From: Dug Song (dugsong@monkey.org)
Date: Sun Feb 27 2000 - 11:41:06 PST
On Sun, 27 Feb 2000, John Boyer wrote:
> But, speaking of colonialism and a "save the gooks" mentality, I think
> America has an impressive record of foreign intervention in the 20th
> century.
impressively awful. our foreign intervention in Central and South America,
for instance, in maintaining the CIA's drug trafficking operations:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/soa/soa.htm
our lack of intervention in genocide, in Cambodia and Indonesia (read Noam
Chomsky's _Manufacturing_Consent_ - "now on video!" - for a good analysis
of why one of them received NO press coverage in the US, while the other
was daily news):
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0394549260/qid=951678560/sr=1-9/104-6929746-5258027
we sent thousands of US soldiers to die in Vietnam (for a half-baked
domino theory, no less), and yet, even after we bombed the country "back
to the Stone Age", the Vietnamese sent their survivors to end the genocide
in Cambodia while we did nothing.
the reality of US foreign policy has been to preserve our own interests
(both economic and military), which rarely ever coincide with those of the
people we slaughter (or allow to be slaughtered), or with any kind of
humanitarian or democratic ideals.
> Where exactly, do people live under oppression because of US
> colonialism?
some of the the lasting, insidious effects of US foreign intervention have
been to destablize economies, goverments, and to foster long-term
international conflict (there are many notable exceptions, but our track
record in general is poor).
it took a military coup in South Korea to end the "humanitarian" aid
forced upon the country by the US (which benefitted US farmers and
industrialists more than Koreans, who were already rich in arable land and
fallow rice fields), and then successive totalitarian 5-year plans (in
state-sponsored high-tech R&D) to rid the country of undue US economic
influence. read John Oberdorfer's _Two_Koreas_ for a more complete
history:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465087922/o/qid=951679103/sr=8-1/104-6929746-5258027
in Vietnam, indiscriminate bombing, Agent Orange, and the wholesale
slaughter of innocent civilians left the country in shambles and desperate
poverty, which communism has failed to save them from (if not
exacerbated). the Vietnamese call it the American War, for good reason.
history is told by victors, and we are always the victors, even when we
lose. but read history from the viewpoint of those whom it directly
affected, and you will hear a much different story than that of the US
making the world safe for democracy...
-d.
--- http://www.monkey.org/~dugsong/
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