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From: orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: American troops in Turkey, S. Korea, Germany,.....
Message-ID: <511@whuts.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 27-Jan-86 12:42:17 EST
Article-I.D.: whuts.511
Posted: Mon Jan 27 12:42:17 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Feb-86 10:22:08 EST
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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I wrote:
> > 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.
> >  
 
To which Sam Cramer replied:
> 
> Mr. Sevener: as usual, your ignorance of current events is astounding.
> Turkey had an election a little while back.  While the election process
> wasn't as democratic as the U.S. or Western Europe, by comparision
> with the elections in Hungary (which you have expressed such enthusiam
> for) and the elections in Nicaragua, Turkey's election was quite democratic.
> 
 
The point was *not* whether Turkey currently has an official military
dictatorship or not.  Nicaragua had elections in 1984 which were
proclaimed by international observers to be relatively free and fair.
But that is irrelevant.  The question is whether countries have the
right to ask another nation's troops to be stationed there, regardless
of their official form of government.  Further, the question is whether
*some other country* has the right to either outright invade or conduct
a war by proxy against another country which invites foreign troops.
I do not believe that *any* nation has this right.  Yet this is exactly
the right which Weinberger and Reagan claim for the US in Nicaragua
and a view which the American media acquiesce in accepting.
 
>  From Sam Cramer 
> American mass media always struck me as bending over backwards to justify
> the Soviet side of things.  But even this isn't enough for you -- you
> want them to be completely supportive of all Soviet moves, no matter
> how evil.  The double standard you constantly refer to does exist --
> but you seem to want to replace it with a different double standard.

I expressly do *not* want the American media to ignore the Soviet's
war and terrorism in Afghanistan - if anything they have hardly covered
the war in Afghanistan enough.  On the other hand I also do *not*
want the American media parroting onesided justifications for 
violence committed against other countries when they do not apply
the same critieria to the US.
 
         tim sevener   whuxn!orb