Enemy of my Enemy?

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Thu Oct 24 09:17:30 PDT 2002


I really wish DP and others would stop the sniping at Carrol and Yoshie in context where it really isn't an issue. If anyone comes forward with a specific proposition that others find objectionable, it's fair game, but it's a tedious waste of bandwidth to have people always throwing that stuff around even where it is not.

That said, I think the answer to the question whether it is ever right to ally with or support brutal oppressive regimes who oppose our own enemies is: it depends. It was absolutely right to ally with the Stalinist USSR against Hitler, don't we all agree? The Soviet Union deserved everyone's critical support in WWII. WWII is an exception to a lot of rules, including the no-US-intervention rule, but consider support for Cuba today, despite the fact that Cuba, though not a vicious tyranny along the lines of Saddam Hussein's regime, is repressive and undemocratic. Although I disgree with the analysis, I cans ee how a reasomnable person might be mislead to think that Milosovic' Yugoslavia was more like the Cuba case than the Iraq case. (Though, N.B., even under Slobo, the former Yugoslavia was never as repressive and dictatorial as Cuba is.) So there's no bright line rule that we only support well-behaved democracies.

jks

--- Dennis Perrin <dperrin at comcast.net> wrote:
> > Let me pose a sharper question. Do you support
> allying with brutal
> > authoritarian regimes to smash imperialism? Is the
> enemy of my enemy
> always
> > my friend?
> >
> > -Chip Berlet
>
> On this board, with a good number of listers, the
> answer seems to be "yes."
> I mean, how can you not love Carrol's line about how
> the US "criminalized"
> the poor, poor Taliban?
>
> DP
>

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