Hugo Chavez vs. Charles Taylor

[The Duke]

Taylor is a worse person, Chavez is a greater threat to the US.

And Flyers, anyone who controls a sizeable portion of the world's oil and uses it to fund communist geurillas in Colombia in an attempt to overthrow that goverment is a threat, and anyone who threatens to cut off our oil for God knows what reason is a threat to America.  Now go back to striking out with ugly Democrat girls.

[The Duke]

anyone who threatens to cut off our oil for God knows what reason is a threat to America.

Venezuelan oil, or any other country's oil for that matter, doesn't inherently belong to the US.

We can play the semantics game if you want, but I'm not that interested.  I don't think there's any doubt what I mean when I said that.

Chavez could wreck this nation's economy by shutting off the oil.  That's an issue that can't be resolved by invoking the case for non-interventionism.

Taylor is a worse person, Chavez is a greater threat to the US.

And Flyers, anyone who controls a sizeable portion of the world's oil and uses it to fund communist geurillas in Colombia in an attempt to overthrow that goverment is a threat

So he gets his neighbors' despotic right-wing governments overthrown in favor of despotic left-wing governments.  Big deal.  We've spent the past 40 years attempting to overthrow despotic left-wing governments in favor of despotic right-wing governments.  Oh, except when we do it, it's ok, because we're America.  The Monroe Doctrine is right there in Pat Robertson's Bible, next to the passage about right-wing economics being pleasing to God.

This is not a threat to the US.

Columbia is a democracy.  It is insulting and ignorant to say that are a "despotic right-wing government".

, and anyone who threatens to cut off our oil for God knows what reason is a threat to America.

Maybe if we didn't keep pretending the Cold War was still on, and stopped mucking around on ideological anti-communist crusades (which are really just about protecting corporate interests in banana republics), Marxists like Chavez wouldn't be so belligerent towards us.

Chavez was belligerent towards the US long before any US action against him.  No one made him threaten to shut off the oil.  No one made him send money to FARC.  No one made him rig an election.  Any suggestion to the contrary is some fantasy that you've cooked up in your head to justify isolationism.

Taylor is a worse person, Chavez is a greater threat to the US.

And Flyers, anyone who controls a sizeable portion of the world's oil and uses it to fund communist geurillas in Colombia in an attempt to overthrow that goverment is a threat, and anyone who threatens to cut off our oil for God knows what reason is a threat to America.  Now go back to striking out with ugly Democrat girls.

Did you support Pinochet over Allende?

I was not alive in 1973 and any comments I could make have the advantage of hindsight.

I do think it was right to overthrow Allende, because his government was on the verge of collapse anyway.  Things would have been much more hectic had we simply stood aside and watched, doing nothing.

I do question whether Pinochet was the proper choice of a leader for Chile, and I certainly question the wisdom of staying with Pinochet as long as we did, especially given how beneficial it ended up being to go with democracy in Chile in the late 1980s when Reagan pulled the plug on Pinochet.

And you are just wrong on Colombia - Uribe is quite popular, was elected democratically, and is fulfilling the wishes of his people, who for the record despise FARC as a pack of criminals who only pay lip service to helping out the poor. The Colombian government is legitimate by any standard. The rebels aren't.

I am not defending Chavez's actions in Colombia.  Simply stating that this is not a threat to the U.S.  It might be a threat to U.S. interests, but even a giant bloc of Communist regimes in Latin America poses no threat to the U.S.  It would be an enormous human tragedy in the region, but no skin off of our nose.

And America's track record of interventions in Latin America leaves us in no position whatsoever to criticize Chavez. 

And why should we be in Latin America to begin with?  As we're no longer the sole democracy in the world, and it's now logistically feasible for other democracies across the world to deploy forces anywhere, the Monroe Docrine no longer has much meaning.  The U.S. should not be playing the role of lone protector of democracy in the Western Hemisphere.  That is now the job of the world community.  AND, even if it were our job to protect democracy, we've completely botched that job up in recent decades, so it's not surprising that the people of Colombia aren't clamoring for our assistence.

Hugo Chavez is not a threat to the U.S.  He is a threat to humanity, just as Charles Taylor is.

A communist takeover of all Latin America is "no skin off our nose"?  Do you have any idea the economic havoc to be wrought by such a thing?  You may or may no support interventions in Latin America, but please don't pretend there aren't consequences to communist takeovers in these countries.

As for our past interventions in Latin America, they've been successful far more often than they have been otherwise.  It's been a long time since we had an intervention that can't be rationally defended.  Panama '89, Haiti '94, Mexcio '94, Grenada '83.  Most of these things worked out very well.

By Mexico '94, I refer to the bailout of Mexico engineered by the Clinton Administration after the Peso crashed.

[The Duke]

Ford since you admitted Taylor is the worse person, then do you agree that Robertson is an idiot hypcortei?

I think Robertson is a bad guy, and we should not pay too much attention to what he says in any area.  But I don't know that he's a hypocrite.  He attacked Chavez for being a threat to America, and he is a greater threat to America than Taylor.  I didn't think he had attacked Chavez simply for being a bad person.

[The Duke]

Chavez could wreck this nation's economy by shutting off the oil.

That foreign madmen and dictators can pull the strings of our economy is nobody's fault but our own.

Columbia is a democracy.  It is insulting and ignorant to say that are a "despotic right-wing government".

I retract.  But it doesn't change the fact that our horrible track record of intervention makes it impossible to criticize anyone else's.  Furthermore, I don't see the people of Colombia begging for our help, and even furthermore, it should be the job of the world community and/or the Pan-American community, not the US alone, to provide that help.

I do question whether Pinochet was the proper choice of a leader for Chile

Why is it up to The United States of America alone to make the determination of who is and isn't the proper choice of a leader for Chile?  I agree that the people of Chile may have had their right to self-determination taken away, but any restoration should be accomplished by international, multilateral means, not by the US acting unilaterally!  What happens in unilateralism, invariably, is that the interests of the intervening government takes precedence over the interests of the people we are supposedly "helping."  Look at Iraq: whose interests are being served there?

I'm not arguing "isolationism."  I'm arguing multilateralism and internationalism.  You know, those ideals that used to be the centerpiece of Republican foreign policy?  If it is not a direct threat to US security, as in a foreign force being deployed against us, we should be acting through the community of nations, not alone.  Yes, it might have made sense in 1820, but not in 2005.

First of all, internationalism has been at the center of US foreign policy during only ONE Republican Presidency: George HW Bush.  All the otheres are all unilateralists of one stripe or another.

In my view, the interests of America and iraq and the region are being served by our presence there.  I'd like to know exactly what you're referring to when you imply otherwise.

If the US had not intervened in Chile, with the condition that country was in, it is nearly certain that the military would have overthrown Allende.  It happens all the time down there, and one major reason that we backed the Pinochet coup, and this is not talked about enough, is that we felt Allende would be overthrown regardless and we should at least help the process along and help make sure the least possible damage was done.  I choose not to feed foreigners to the wolves when it costs not one American life to help them.

[The Duke]

A communist takeover of all Latin America is "no skin off our nose"?  Do you have any idea the economic havoc to be wrought by such a thing?

If we stop acting like stubborn pricks and continue to do business with the communists, very little.  If we get all high-and-mighty about closing off trade with any country just because we don't like the way they run their economy, then yes, there would be plenty of havoc.

As for our past interventions in Latin America, they've been successful far more often than they have been otherwise.  It's been a long time since we had an intervention that can't be rationally defended.  Panama '89, Haiti '94, Mexcio '94, Grenada '83.  Most of these things worked out very well.

Noriega was a criminal arrest, not a US-engineered change of government.  Haiti is still a toilet, and just recently transitioned from Despotism to Anarchy (to use the CivIII terms), so I don't really see what good that accomplished.  Mexico was a bailout, not a US-engineered change of government.

At some popint you have to make a moral judgement that you're not going to do business with a certain caste of people.  If we don't make these judgements, then America's security and dignity are finished.  Would you do commerce with Zimbabwe?  North Korea?  Apartheid South Africa?  Nazi Germany?  Who don't we do business with?  Is anything too much oppression, too much dishonor?

There are bad people in this world, America needs to be adult enough to call them what they are and treat them accordingly.

Call it what you will with Noriega.  There are a dozen other guys who've violated international law and could be nabbed and taken to the hague.  If calling something a criminal arrest is all that's required to get you to approve of an intervetnion, we can just call all of these things criminal arrests, because in nearly all cases a law has been broken, and Chavez has broken international laws and has been involved in the drug trade.

I'd have to disagree that removing a military despot who overturned a free election wasn't worthwhile.  If Aristide turned out to be a bad guy, that's just how life turns out sometimes.  Aren't you the one who, only a few posts ago, said we shouldn't make such judgements about elected leaders?  Aristide was an elected leader, and as of 1994 he hadn't done anything uncouth.  Why do you selectively judge some thrid world leaders and not others?

Ever hear of dollar diplomacy?  Sometimes the pen is mightier than the sword.  American influence and intevrvention is often more than guns blazing, so calling a Mexico bailout an intervention isn't very unusual at all.

[The Duke]

At some popint you have to make a moral judgement that you're not going to do business with a certain caste of people.  If we don't make these judgements, then America's security and dignity are finished.  Would you do commerce with Zimbabwe?  North Korea?  Apartheid South Africa?  Nazi Germany?  Who don't we do business with?  Is anything too much oppression, too much dishonor?

But then why is doing business with communists so much worse than doing business with Pinochets or other such repressive regimes? If you want to argue the US should not be trading with any repressive regimes, fine, not a bad policy, but some consistency is needed.

And of course, the person who most opposed trade restrictions and sanctions on South Africa was Ronald Reagan. He had vetoed bills establishing so that had the support of over 80% of Congress.

I've said in this thread and elsewhere that I've never been sold o Pinochet.

As for S. Africa, there are perfectly good reasons to support keeping trade open with S. Africa in the 1980s, namely that sanctions would hurt the people we were trying to help.  Since only US comapnies would employ blacks it might not be a good idea to embargo the country.  I don't agree that we should have traded with S. Africa, but I'm not going to throw a hissy fit when someone disagrees with me on this issue.

In most of the cases you can bring up, there is either a very compelling reason to make an exemption or you'll find that I don't support open trade with these countries.