> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- > Van: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Verzonden: dinsdag 5 maart 2002 22:27 > Aan: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Onderwerp: Re: An Interview in Pakistan
> > Dictators that are hospitable to American companies are usually > > hospitable to Americans, in general. > > > Like, say, Pinochet? Or is _Missing_ a fictional movie? > > Me: > Well, Pinochet was on our side during the Cold War. And that justifies supporting a crime-committing dictator -- being on the side of the US? It implies that we should simply excuse the crimes committed by dictators like Pinochet, Batista and others like them: they were evil, but they were US-supported dictators so their crimes are not as evil as similar crimes committed by not-US-supported dictators. During the war against Iran, Iraq and the US were buddies. Does that mean that the crimes Saddam Hussein committed against his own people back then are less severe than those he has committed after the US started calling him Evil? > I'm not saying their record was _perfect_, I'm saying it was better > than the alternative. The US boasts of being the defender of democracy. Yet the US has in the past toppled democratically elected governments and replaced them with dictators, only because those democratically elected governments were not as pro-US as the US would have liked. So, how is dictatorship better than democracy? > The Kurdish genocide is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century. > It's also kind of over. Yeah, that is what you get with genocide: if you keep it up long enough, sooner or later you are going to run out of people to massacre... :-( > Our first priority is, and should be, making certain that weapons of > mass destruction cannot be used _against us_. I'm totally comfortable > with that statement. Other countries do not want to have weapons of mass destruction used against them either. Would you also be comfortable with those countries doing what the US is doing -- trying to prevent others from using weapons of mass destruction against them? Even if it would mean attacking an ally of the US? > The USA is removing enemies and replacing them with allies. But our > allies are _better_ for the people they govern than the enemies we are > replacing. Tell *that* to (the friends and relatives of) the people who were persecuted, tortured and murdered by US-supported dictators like Pinochet and Batista. And to the people who fell victim to the US-supported contras in Nicaragua, who, I must point out, were fighting against the democratically elected Sandinista government. > Are you describing that as morally neutral? IMO, replacing US-unfriendly governments with US-friendly dictators because you disagree with that government�s political colour is not morally neutral, it is immoral. > Even more significantly, those countries that are allied with us are > usually good to their domestic populations, while those that oppose us > are not. I think that much of the Central American population will see things quite different... > Birds of a feather flock together, as they say. I find it interesting to see that you see the US government and dictators like Pinochet as "birds of a feather"... > > And by doing so, they help their own countries profit as well. That would violate every rule in the Dictator�s Guidebook. Dictators tend not to do (or even care about) what is best for the country, but only do whatever they must to gain and keep complete power and increase their personal wealth. Jeroen _________________________________________________________________________ Wonderful World of Brin-L Website: http://www.Brin-L.com Tom's Photo Gallery: http://tom.vanbaardwijk.com
