(David Horne, _the_ chancellor of
the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco 24h offy) wrote
in news:1hfu6hp.p7s8w61io0cqdN%this_address_is_for_sp :

wrote:

The Reid wrote:
Following up to Bert Hyman

I lay all of Africa and the middle east, most of Asia and a
good chunk of South America on Europe's door step.

then you should start thinking about US actions in south
America, rather than ignoring more recent history in favour of
cosily blaming the worlds ills on the empire building of earlier
centuries.

S America, SE Asia, where shall we stop?

And as for Africa and the ME, are the situations there due to
European empires, or to post-empire meddling, such as US support
for UNITA in the Angolan civil war (to mention just one example).

I don't see why it can't be both. I think it's safe to say that
both Europe and the US have a lot of blame to share. Sure, a lot of
European countries have tended to follow more progressive paths
post-WWII, but there's still a lot of **** there. I watched Michael
Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" last night which had, among other
things, footage of the British atrocities in India, and the French
in Algeria.

The post-war actions of the US around the world were driven by the
short-sighted "enemy of my enemy is my friend" theory, which led us
to support any tin-pot dictator who would claim to be anti-Communist,
and we'd cheerfully ignore the most terrible actions of these guys so
long as they'd allow our military to operate out of their
territories.

That said, we did simply use the totalitarian or authoiritarian
systems we found, although we'd sometimes arrange for a leadership
change if it suited our purposes.

--
Bert Hyman | St. Paul, MN |