On Wed, 12 Sep 2001 13:03:33 -0400, "Ronald J. Hall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote:
> >
> > Just off the top-of-my-head, I can think of the entire Panama campaign and
many
> > smaller compaigns in Korea and Vietnam which did _not_ follow this format.
Do
> > you have any idea of what the civilian toll was in Korea and Vietnam? Don't
> > think that they just got in the way by accident, many were killed by both
sides
> > either for "strategic" reasons or simply for the hell of it. Quite a few of
> > these incidents have been well documented, and many Koreans have taken the
US
> > military to court (in the US) over issues such as this.
> >
> > What about places like Chile, where the US funded a bloody coup and then
> > supported the establishment of a brutal dictatorship?
> >
> > It aint that simple. It almost never is. War is hell.
>
> Just taking the Korean referral for an example here, and by all means correct
> me if I'm wrong, but didn't ---> United Nation <--- forces enter the Korean
> war because NORTH Korea attacked S. Korea? Were we not there, along with UN
> forces, defending an innocent country?
Well, I'm drifting away from my original argument here, but I shall respond
nonetheless. See this as more of an FYI than an actual argument :-)
After World War II, Syngman Rhee was elected to be president of the Republic of
Korea ("South Korea"), and was backed by the US. While initially popular, his
government quickly became corrupt and authoritarian. The constitution was
modified to make Rhee a virtual dictator, and US aid continued to pour in
despite this. The economy was neglected by the government, and South Korea was
one of the poorest nations in the world. By the time of the Korean War, the
South was not much more free than the North, and far poorer. After the War, the
US supported Rhee's return to power, despite his then-known authoritarian
ambitions.
In short, neither North nor South Korea were truly "innocent". Both were
dictatorial regimes which pretended to be "democratic". Each was propped-up by a
world superpower. It has been fashionable to romanticise about South Korea being
a democracy that was being unnecessarily attacked by the North, but this is not
the case. Both nations were simply tools of the Cold War.
> Just like Kuwait...(although I don't think the UN was involved there).
I don't know much about the Gulf region, but I know that Kuwait is most
certainly _not_ a democracy. The National Assembly has almost no power, and
women cannot vote (it is a very Islamic nation, after all). The press is
strictly censored and controlled. Nevertheless, this small nation are heavily
backed by the US and other Western nations because of their oil reserves.
--
Sridhar Dhanapalan.
"There are two major products that come from Berkeley:
LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
-- Jeremy S. Anderson
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