Posted on 12/24/2005 12:39:03 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Nepal, sandwiched between the two rising economic and demographic behemoths of the ageChina and Indiacould be the first country since the fall of the Berlin Wall where communists emerge triumphant. If the Bush administration does not act decisively, that's what might happen. The administration should not take solace in the flurry of negotiations between the Maoist insurgents (who control most of the hinterlands) and the country's political parties in Kathmandu, which could undermine the last vestige of legitimate royal authority while further strengthening the insurgents.
By canceling Special Forces training missions to the besieged Royal Nepalese Army, and with the possibility of lethal cuts of American aid to the local military, the administration, along with Washington, has bought into popular abstractions about how to best implant democracy while ignoring the facts on the ground.
Nepal is fast becoming a replay of both Cambodia in the mid-1970s and El Salvador a decade later. In Cambodia, the monstrous Khmer Rouge were threatening the capital of Phnom Penh, home to a pathetically undemocratic yet legitimate regime to which a Democratic Congress had cut off aida result of the Watergate-inflicted weakness of the Nixon administration. In El Salvador, murderous right-wing forces that nevertheless represented a legitimate state were pitted against murderous left-wing ones that represented the geopolitical ambitions of the Soviet Union and Cuba. Though the media emphasized the atrocities of the right wing, the Reagan administration had little choice but to work with them. Eventually, the right wing in El Salvador, with the help of a small number of Army Special Forces trainers, won the day. And in the years that followed the Salvadoran state and military were reformed.
(Excerpt) Read more at samudaya.org ...
Thanks...will do.
Great! Now we'll be able to buy better Burberry knockoffs, innit.
Sorry, Posted to wrong thread.
The world is quite comfortable with holding Uncle Sam's coat and telling him to 'go at it' whenever anything needs fixing. Then complaining loudly.
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