ATG wrote:
Thats like saying that because we helped train drug enforcement agents in Mexico the cartels now have really well trained people working for them.
It's not our fault these people are murdering assholes.
Saddam Hussein was a murdering asshole, but the US government supported him until he got too ambitious for his own good and thought he could buck the program. Now apparently we're supposed to believe he just woke up evil one morning and started killing and torturing his own people instead of realizing the US government didn't give a rat's ass who he killed or tortured for over a decade as long as he stayed friendly to US government interests.
Manuel Noriega was a drug-dealing murderous asshole, but the US government supported him until he refused to go along with US actions against Nicaragua. That's when he apparently woke up evil too.
Francois and Jean Claude Duvalier were a family legacy of murdering assholes in Hati that lasted for
thirty years until their own people finally kicked them out. The US government supported them right up until the bitter end because they were more Cold War anti-communist allies, which apparently also gave them the right to torture and murder their own people.
Shah Mohammad Reza Palevi was a murdering asshole who ruled Iran after the CIA toppled the previous democratically-elected government. Membership in the sole political party he created was compulsory, his SAVAK secret police engaged in torture of Iranian citizens on a massive scale and his military used tanks and helicopter gunships against civilian protestors duing the "Black Friday" national protests in 1978. Eventually this and other abuses led to a full-scale revolt against the Iranian monarchy and the institution of the current Islamic theocracy a little over a year after "Black Friday". So, for the sake of anti-communism there, the US helped fundamentalist Islam gain a huge foothold in the Middle East by supporting a tyrant. Great job guys, thanks a bunch.
This is a
short list. I could go down the line of every two-bit thug and halfass dictator the US government has ever supported who later either turned or became a liability, but I'll be here all frickin' day. And before anyone goes there, yes I realize other governments do the same damn thing. That is not an acceptable reason, that's kid logic: "Billy did it TOO!". Point being, the US government has an established track record of screwing with and destabilizing other countries, supporting tyrants and generally fomenting anti-US sentiments throughout the world. And guess who gets to reap the rewards of that? George Bush? Bill Clinton? No.
We do. The regular folks who get pretty much zero say in all of this crap. They play power games and we get
dead. We get planes flown into buildings, we get abducted overseas, we get suspension of habeus corpus and warrantless surveilance. We get extraordinary rendition. And on top of all that, like a cherry on a shit sundae, we get some smiling prick a`la Ronald Reagan telling us bedtime stories about freedom and liberty while they train the soldiers of third-world dictators how to torture people or they send weapons to people who will eventually become our enemies. They do this and then they practically sign all of our names to it, but then somehow manage to act shocked and appalled when one of their pet psychotics acts true to their nature.
So, maybe it's not directly our fault, but as long as we allow it to continue because some politician can trowel a big layer of "we're the bestest nation in teh world becuz we stand for FREEDOM" over it, we are responsible.