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From: orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: American troops in Turkey, S. Korea, Germany,.....
Message-ID: <502@whuts.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-Jan-86 18:15:25 EST
Article-I.D.: whuts.502
Posted: Wed Jan 22 18:15:25 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jan-86 22:36:09 EST
References: Upon request <202@aero.ARPA> <483@whuts.UUCP> <1566@ihlpg.UUCP> <500@whuts.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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Do you suppose we would ever see these headlines?
 
"AMERICAN TROOPS IN TURKEY, SOVIETS PROTEST AMERICAN INTERVENTION"

Of course not.
Yet, in fact , American troops are stationed in more countries
throughout the world than any other nation's troops. American troops
are indeed stationed in Turkey, on the Soviet border, they are
stationed in Honduras, on the Nicaraguan border, and so forth.
Would anyone in the American media ever *consider* suggesting
that  the stationing of such troops at the bequest of other
nations was grounds for another country to invade such nations?
Wouldn't such a suggestion immediately be labelled ludicrous and
ridiculous? Of course.
 
And yet, just as the American media seem contented with a totally
one-sided view of "terrorism" which equates it with the killing
of *American* civilians by our "enemies", so they simply accept
and parrot the rationale that Soviet or Cuban troops invited to
any other country gives a justification for invasion or military
intervention.  This, once again, is sheer hypocrisy and blatantly
nationalistic bias.  If the Soviets published rumors of Soviet
action against Turkey because of American troops there, the
American media would be whipped into a frenzy.  Yet the same media
simply echos Eliot Abrams as he charges that Cuban troops in
Nicaragua are grounds for invasion.
 
This is not to say that I am voicing support for either American
troops in Honduras or Cuban troops in Nicaragua.  Indeed one of
the key provisions of the Contadora agreement called for the
withdrawal of *all* foreign troops from Central America.
But I cannot see how we can say that a repressive military 
dictatorship in Turkey has the right to ask American troops
to  be stationed there, while Nicaragua or any other country
has no right to ask other nation's troops to be stationed in
their own country. What is good for the goose is good for the
gander.
 
This is another way in which American media present a one-sided
"America can do anything we want" view of the world.
This view is both unquestioned and unchallenged in the mainstream
media.
It goes without saying that most Americans come to accept the
same unquestioned assumption coming at them from all sides of
the American media.
 
        tim sevener    whuxn!orb