Robert Wade

John K. Taber jktaber at tacni.net
Mon Jan 7 09:36:06 PST 2002


Paul Prescod <paul at prescod.net asks:

[snip]


> Really. Name three places where the US has militarily deposed a
> democracy in favor of a dictatorship in the last ten years.

Hmm. There are just enough qualifications in that question to assure no answers.

Maybe you mean 11 years ago we wuz bad. But we are now reformed, we see the light, and all prior years should be dismissed, except in history classes which need not concern us because there were reasons for it.

Then it must be a dictatorship, you stipulate. As I recall we have NEVER officially supported a dictatorship. True we overthrew the x-regime, and it resulted in a dictatorship, but we wuz helping the poor country in the democracy process. Alas, alas, the y-regime IS a dictatorship, but so many dollars in aid, and arms to boot, should help it on the road to democracy.

Then, the deposing must be military. Why this qualification? We haven't done an outright military overthrow since Granada (not counting today's events), but maybe Panama was later. Of course, Noriega might not have been a democrat, so you have disqualified this military intervention.

Nice wording. I can't even mention Venezuela today and what appears to be our pushing to get Hugo Chavez out of power. Oh, sure, I could be wrong. It ain't military, Chavez's opponents claim he is pursuing commie objectives so that ain't democracy. And maybe we ain't behind it.

Nope, I can't meet one of your stipulations.

Oh, well.

-- John K. Taber



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