Foreign Policy Experts , help me please !

[sushiman]

A Latin-American gentleman on a hometown discussion forum wrote the following . Not up on Latin-American foreign policy at all , so would appreciate any ammo you guys and gals can provide for a counter argument . Thanks in advance ! BTW , spelling mistakes are his !

" My friends,

We need to review the history of our country. The War started long before 9/11. We have a bad foreign policy and Cold war mentality. We have supported terrorist regimes in the name of market economy and our ideological diferences with the nationalistic goverments. We persecute dicent even in our own country!

The issues at hand today are nothing new. In the island of Vieques, marines raped men and woman, got drink, killed pigs, chickens and a young 19 years old kid in 1963! Almost Every country in Latin America have experience torture in the hands of CIA agents and US trained death squads. Cuba have been the victim of terrorist attacks, biological attacks by our country. We ignored the genocide and crimes by Somoza (Nicaragua), Marcos(Philipines), Suharto (Indonesia)Duvalier (Haiti)Trujillo (Dominican Republic)and the list goes on and on. The world hates us because of those foreign policies that Americans know little about. Not because of "our way of life".

We need to treat others the way we want to be treated. We need to respect the religion, values and culture of others. We must stop trying to "Americanize" the world!

An example of misguided foreign policy is the current attemps to overthrow and distabilize the democratically elected government of Venezuela and the removal (by the barrel of the gun) of Haitian elected president Aristide.

Read my friends, read, not just sit at home and watch Fox news! Expand your intelectual horizon behond our borders. "

[concentric circles]

...We need to treat others the way we want to be treated.

Yeah, right. This only applies when dealing with honest, civilized people. It only plays into the hands of the barbarians interested in nothing but power. We treated Stalin like a king. He showed his appreciation by slaughtering millions of his own people. He who strokes a tiger looks like food.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

Follow the keywords and you will find lots of threads. Cincinatus' wife has a complete file on Hugo Chavez.

[sushiman]

Thanks so much for your reply . I am ashamed of myself for NOT being more knowledgeable on the subject at hand . Have a great weekend .

[Rockingham]

The posted comment is a load of left-wing clap trap, more an expression of pathological anti-Americanism than a defensible opinion.

The US is regularly criticized for supporting or tolerating dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere. We do so because it often necessary for practical reasons and because there are seldom good alternatives. We are also criticized for opposing and sometimes overthrowing dictatorships. Those contradictory criticisms are evident in the remarks that you posted.

The underlying principle, of course, is anti-Americanism, generated and sustained by a toxic combination of Marxist ideology and the need of corrupt elites to find an excuse for their chronic misrule and the failures of their own societies. Most Latin American countries are miserable places for the populace at large, but comfortable for their kleptocratic rulers. They have cheap servants, wealth through official corruption and business and political cartels, with Los Angeles, Miami, and Disney available for recreation -- and safe exile, if necessary.

If the US is so bad and such a malign influence, then why don't other countries reject trade, tourism, and aid from the United States? Yet they all want our dollars in one form or another.

Cuba denounces the US for not allowing full trade with them; conversely, we are also denounced for "imperialism" because of the attractiveness of US trade, aid, and American culture and security guarantees.

Given the chance, a large portion of the Latin America populace would flee to the US. Many have already done so, legally and illegally, for the sake of freedom and better opportunities than their own countries could ever offer. Indeed, the money sent back by Latin America's immigrants to the US is essential to the economies of many Latin American countries.

Vieques? The locals are protesting again, but now it is because the US is closing its naval base there, costing the wretched little island its best jobs.

Like most of Latin America, Puerto Rico is poor, proud, corrupt, and dysfunctional. For the Left, the US is somehow to blame, of course -- but Puerto Ricans go to the US if they want to prosper. Privately, many of them tell American friends that their home island is a beautiful but hopeless mess.

Recently, a conservative government was elected in El Salvador through a campaign that featured TV ads in which an immigrant in the US warned his mother over the telephone that if a left-wing, anti-American government came to power, he might not be able to send more money home because he might be deported. Mamacita got the message and elected the pro-American conservative.

The new President of El Salvador is thus pro-American, pro-free market, and an open admirer of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Notably, El Salvador has a contingent of troops in Iraq who have won admiration for their courage and professionalism.

Latin America suffers due to its dysfunctional governments and cultures and the bad choices they make. US policies and actions are little to blame for their problems.

For example, at the beginning of the 20th Century, Argentina had one of the highest standards of living in the world -- but they devastated their country through socialist policies, class warfare, and Peronism and other dictatorial ideologies.

Similarly, Venezuela's ruling class enjoyed their oil wealth while it lasted, but cartels and endemic corruption undermined the economy and the legitimacy of the elite's claim to power. Castro ally Hugo Chavez is now in power and well on the way to establishing a left-wing dictatorship that will wreck the country and generate a flood of refugees to Miami. It is jokingly said that the teenage children of the elite are Chavez supporters in delight at the prospect of exile in Miami.

Brazil's goofball drunkard leftist president Lula is less sinister than Chavez, but he too is wrecking Brazil's economy and stoking destructive class warfare. He is also pushing for development of a nuclear weapons capability for the sake of Brazilian pride and power.

The US is not to blame for any of this, but we are an essential scapegoat in the political psychology of most of Latin America.

A Peruvian economist, Hernando De Soto, has pointed out that simple changes in Latin American domestic policies can lead to dramatic improvements for the poor: provide simple means by which businesses may be permitted and established; simplify and reform the tax system; and grant the poor clear title and rights to transfer land and dwellings. De Soto's ideas have been proven to work and are gaining hold, supported by US aid and foundation grants.

Private and public US aid funds billions of dollars per year in humanitarian and educational projects in Latin America: schools, orphanages, scholarships, clinics, water and sewer projects, and so on. No one does this to the extent that the US does -- and no one does it with such willingness to accept abuse from chronically ungrateful beneficiary governments.

The record of the US in Latin America is commendable: extensive aid; jobs and freedom for millions of immigrants; and support for policies and projects to improve the lot of Latin America's poor.

The true blots on our record are things that US conservatives oppose: massive US farm subsidies and trade protections that shut out foreign agricultural produce; International Monetary Fund policies that encourage high taxes; and World Bank projects riddled with corruption that feeds and empowers Latin America's predatory elites.

There is such a things as "invincible ignorance." In the fashion of Don Quixote, Latin America's leftists are uncomprehending of history and what is occurring in front of them. Unfortunately, unlike Cervantes's mythic knight, the Left's motives are perverse and their ideas toxic and destructive to those countries that have the misfortune to follow them.