American support for dictators (split thread)

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
21

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Chota: *

The US ultimately through supporting despotic regimes has ensured economic growth for itself and in doing so deluded its own population into going to war again and again for more economic benefit.

quote:

Originally posted by Ohioguy:

Our goal over the next 50 years is to export liberty

This shows the extent of 'perception management' (read brainwashing) in the US populace.
[/QUOTE]

The world is so grateful for amerikas warped interpretation of liberty!

Export liberty if thats liberty you can keep it.

Keep living in Hollywood do post again when you hit reality!

22

Oh Chota,

A picture does not tell a thousand tales. That is just a brand of propaganda that suits your needs.

Akif,

It is utterly laughable that you consider Arafat to be Democratically elected. He is a corrupt leader stripping the PA of millions. There was precisely one election, but Arafat has been leading the PA for over 30 years. Cynically I believe that the current Intifada guranteed that he would not have an elction again, and he could blame this on the Israelis.

"Anyway, contrary to your statement, didnt the US try to 'whip up' democracy in Iraq"

Yes indeed. In 1991, the US urged a coup against Saddam. While many think that we should have assisted, and I indeed beleive that, it would have been so much better if the Iraqi's could have done this themselves, they could not.

"From the above quoted statement, do you mean Iraq was attacked as a test case, so it would push other mideastern countries to democracy? "

I indeed believe this to be true. I believe that the case for WMD was pushed to the fron of the line because it was the only topinc on which UN agreement might be reached. France and Russia would never have agreed to the overthrow of Saddam, because of their own debt and business relations. These are the actors that REALLY enslaved the Iraqis, not the Halliburtons of the world.

Back to one of my original diatribes, it is hard for many of you to accept that "support" and "engagement" are two separate and complete issues. Engagement is simply participating with a country to the point where one has some leverage. What most are encouraging around here is essentially shouting insults from across the Pacific. Not only does that not work, Saddam showed us that even with the most debilitating sanctions in history, he could cling to power. We could shout ourselves horse and not dislodge a dictator the likes of Saddam.

Since we are busy second guessing, please posit a suggestion or two. What SHOULD the US do about various despots arount the world? Please enlighten us with the newest process in Foreign Affairs that will cause an abrupt change in despotic regimes!

23

Mubarak
Musharraf
Karzai
Puppet Iraqi council
Qaddafi (Recently joined the list of countries to which liberty has been exported)
Algeria
Jordan
Morrocco

Suharto - Indonesia

Nicolae Ceausescu - Romania

Ferdinand Edralin Marcos - philipines

Jean Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier-Haiti

Joseph Désiré Mobuto Sese Seko – Zaire

Panama
Haiti
Dominican Republic
Honduras
El Salvador
Uzbekistan

and on and on and on and on.......

[thumb=H]notorture18153_8564535.JPG[/thumb]

quote:

Originally posted by Ohioguy:

Our goal over the next 50 years is to export liberty

100 000's if not millions dead, yes liberating innocents from their lives, their families and of course their wealth.

24

Thats the sum total of your analytical power? A list?

Well, that pretty well sums it up.

I'll tell you what. Let's take that list and kill all of the parents of those people. And their priests/mullahs/pastors, and the villages where they were raised, and all of their grammar school teachers, and everyone who served in thier governments.

The depth of your understanding for all of the ills in the world is to blame the US. Look around you and see who is killing Muslims. Overwhelmingly it is other Muslims. Look at the weapons that are killing them. AK-47s kill a lot more Muslims everyday than Ariel Sharon. Ever see a video with some hooded guy waving a US supplied M-16?

The answer here is that for years the Soviet Union and it's proxy states as well as China sold Millions and Millions of AK-47s and their clones to every tin pot in the world. Those guns kill more Muslims every year that the US did in two wars. Yet you are in utter denial that it was the Soviet Union who would supply virtually anyone with whatever weaponry they could afford. So who "supported" these killers with ubiquitous and lethal weapons?

Yet your anti-American prejudice does not allow you to see that simple fact...

25

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ohioguy: *
The depth of your understanding for all of the ills in the world is to blame the US. Look around you and see who is killing Muslims. Overwhelmingly it is other Muslims. Look at the weapons that are killing them. AK-47s kill a lot more Muslims everyday than Ariel Sharon. Ever see a video with some hooded guy waving a US supplied M-16?

The answer here is that for years the Soviet Union and it's proxy states as well as China sold Millions and Millions of AK-47s and their clones to every tin pot in the world. Those guns kill more Muslims every year that the US did in two wars. Yet you are in utter denial that it was the Soviet Union who would supply virtually anyone with whatever weaponry they could afford. So who "supported" these killers with ubiquitous and lethal weapons?

Yet your anti-American prejudice does not allow you to see that simple fact...
[/QUOTE]

B-52 bombers wiping out entire villages in afghanistan

F 15 fighter planes bombing mosques all over the joint

Apache helicopters blowing up Weddings in Iraq... just a few vey recent examples!

Thousands killed and you saying the US is innocent and victim of hate campaign give us a break, we can see propoganda a mile off!

26

U.S. State Department Policy Planning Study #23, 1948:
" Our real task... is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity ... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming... We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization... we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
George Kennan, Director of Policy Planning. U.S. State Department. 1948

27

Abacha, General Sani Nigeria
Amin, Idi Uganda
Banzer, Colonel Hugo Bolivia
Batista, Fulgencio Cuba
Bolkiah, Sir Hassanal Brunei
Botha, P.W. South Africa
Branco, General Humberto Brazil
Cedras, Raoul Haiti
Cerezo, Vinicio Guatemala
Chiang Kai-Shek Taiwan
Cordova, Roberto Suazo Honduras
Christiani, Alfredo El Salvador
Diem, Ngo Dihn Vietnam
Doe, General Samuel Liberia
Duvalier, Francois Haiti
Duvalier, Jean Claude Haiti
Fahd bin'Abdul-'Aziz, King Saudi Arabia
Franco, General Francisco Spain
Hitler, Adolf Germany
Hassan II Morocco
Marcos, Ferdinand Philippines
Martinez, General Maximiliano Hernandez El Salvador
Mobutu Sese Seko Zaire
Montt, General Efrain Rios
Guatemala
Noriega, General Manuel Panama
Ozal, Turgut Turkey
Pahlevi, Shah Mohammed Reza Iran
Papadopoulos, George Greece
Park Chung Hee South Korea
Pinochet, General Augusto Chile
Pol Pot Cambodia
Rabuka, General Sitiveni Fiji
Montt, General Efrain Rios Guatemala
Salassie, Halie Ethiopia
Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira Portugal
Somoza, Anastasio Jr. Nicaragua
Somoza, Anastasio, Sr. Nicaragua
Smith, Ian Rhodesia
Stroessner, Alfredo Paraguay
Suharto, General Indonesia
Trujillo, Rafael Leonidas Dominican Republic
Videla, General Jorge Rafael Argentina
Zia Ul-Haq, Mohammed Pakistan

and on and on and on and on and on.....

[thumb=H]notorture18153_8564535.JPG[/thumb]

quote:

Originally posted by Ohioguy:

Our goal over the next 50 years is to export liberty

28

"1948"

Oh poor pathetic Chota.

My father was a child in 1948.

Do you have any original thoughts of your own, or just more cut and paste. Try hard to string together two coherent analytical sentences free of propaganda and rants to discuss the issue. Your lists are not evidence, except to the ignorant and easily convinced. Try to form a well thought out paragraph or two...

29

The Balfour declaration effectively created the state of Israel in '48 too does that make it any less significant.

Ohioguy, you have little of interest further to say. I think you've set your position up quite well; ignorance of world affairs in general coupled with a rather forlorn blind denial for your country's foreign exploits and underlying doctrine.

But you know what I like you just the way you are.

I'd only discuss something at length that has a defensible position and isn't as one-sided as this issue.

Did you know that while Idi Amin was in power, he brutalized his people murdering countless 1000’s all with US military aid and with Israeli and CIA training of his troops?

Etc etc etc etc and on and on and on and on.

Your original statement on democracy sounds pretty pathetic now doesn’t it?

I'll leave it to a dictator a day, tommorow more on Amin and then a little on colonel Hugo Banzer, consider it a history lesson before we bring it right up to date :)

30

What you are missing is the big picture. During the time of the Cold War, there was a collassal chess match at work. The Russians and the Chinese set out with a plan for global dominance. Not just a cultural dominance, or an economic influence, an Empire administered in Moscow or Bejing.

this cancer grew upon the world, hop scotching from country to country like a huge game of monopoly. You have a list of countries where the US had some measrue of influence. How much worse would the world have been had Idi Amin been had he been a complete Russian client. You discuss the world as if the US had free reign. Up to a year ago, Russia was still hoping to keep Saddam in power to recover Billions of dollars of loans to provide weaponry to destabilize the mid-east. You are looking through binoculars with one eye closed. You are looking at the world with 20/20 hindsight, and deciding which chapters to ignore, and which chapters you wish to critique.

Imagine a thousand Chechnyas all over the world. Godless communists who are BY FAR the worlds biggest mass murderers. Think about the following paragraph:

"Probably 61,911,000 people, 54,769,000 of them citizens, have been murdered by the Communist Party–the government–of the Soviet Union. This is about 178 people for each letter, comma, period, digit, and other characters in this book.
Old and young, healthy and sick, men and women, and even infants and infirm, were killed in cold-blood. They were not combatants in civil war or rebellions, they were not criminals. Indeed, nearly all were guilty of … nothing. "
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.CHAP.1.HTM

Think about the enormity of these crimes, and the 50 year running war to keep these people from expanding their reach throughout the world. You may have big lists, but those lists lack context.

31

Bravo.

There you have it, it took several contortions and beating around numerous bushes (pardon the pun) but seemingly we're headed toward a discussion on the real issue here.

Yes it's about hegemony, it’s about global control and dominance as every good chess player knows, it’s about punitive actions and shows of force, it’s about killing countless people now with the notion of furthering a perceived greater good for the selected populace in the future.

“He who fights monsters must take care lest he become a monster” –Friedrich Nietzsche

Never a better place to insert the above hackneyed quote.

Has anyone totalled the global millions dead through direct or indirect interventionist US foreign policy of late, how would these figures compare with the ‘communist scourge’.

This can quite easily turn into a game of numbers, but does little more than attempt to justify one evil with another.

The company the US keeps in it’s global game says it all.

32

OG, it is futile to educate someone who has no desire to be educated. Hate can put up a wall that cannot be penetrated, even though an honest person would recognize that he would be speaking Russian, German, Chinese, Japanese or not even be here if it weren't for US foreign policy over the past 100 years (both good and bad). The concepts of democracy, human rights and freedom, as well as the responsibility of being the world power that facilitated the proliferation of these concepts around the world are difficult for people to grasp since they are only used to weak, impotent nations where anyone who advocates these positions faces death or imprisonment. For those who think they could have done it better than the US - where the hell were you? Why didn't you do something about the Nazis or Communists? We could have used your help in Normandy where we sacrificed thousands of our young men. Why didn't you do something about Idi Amin or Pol Pot? There has only been one country that has led the way for the world (with the exception of the Muslim nations and Africa) to become democracies where their people can prosper. Even with all the mistakes the US has made and the tyrants it has tolerated, the world is a better place because of it. So don't hate the player, hate the game. Either that or play it better yourself and stop whining. As a wise man once said: lead, follow or get of the way.

33

"Yes it's about hegemony, it’s about global control and dominance as every good chess player knows, it’s about punitive actions and shows of force, it’s about killing countless people now with the notion of furthering a perceived greater good for the selected populace in the future."

Sure.

The good news is our brand of "hegemony" (if you must) is a damn sight better than all the other available brands of hegemony. There is a burden that goes with power. Just watch the Sudan. If the US does not go to the rescue, no one will. Same with Rwanda. Same with Cambodia. If the US does not lead, the world will often stand around with it's hands in it's collective pockets. There are hundreds of thousands of Muslims alive today in bosnia/Kosovo as a result of action, not inaction. Better factor that in...

Leadership implies failures. God knows we have plenty. No country, nor any person can expect one hundred percent success.

But it is my belief that despite it's failure that the US remains a force for good. We would be under the thumb of the Nazi's, the Imperial Japanese, and the Soviets were it not for the US. We have played the large scale conflicts well, and have won. The question remains, now that we are so dominent militarily, economically and technologically, what will we do with this power? There is one sure thing that we will not do, that is wait for a perfect concensus, as that certainly guarantees failure.

34

Amerikkans speaking rubbish yet again.

World War II was not fought by amerikans and british alone as the media trys to portray.

half a million muslims where forced or joined the british army and 179000 where either killed, wounded or missing in action.

As for the thread it is clear that amerikka supports many dictators in the past and present even assasinating some leaders who didnt tow the line, Britian and Russia also proped up and killed leaders also but this thread is about amerika . From self denial we are now getting a luke warm admission, which is a start.

Now debate has moved onto has the amerikkan support of dictatorships been good or bad. And from the muslims point of view it has been bad all the way!

35

OK fine.

Let us live in the present. Which dictators are we "supporting" TODAY which should not be "supported". Be specific, tell me precisely what the US should do to chang the behavior of the "dictator"?

36

Lets start with Hussni Mubarek, became President in 1981, now gromming his son to become President. His govt is supported and financed by the US.

Its a "democracy" supportrd by the US, where the president gets 99.9% of the votes, and all sort of opposition is crushed.

37

Frequently foreign states will tolerate, or even positively assist a dictatorship in order to advance their own economic or political interests. They are likely to sell out an oppressed people instead of keeping pledges to assist liberation because of other interests.

It is this colonial power interference in the first that helps to establish/undermine the dictators power or build his power in secret by assisting in coups, one only needs to look at the countless coups that took place in Iraq during the 1950`s or the recent invasion by the US/UK.

Dicatorships rely on several factors to remain in power and each dicatorship is different, for example in Saudi Arabia they rely on the Religous Auhtority, Al Saud family allying themselves to the Wahabi religious authority who claimed that the Al Saud family were the defenders and protectors of the faith, and were consequently worthy of obedience of the people. This relationship is now broken because the people are now openly hostile to saudi regime especially with the fact that amerikan forces are entrenched in Saudi itself. The ruling family can see this and US forces will be asked to leave sooner rather than later.

What the western Governments can do is leave, in particluar their occupying military, and not intefere and support regimes like the ones mentioned already in several other posts but this is wishful thinking because of what i mentioned in first lines of this post, and in reality this relationship can only be cut by force.

38

^ Great. Now that it has been determined that you plagiarize khilafah khilafah websites, do you have any original thoughts? You know, the ones that end with exclamation points and general insults against the west, their governments and their people? At least throw in a couple of "amerikkkas" to pass something off as your own.

39

The U.S. is now openly supporting a reform of these regimes but it's not going to happen overnight. One of the ultimate failings in the current administrations war on terror is its inability of understanding that this war is going to take more than military might. The U.S. must re-evaluate it's foreign policy and make changes so it reflects the message that it is trying to send the Muslims world, which is this is not a war against Muslims, this is not a plot to plunder your land. These changes must make progress that is visible as simple rhetoric won't do but merely adds insult and incites the Muslim world even more so. What makes this task increasingly difficult for the U.S. is the fact that the U.S. must work with the current regimes in power. Another obstacle that lies in the way is that the military aspect of the war cannot be halted, there are those who want to destroy the U.S. and use a perverted version of Islam to hide under and use to recruit it's members. It's a difficult road ahead and in the end the U.S. military can cut down the heads of terror that pop up while U.S. foreign policy can take away the seeds of terror and prevent it from ever growing.

40

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by underthedome: *
The U.S. is now openly supporting a reform of these regimes but it's not going to happen overnight. One of the ultimate failings in the current administrations war on terror is its inability of understanding that this war is going to take more than military might. The U.S. must re-evaluate it's foreign policy and make changes so it reflects the message that it is trying to send the Muslims world, which is this is not a war against Muslims, this is not a plot to plunder your land.

[/QUOTE]

UTD

The muslims world as well as south america, and parts of africa have suffered colonial rule and suffered as a consequence.

The people there already know not to trust governments like amerikka, and history is a witness to this.

Amerikka is in muslim countries and there for a reason their own benefit.