From: "William Robb"
From: "paul stenquist"
> I think that's true, but the alternative may have been worse: a mega Iran
> and a strong Soviet presence in the middle east. There's no way to flip
> the switch and see what might have happened if Afghan and Iraq hadn't had
> U.S. support back in the day.
Meddling with other peoples governments is usually not a very good thing to
do.
The USA seems to think it have a God given right to do it, and then justify
it under the theory that if it's good for the USA it's good for everyone.
It usually works out to be bad for everyone, just less bad for the USA in
that less Americans get killed by a factor of a thousand or so.
Bill,
I think you're assuming a lot more thought goes into some of these
policies than the evidence suggests. Much of it is purely knee-jerk.
Most of these situations, no one knows what's really good for the USA,
but the administration has to DO SOMETHING NOW or look weak.
It's a lot more like the ping-pong ball is in the air on the U.S. side
of the net and we've got to hit it back.
No one has time or takes time to question if we even need to be in this
game. Once the policies and programs are in place they take on a life of
their own. Some special interest profits from continuation of obsolete,
even counter-productive programs and they become impossible to kill.
The U.S. government knew in 1955 [RAND Corp, the Pentagon Papers] that
the war in Vietnam was hopeless; un-winable, and it still took another
20 years to extricate the U.S. from it.
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