[Grovenet] Re: oppression and war

Fri Aug 25 10:41:48 PDT 2006

You are right Joy. We have supported effective leaders. But I don't think we
require that the leader be effective, fair or even humane provided he gives
us what we want. The "oppression" I spoke of began long before 9/11 or the
attack on the Cole or any of the other events of recent years. It's a
pattern that goes back over a century that involves the middle east and
other countries.

A lot of people here in the USA are upset that we didn't just invade Iraq
and take it over; take their oil and run the country ourselves. That's what
countries did in the past. The British, French, Germans and Spanish,
especially, built huge empires in which they simply invaded and controlled
whole countries while "administering" their people and appropriating their
resources. But, by the time the USA became a world power in the early years
of the last century, the world no longer tolerated such empire building. We
needed a different way to appropriate resources. We turned to politics.

Who is responsible for the suffering in Cuba? We Americans turned it over to
our American Mafia to run the resorts and American corporations to force
Cubans to live in abject poverty while we reaped huge profits from the sugar
cane fields there. Things got so bad the bulk of the people would do
anything, and they did it by going to the mountains and living like animals
to build a revolutionary army to fight the corrupt government. Then, when
they won, we cut Cuba off. We've left them to starve and struggle. Castro
didn't have a choice about turning to communism. Cuba couldn't survive alone
under our sanctions. American politicians wouldn't support him because it
was clear that to do so was political suicide. After all, Castro had
nationalized the American-owned industries there and thrown out the Mafia.
That's not acceptable. Those Cubans who were hugely wealthy in the Mafia
streamed to Florida's shores and set up a political machine that has made it
suicide for any American politician to even discuss normalizing
relationships with Castro. The Mafia still runs Cuba in America.  

Then there was Vietnam. They were about to have free, democratic elections.
We didn't like the party who was ahead in the polls, so America launched an
insurgency that became a civil war to stop the elections. The Vietnamese war
was our warning to everyone that America only supports freedom and democracy
to the extent that we approve of their choices. Vietnam was a more subtle
issue than Cuba. The US experts were convinced of the "domino theory": that
if we let the communists win a free election in Vietnam all of Oceania would
become communist, including Australia and New Zealand. As it turned out that
belief had no more credibility than the President's belief that the people
of Iraq would throw flowers at our army and dance in the streets of Baghdad.
That subtlety was also the undoing of the war effort. The American people
didn't see the benefit of winning the war. Gas wouldn't be cheaper.
Americans wouldn't be more prosperous. Vietnam had nothing that we wanted.
The cost of the war, in American lives, was unacceptable and there was no
apparent benefit. So we walked away.

I think we're about to do the same thing in Iraq for the same reasons.  

The bulk of the people of the middle east have gotten, at best, a few crumbs
of the billions we've poured into a few unbelievably wealthy families who
we've supported over the past century. It's clear that the Israel's army was
stopped in its tracks in Lebanon by American dollars that bought state of
the art weapons to supply Hezbollah. 

I think that what's been happening is that the American star is glowing less
brightly. We still have lots of big bombs, but not much else. We no longer
lead the world in politics, science, humanities, education, technology,
manufacturing, energy, resources, agriculture or in any other significant
field. Indeed, we depend upon other nations for support in all of those
things to maintain our standard of living. All we have to keep other
nation's attention on us are a whole lot of big bombs. Is it any wonder that
some others think they need a big bomb of their own? 

A friend of mine from New Zealand once put it this way, "If a group of
people are all trapped in a room, and one of those people has a gun and
shoots someone else, suddenly everyone is going to take the armed person
into account when considering every action, every word. They may not like
him. They may hate him. Some may try to befriend him. But what everyone has
in common is a realization that he's armed and willing to use the gun. In
today's family of nations, that armed man is the USA."

I heartily agree with your prayer Joy. As we become more dependent upon
others we must learn to work as partners not as leaders (bullies, or
whatever one wants to call the guy with the gun). America no longer controls
the direction of the world. Others are already doing that in every endeavor
except warfare. And we're learning that warfare doesn't solve all problems. 

Ron D'Eau Claire 

In a message dated 8/24/2006 2:12:46 PM Central Daylight Time,  
grovenet-request at rdrop.com writes:

The work  of soldiers is to win battles. 

The work of politicians is to make the  battles worthwhile. 

We must not connect the humanity and heroism of  our soldiers with the
failures of the politicians.  

Well said, Ron, as usual.
One question: exactly how, prior to our response to 9-11, did we  "oppress" 
the people who use terrorism to fight us? By supporting Israel's right  to 
exist, despite the ongoing hatred of Israel amongst Palestinians  and
thereby 
among other sympathetic Muslims?  Or by buying the oil  that has enriched so
many 
Arabs?
Surely the fact that we've propped up so many leaders who turned  out to be 
despotic and cruel is not a greater indictment of us than it is of the
leaders 
themselves...
I keep thinking of Ataturk, without whose progressive leadership  and 
moderate philosophy Turkey would also be in the enemy camp. And I recall
when Castro 
was a revolutionary hero to us as well as to most Cubans -- until he  chose 
communism.
What I pray for is the emergence of really strong, capable, wise  and 
peace-loving leaders throughout the world, as well as in our own country. To
survive 
as a species, we absolutely must divert our resources and talents from  
killing each other and grabbing power to developing new technology and
devising  
better strategies for protecting our planet and satisfying the needs of our

burgeoning population. As that old song from the Sixties asks, "When will we

ever learn?  When we will ever learn?"

Joy

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