
03-19-2003, 07:00 AM
it is true, The US has done those things, but a lot of the overthrowing of leaders and attacking people was a choice of who's bad and who's worse.
yes, we overthrew an elected official, but saddam was "elected" also. We have also installed dictators, but they were better than the alternative. This was evident in Iran. Carter threw out the dictator there and installed a Prime Minister, thinking it would be more democratic, but in fact, the new leader spurred Iran to capture all those hostages for something like 455 days.
Also, in many of these countries, terrible, terrible things were happening, like in Somalia where the people were starving. WE needed to get the clans and warlords out of there to help the people of Somalia. Similar things happened in many of the other conflicts you listed.
Another thing to blame is our containment policy regarding communism. We have had some major conflicts caused only by communism and trying to stop it's spread, maybe if we just let the communists live their own way, they would just fall apart on their own, without us having to intervene.
You have to remember that with politics of foreign policy, many choices are between who's bad and who's worse.
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