezuela, or another sex / real estate scandal). And btw
anything the US does in Central or South America is suspect; leaving I
think just Timor, which we did a bit of a Rwanda with (the Brits are
most at fault there though, due to our shameful Indonesian ties).
The argument about being pro- or anti-Muslim is a bit of a red herring:
all this does is get every muslim's back up because it is the perceived
anti-Arabism that is the problem (from 'them', although 'they' too have
fallen into the shorthand of using Islam as the discriminator), not a
more general Islamophobia; and talking about Islam all the time looks
like an argument from ignorance. Plus the 'US is pro-muslim' thing is so
transparently a post-hoc rationalisation of events that it could never
bear any real weight. The argument should have been purely that the US
is blind to race/creed (a subtle but very important distinction which
avoids all this 'weighing'); I know that's not how you just phrased it
anyway, but that is how it usually comes across in the media.
Cheers, Chris.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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