Alberto Monteiro wrote:
>
>AFAIK, there was no case where the USA or the USSR *directly* ruled
>a foreign country. It's easier to find Qislings to do the dirty job.
Japan was directly ruled by the United States for several years after WWII.
>There are horrible examples in both sides. The USA-sponsored
>Argentinian dictatorship of the 70s killed 30,000 citizens. These
>were *individual* deaths, not those abstractions like "1 million
>dead by hunger". Each one of those 30,000 citizens was
>arrested, tortured, killed, and their bodies vanished. And there
>was a huge CIA support in those opperations.
Without getting into the specifics of how much the CIA was involved in that
operation, I'll accept for the sake of arguement that 30k were killed over
about 10 years. That is a reasonable example as an example of a large
number of people killed by a US client government. In the same decade, Viet
Nam, after the fall of Saigon killed 750k, and the Pot Pol killed about 2M.
In the great leap forward and the cultural revolution, estimates are that
China killed 40M to 80M. The Viet Nam number doesn't include, of course,
those people who were forced out of the country to become boat people.
There was also, during the late '70s, 500k killed in Uganda. Again, these
are not abstract numbers, but numbers killed by direct government actions.
There seems to be order of magnitude differences in the numbers killed (with
China 2 orders of magnitude...it is a large country, which accounts for the
second order of magnitude.)
> >
>Uh? I think part of the South African's military power was given by
>the USA.
After the early 1960s? Perhaps they bought stuff from US manufacturers, but
that's not the same as US government backing. I'm sure they bought from the
French too, they would sell to anyone.
>
>>No excuse is a pretty strong statement. Many people in the US saw >>the
>>Cold War a war the US could lose. If it did, it would be >>destroyed or
>>remade in the image of the USSR. I do feel that this >>was overstated, but
>>not entirely false.
> >
>But does the fight for "democracy" require the support >of
>"dictatorships"???
Well, what choice did the US have? There weren't that many democracies in
the third world. Do you suggest that the US refuse to work with any
government that is not a true democracy? Now, I think that the evil of
supporting a dictatorship must be weighed against the good of fighting
against agression from the USSR each and every time. But, I don't think
that I would only support true democracies.
>
>The USA *might* have become a dictatorship, too. Maybe if
>the USA had won the Vietnam War, and maybe a couple of wars
>after that, your militaries might think the civilians were unfit to
>rule your country :-/
>
The US had won every war it was in but one in its history. That one was the
war of 1812, which was, effectively, a draw. Viet Nam was the first real
loss. During all that time, the only hint of a military uprising was when
the WWI Vets marched on Washington to demand war bonus payments. I think
this was about 1930.
The United States has tremendous institutional safeguards against
dictatorships. Among them was the drafted army. A second is the National
Guard units under the supervision of the governers. If the generals in the
army staged a coup, and the National guard was called out to protect the
constitution, how likely would it be for the average GI to fire on the
national guard units fighting for the Constitution. I would argue that that
probability is virtually nil.
Dan'm Traeki Ring of Crystallized Knowledge.
Known for calculating, but not known for shutting up
>
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