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From: tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: In the Name of God
Message-ID: <1719@ihlpg.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Mar-86 19:43:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ihlpg.1719
Posted: Wed Mar 19 19:43:00 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 20-Mar-86 18:12:47 EST
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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> [Me]
> >Unfortunately, if the (relatively) bad guys interfere in the internal
> >affairs of other countries, and the (relatively) good guys do not, the
> >(relatively) bad guys will end up calling the shots.  
---------
> [Richard Carnes]
> Highly debatable, Bill.  The way you describe it, it sounds as if
> whoever intervenes in Third World Country X the most, wins, as if the
> people in those countries are just pawns to be manipulated by the
> White Hats and the Black Hats.  But I think it is no accident that
> communist influence is strongest today where the US has attempted to
> intervene to "stop communism" (as in Vietnam and Cuba); and where the
> US has had the wisdom to allow self-determination by the people,
> there communist influence has declined, as in the Philippines and, I
> believe, Nigeria during and after the civil war, Angola after the
> Clark Amendment, and Zimbabwe, which may be left-leaning but is no
> surrogate of Moscow.  Some may quibble about some of these countries,
> but I think the general point holds.  Indeed, some countries, like
> Egypt and Ghana, have gotten fed up with the Russkies and kicked them
> out without any help from us.
--------
Richard, you misinterpret what I said.  I was simply saying that if
the U. S. NEVER intervenes in other countries, and the Soviets are free
to do so, Soviet power will expand. I was responding to Tom Keller, who
opposed all such interventions.  There are, of course, counter-productive
interventions.  You leave out the
successful (from the point of view of the intervener) interventions,
i.e, the U. S. in South Korea and the Phillipines (the 1950's insurgency),
the British in Malaya and Oman, and of course the Soviet and/or Cuban
interventions in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Ethiopia, and Angola. 
You use selected (although valid, at least in part) examples to make
a gross generalization, while leaving out examples supporting the other side.
Some interventions work, some backfire. 
-- 
Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL  ihnp4!ihlpg!tan