Sir Bobby,
Quote:



freediver wrote on Jan 11^th, 2016 at 12:15pm:



If you put petrol on a fire it will get larger & explode.

Was that a good prediction?

forgiven

namaste

polite_gandalf wrote on Jan 9^th, 2016 at 7:32pm:


Calling US Foreign Policy mass murder is somewhat hysterical though you would admit?

polite_gandalf wrote on Jan 16^th, 2016 at 4:03pm:

Well, by that reckoning every country that has ever engaged in war has been having a foreign policy that includes mass murder. Islam's foreign policy has been mass murder for 1400 years.
The US is only 200-odd years old.

The scale of US foreign policy seems proportionate to the scale of the US. Everything is bigger today, but I'd rather have the US leading the way than any historical empire.

Do you think the Iraqis would have preferred being invaded by someone else? ISIS perhaps? Russia? Who else would invade a country then set up a democratic government?

freediver wrote on Jan 16^th, 2016 at 6:46pm:


Agree with that.
Look at the ideologies of the United States, then compare with say Russia or China.
Democracy or corrupt despotism?

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Jan 16^th, 2016 at 7:58pm:


Okay. In 1989, the US invaded Panama. It firebombed the poorest part of Panama City, taking out thousands of homes. The US estimated 1000 civilian deaths, most caused by the fires. It refused to let the Red Cross or the media in for three days after the invasion while it cleaned up the mess.

The invasion was quaintly named Operation Just Cause. Its purpose was to retake the Panama Canal. Ten years earlier, Jimmy Carter had signed a treaty handing the canal back to Panama. Just as the treaty came into effect, the Bush administration changed its mind, invading Panama instead.

This is just one small invasion that woke the world up to the realities of US imperialism, particularly in Latin America. The Panama Canal is the only shipping route of its kind in the Americas. It rakes in the dollars, its control determines the supply of many goods to two continents. The US had already helped to establish Panama as a state in 1903 on territory siezed from Colombia.

Prior to the invasion, the CIA had already assassinated its leader, General Omar Torijos, and replaced him with the CIA agent and official Panamanian liaison, Manuel Noriega. When Noriega was tried by the US for drug trafficking and money laundering, the court acknowledged that Noreiga had been paid to do so by the CIA. However, evidence involving state secrets was ruled inadmissable. Noriega, the CIA's former man in Central America, was given 40 years.

We can talk about the invasion of Tibet by China or Afghanistan by the USSR, but I'd love to see an comparable equivalent to the US invasion of Panama - an invasion of a peaceful, sovereign country for no other purpose than to control shipping routes in peacetime.

The only ideology of the invasion of Panama - "Operation Just Cause" - was business, and ultimately, control of shipping in the Americas between the Pacific and the Atlantic. One thousand poor Latinos burned to death. Thousands more injured. Sixty thousand made homeless.

This was not an act of war. By any measure, it would be seen as an act of state terrorism if it wasn't for good old Uncle calling the shots.

Thank God for democracy, eh?