Just watching a documentary on the Military Channel about the defeat of Argentina at the hands of the British during the Falkland Islands war.
And what I like about it is not so much how the Brits roundly defeated the Argentinians, but how today Argentina and their nepotist president, Cristina Kirchner make the occasional threat or claim to the Falklands despite the Falkland Islanders insisting they're British.
You see, a democracy is where the people get to decide whether...never mind. Something tells me that Argentinian nationalists will ignore the wishes of the people on the island and it'll just be easier to beat the Argentinians again if they're so stupid as to try to take over the islands again.
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South American politics are a hellhole. I'm in no rush to see us get involved; I'd just as soon watch them collapse, and they sure as hell don't want our help in picking new rulers for them.
Granted, our track record of involvement in South America isn't exactly stellar. A lot of people still hate us for crap we did during the cold war.
If the Argentines were to invade the Falklands today, the British would let them keep it. They have neither the will nor the means today to mount a defense like the one Thatcher ordered.
Granted, our track record of involvement in South America isn't exactly stellar. A lot of people still hate us for crap we did during the cold war.
What wasn't stellar? US corporations providing them the capital and expertise to help them exploit the full potential of their resources and actually expect to be paid for doing so?
Providing them with massive amounts of loans that they unilaterally defaulted on?
Killing Soviet, Cuban, and Nicaraguan sponsored terrorists and dictators?
The missing piece of your puzzle is the Communist "crap" during the Cold War that prompted and necessitated our involvement.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, we learned from opened KGB files that they secretly funded Salvador Allende's campaign and paid him over $400,000 in bribes.
Correa, Morales, and Chavez didn't come to power because, all of a sudden, the people decided they wanted socialist dictatorships again. They were heavily funded by external influences, including Russia, Cuba, and international narco-terrorist groups. They also exploited hateful nationalism and appeals to the vanity and ignorance of so-called 'indigenous' populations.
I make no excuses nor apologies for US intervention in Latin America. Letting them collapse upon themselves is a delightful wish, but to do nothing was to openly invite communism and Soviet warships and missiles into our hemisphere. Based in those nations, they would have launched communist revolutions into all of Latin America.
By fighting them in a dirty, covert war, what we got instead was a third wave of democracy and a massive wave of privatizations throughout the 80s and 90s which have not only benefitted the people of Latin America, but the rest of the world as well. Chile's pension privatization was the model for at least 15 other nations as it should be for ours.
I don't care how many commies Pinochet slaughtered. It is no crime to kill a communist.
Assuming that paramilitary death squads get it wrong about as often as civilian police do (which is pure freaking fantasy, but whatever) then they killed a whole hell of a lot of people who weren't communists.
It gets even worse without some soft of process for actually verifying if the grounds upon which the people you're "disappearing" are even the ones you're after. "Yeah, my neighbor Jose, who I hate because he was eyeballing my daughter, is totally a communist. You should kill him for me. I mean, "kill him for DEMOCRACY." Yeah."
Ryan, I'm not excusing murder by paramilitaries and neither is the US government. We did not arm and train them for that purpose.
I worked with soldiers at School of the Americas. They were, as far as I could observe, brave and honorable men who only wanted to protect their families.
Don't take it from me. Take it from Bill:
WILLIAMS:
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their
children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.
KING HENRY V:
So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him: or if a servant, under his master's command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the
business of the master the author of the servant's damnation: but this is not so: the king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death, when they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers: some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God: war is his beadle, war is vengeance; so that here men are punished for before-breach of the king's laws in now the king's quarrel: where they feared the death, they have borne life away; and where they would be safe, they perish: then if they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience: and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained: and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive that day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.
WILLIAMS:
'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon his own head, the king is not to answer it.
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