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From: faustus@ucbvax.ARPA (Wayne Christopher)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Context of the Debate
Message-ID: <1866@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 12-Sep-84 22:36:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.1866
Posted: Wed Sep 12 22:36:32 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Sep-84 21:11:15 EDT
References: <1052@ihuxm.UUCP>
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 42

> Today's newspaper reports rebellion in the streets of South
> Africa by a very oppressed people against a racist regime.
> It reports bloddy supression of strikers in Chile by a
> fascist government incapable of keeping the feeble economy
> alive. It reports new unity in the opposition to Phillipines
> Dictator Marcos.   All three repressive regimes are part of
> the "free" world and are friendly to the US Government.
> All three regimes are facing the just wrath of their
> population.  
> 
> Yet the debate on the net is not over the nature of these
> rebellions. It is not even over CIA  efforts to keep these
> doomed regimes alive.  The debate ASSUMES that the KGB is 
> behind it all and the only question is how much to unleash
> the CIA to counter the KGB!!!!.

Undoubtedly the KGB is behind a lot of it, but that's not the
point. The USSR supports any and all countries which are willing
to cooperate with it in foreign policy, which includes
undermining the governments of other countries, whether they are
democratic and reasonable or fascist. They don't care about
human rights. We do care about human rights, and we should do
all we can to change the governments under our influence that
violate human rights. But this doesn't mean abandoning them
entirely to revolutionary (whether KGB-sponsored or not) forces,
if the new government wouldn't support us. We need all the help 
we can get from whomever can give it to us to fight the Soviet
policy of "exporting revolution" (setting up puppet
Marxist-Leninist governments), and we can't afford to be too
picky. 

Besides, this sort of sympathy for revolutionary forces tends to
lead to supporting acts like the overthrow of the Shah of
Iran, who, despite the claims of Khomeni, was a very good ruler,
and whose only mistake was limiting the power of the Islamic
church in Iran. Because of people who thought, "They're
complaining, so their government must be bad", a bunch of religous 
fanatics were allowed to come into power and reverse years of
social and political advances under the Shah.

	Wayne