ludahai said:
The epitome of anti-American Leftist rants. The United States has done more to liberate people than any nation in the history of the planet earth. The U.S. hasn't expanded its borders in more than a century. The presense of U.S. military forces have protected people from German militarism, fascism, Communism, and now they protect many East Asian countries from Chinese Communism, help many countries around the world fight the war on terror, and have liberated the people of Afghanistan and Iraq from brutal dictators. They helped tsunami victims at the end of last year, U.S. military forces are always among the first to deliever food at the site of a natural disaster simply because oftentimes no one else can get there in a timely manner. I find it interesting, for example, that CNN reported that tsunami victims not only felt sympathy for the victims on the U.S. Gulf Coast, but also remembered U.S. aid for their region when they were desparate. The U.S. has been the single greatest force for good and liberty in the history of the planet.
You talk about right-wing juntas. However, look at the countries that were not democratic, but had heavy American influence. Philippines - people power overthrew Marcos. Taiwan - Taiwan's Tangwai movememnt forced democratic change. South Korea - emerged from dictatorship to democracy. There are so many other examples of how US moral influence in countries all around the world resulted in change. Unfortunately, the U.S. had to work with some unsavorary people around the world during the Cold War, but there is such a thing as the lesser of two evils. And when one looks at the record, many of those pro-American dictators actually had to succomb to democratic change due to the moral suasion that few countries OTHER THAN the United States possess.
Today, the United States is indespensable to the maintainence of peace and democracy in the East Asia region. Your leftist Anti-American rhetoric does nothing to change the greatness America has achieved through history.
I find your reference to the Phillippines as bizzare to be frank. The U.S. backed Marcos' brutal regime, and the Aquino regime that replaced it, which continued to use the Death Squads set up by the U.S.A. after his ousting as a 'counter-insurgency' army to purge political dissidents and failed to institute any economic reforms. The current political climate is little different with counter-insurgency still being carried out against communist elements and MILF noticeably with Human rights abuses still being reported in the country. These days though, these actions have protection under the auspices of the 'war on terror'.
As to Taiwan, well the situation has improved in the last decade or so, human rights abuses still occur, and the fact that improvement has occured is more indicative of the horror of the past situation than of the enlightenment of the present.
South Korea has undergone intense economic reform over the latter half of the 20th century, and this has in some ways encouraged democracy, but once again human rights abuses do occur, and once again these are in direct relation to fighting terror. However these are mild and comparable to abuses in some industrial countries. I would dtill stress economic reform, largely brought about by the Indochina wars, so yes South Korea is perhaps a viable benefactor of U.S. foreign policy. Another country whose economy is built on the "blood and tears" of the third world,
And as all three of your examples began with bloody and repressive U.S. intervention leading to dictatorship in all three cases, I think they can go some way to proving my point. The democracy that has sprung up in South Korea and to a lesser extent in the others is the exception and not the norm. Where are the democracies in the other countries that have recieved U.S. intervention? The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are arguably examples of this, but again I would stress that this is simply the latest action in a long history of bloody intervention, and 'counter'-terrorist operations are continuing in both of these countries.
And I don't think "the lesser of two evils" argument is ever valid. The much overblown Soviet threat was simply a successful propagandistic attempt to convince the U.S. public that military intervention was justified on a global scale. U.S. foreign policy is not dominated by the concepts of freedom and liberty as the rhetoric regarding foreign policy so often is, and the spread of 'international communism' apart from at least in part being an invention of the U.S. government dutifully reported by a obedient media invention, was in my mind far less insidious than the spread of U.S. style 'democracy' or in English, Fascism.
And we see the pattern repeating itself with anti-Islamism replacing anti-communism as the overriding ideology of the U.S. as outlined by the government and once again dutifully reported by an entirely servillient press. As we saw in Vietnam, the controversy in the mainstream is not whether or not the U.S. has the right to intervene,
but in the tactics it employs in it's intervention. If you still think the U.S. is a force for good, and I am simply a rabid anti-American I would urge you to look at the history of U.S. intervention in Central America, as well as the global projection of military power.
