On 30 Jul 2002 at 13:09, Ben wrote:
> [Rhinoceros]
> As an endnote, would it be extreme to take into account the fact that the
> presence of Americans at some parts of the world is a source of death
> and
> distruction?
>
> [Joe]
> Like in Bosnia-Herzegovina and kosove, where we liberated a Muslim
> people being butchered by a neonazi thugocracy? Like in Somalia
> where we were killed for attempting to feed a people and defend food
> supplies against warlords who seized them in order to use hunger as a
> terror weapon? Like in East Timor, where we applied the pivotal
> pressure on Malaysia to halt the religious pograms and allow secession
> and free elections? Like in Kuwait, where we repelled a foreign invader
> and restored a country to its inhabitants (although not to democracy -
> that will, I hope, come in time)? Like in Afghanistan, where we have
> wrested a country from a fundamentalist theocracy allied with an
> international terrorist conspiracy and made representative government
> possible once again? The US has restabilized much more than we
> have destabilized, but they receive no credit and copious blame. This
> is hardly balance.
>
> [ben]
> None of which has anything to do with his question, if you think about it.
> The fact that in some parts of the world the US does good does not alter the
> fact that in other parts it commits greivous wrongs - and much of what you
> list is very open to interpretation. For example in Kuwait were we really
> "repelling a foreign invader
> and restoring a country to its inhabitants" or were we protecting one
> dictatorship for another in order to protect our oil interests? Just by way
> of example...
>
Foreign policy, like most other things, is not perfect, or even in principle
perfectible. We do the best we can with what we've got and what we
know, realizing that knowledge is incomplete and resources are finite.
As to Kuwait, while we did restore it to the Emirs, our real objective was
to prevent Iraq's Saddam Hussein from invading, annexing and
assimilating the Arabian peninsula; had we allowed him to do that, the
consequences would have been dire indeed, and would have required
a much wider war to rectify.
>
> -ben
>
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