Darryl Shannon wrote:
>First, a little hint for you all: every so often, look at the subject
>line of the thread you are replying to. If it makes no sense, try
>changing it! You'd be surprised at how much less confusing it makes
>things!
Awwww... there goes 'confusion to the enemy.' Thanks bunches, Darryl.
>
>Now, let's address Kat's question about whether the Cold War was worth
>it. Gautam wrote a good response, I'll try to do it in a simpler way.
This one, I actually understood... and didn't sound quite so much like
"US good! All Else BAD!" Thanks. I am violently allergic to anything that
sounds like propaganda, even if bits of it are true, which may be the
root of the problem here. There's been an awful lot of propaganda spouted
off lately....
Believe it or not, I don't like communism. I have nothing against
socialism in theory, which has nothing wrong with it other than excessive
idealism, but in practice I can agree it was a nightmare. I do like
democracy, with all its faults. I do hate dictatorships. After reading
some of the responses to my posts that have been coming up, it seems I
should make that awfully clear.
After reading Darryl's post, I think my question of whether or not the
Cold War was justified is pretty well answered: I think it most likely
was. However (before you ask for another apology, JDG) I do still have
some pretty serious questions about how the Cold War was handled. The
"arms race", for example, still seems to me to have been a collosal waste
of time, money, and resources, quite aside from saddling us with a bunch
of nuclear armaments we're not going to use and don't need and now have
to dispose of in insanely expensive ways.
I still question why, if the Americans were really trying to help people
find their freedom, they didn't move in while some of the countries were
colonies struggling for freedom- why did they have to wait until the USSR
got involved? Darryl's explaination- that the intent was only to contain
the Soviet Union and that the welfare of the countries themselves was a
secondary consideration to the welfare of the world as a whole, if I read
it correctly- makes sense, but it's not exactly the high-and-mighty
moralistic reasons that others have claimed for the US, and that the US
itself seems to claim these days.
More importantly, I wonder why America, in fighting the Soviet Union,
felt itself justified in making itself more like its enemy. I think this
is something that happens in every war (witness the Japanese containment
camps of WWII) but I think that, in this case, with the Cold War being
drawn out over half a century, the effects are far more serious. Take a
look at the attitudes of Americans who grew up in pre-Cold War America .
Now look at the attitudes of Americans of my generation and my parents'
generation- the folks who grew up during the Cold War. It's really a very
marked difference, isn't it? A marked difference in the level of trust-
pride- belief.
I would hold that it's this, not our ridiculously huge national debt,
that is the real cost of the Cold War. That, and the truly incredible
mess that's been left of Russia and the former USSR. We *can't* just say,
"OK, not our problem any more," can we? We *caused* that mess. And
there's all the countries suffering through post-communism withdrawal who
have learned, over the past half-century, to expect our help. The problem
with a fifty-year war is that it's going to take at least twice as long
for the cleanup- and we can't just look at the mop and bucket and go,
"No, no! That's not our job! We already did our job!"
We may or may not have saved the world from communism- I tend, after
witnessing the evidence, to believe we at least helped. But the cost
seems to be that we now must save the world from our past actions.
Kat Feete
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Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.
-Terry Pratchett
