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USA Today broke a story yesterday with a headline, “U.S. seeks better ties by aiding militaries”. In the first paragraph, the newspaper writes,
Concern about leftist victories in Latin America has prompted President Bush to quietly grant a waiver that allows the United States to resume training militaries from 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries.
The rest of the story elaborates on how a waiver has been lifted (quietly by the administration) on 21 countries, half of which are in Latin America. The story of the US (especially since World War II, but there is evidence of tamporing as far back as Theodore Roosevelt) in Latin America is full of meddling. We have propped up governments and taken down governments that are not favorable to our policies and way of life.
For many conservatives, whenever these arguments are used, they tend to say, “that was the old CIA” or “that was then”. Well, apparently, this is now. The spread of democracy is not the aim of the US as most (especially conservatives) claim. It’s the spread of democracies that are pro-American. In fact, it is probably fair to go as far as to say that our leaders in Washington prefer a pro-US government (Iraq in the 1980s for example versus Allende’s chile in the 1970s) rather than a democratically elected government.
Would I prefer Chavez-like (Venezuela’s elected president) leaders? No, however, that’s not my choice nor my government’s choice. If the spread of democracy is part of our foreign policy arsenal (which it is), then we take the risk of allowing anti-US politicians to come to power.
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The election of Hamas was a another good example of how the current US government is not truly in favor of democracy. I’m no fan of Hamas, but if that’s who the people pick then we should play ball with them.
Mostly in agreement with both of you. Our foreign policy is driven by self-interest and not primarily by ideology. Pretty much like everybody else’s foreign policy. That’s why idealistic approaches don’t work very often.
I would be careful of calling Hamas a democratic leadership. If by democracy we only mean leadership placed in power by popular vote, then yes, Hamas is a democratic example. Democracy, however, means much more in my opinion. It includes protection of minority rights, rule of law over the rule of masses, etc. Also, I think it is difficult to call any party a purely democratic body (words I know no one here has used) if they maintain their own armed militia. Militias, in my opinion, do not protect their power via democratic means.
Otherwise, I agree with a lot of what y’all are saying. It reminds me of a quotation from the film Syriana in which Prince Nasir Al-Subaai laments about how he’s treated if he accepts a higher bid from a nation other than the US, which would be a reasonable capitalistic move. He says, “Except your President rings my father and says, I’ve got unemployment in Texas, Kansas, Washington state. One phone call later, we’re stealing out of our social programs in order to buy overpriced airplanes. We owed the Americans, but we’ve repaid that debt. I accepted a Chinese bid, the highest bid, and suddenly I’m a terrorist, I’m a godless communist.”