[Latin America stuff split to other message] Gautam wrote: > >> The most recent example that still hurts was the >> replacement of the Communist regime of Afghanistan >> by the Talibans. It was a replacement of _bad_ by _worse_, >> and it was fully supported by the USA. > > Not true. That's one of those nice pieces of mythology > that has been created over the last year because it > makes people like Jeroen happy, > If it is a fable, then it certainly has some moral lessons, like "do not support evil psychotic genociders even when they are the enemies of your enemy".
> but it's not true. The US never supported the Taliban > in Afghanistan in any meaningful fashion at all. Up > until about 1989 or so we supported the > people who would eventually become the Northern Alliance. > Ok, but this Northern Alliance was a bunch of evil rapist genociders, whose replacement by Taliban came as a _relief_ to most afghanis. > >> The purpose of WW2 was destroying the Nazi regime. >> The price of this destruction was giving Poland etc to >> Stalin. > > > So you're comfortable with that, > No, I am not; but I am realistic enough to consider that freeing Poland from Stalin would be too costly. > but not when a similar choice is made in > other places. Well, I'm not comfortable with that > choice _anywhere_, but sometimes, hard choices do > have to be made. > I agree. But again this is not my point :-) >> My point in bringing up Vietnam is that this is an example >> of the policy of chosing a corrupt ally instead of a >> moderately evil enemy. > > But our corrupt ally was a lot better than the evil > enemy. A simple note - during 20 years of war, very > few refugees left South Vietnam. When the > North Vietnamese took over - tens of thousands fled the > country at great risk to their lives. This should tell > you something about the North Vietnamese government. > No, it tells me that Vietnam was pretty much devastated during the War. Or maybe that it was easier to flee in times of peace than in times of war. Alberto Monteiro
