From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Thu 01 May 2003 - 17:18:29 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).
>
It was only abut oil with the Russians, Germans and French, who had
the multibillion dollar contracts with a now-defunct regime. The US was
getting that oil anyway, through the UN oil-for-food program. The oil
companies were opposed to the war, preferring the security of
business-as-usual and caring not one whit about the people being
oppressed or the terrorists being paid.
Actually, one could claim that anything Clinton did was a diversion,
since the Republicans dogged him for that BJ and a real estate deal in
which he lost 50K for nearly his whole two terms. He acted in Bosnia
and Kosovo because people were dying on TV and the international
community was screaming, but Europe once again didn't have the
cojones to clean up its own back yard and the US, remembering bitter
past experiences, wasn't gonna wait around for a greater Serbia to be
established like a greater Germany was.
Clearly, the US went to Afghanistan because that's where Al Quaeda
was based, not because of some proposed pipeline. If Al Quaeda had
been based in East Bumflick, after 9/11 the US military would've ended
up there.
Panama was just a case of an autocratic ruler deciding to make his
fiefdom into Cocaine Transshipment Central.
>
> 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.
>
The majority of the US post-Soviet assistance and despot-toppling has
happened in Muslim countries simply because most of the countries
ruled by despots or in need of humanitarian aid are indeed Muslim.
You have to look for the quarter where you dropped it, not where the
light is better. However, it goes both ways; in East Timor, it was the
Catholics that were liberated from a Muslim genocidal oppression. The
common denominators found in the destinations of the US' recent
incursions do indeed seem to be despotism and oppression.
>
> Cheers, Chris.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
> http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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