Posted on 07/02/2002 9:00:48 AM PDT by philosofy123
Any body with a gut feeling about the politics of Peru, and the liberal media in the US?
I just fail to understand how Peru shows up on our radar as a worthy news? Even after their President, Alberto Fujimori left to live in Japan, the leftists are still after him. Today's NPR provides us with a long drawn out report on how Fujimory's security chief was convicted in taking a bribe! Give me a break, there are people in Washington that are taking bribes every single day, including our ex-President, so how do we waste ink on Peru -- a virtually non existing little country in our news paper?
Our willingness to embrace the Saudis and Somozas of the world has seriously damaged our credibility.
The left thought the military action needed would bankrupt the country and lead to their ascent to power. The also doubted he would do it.
They were wrong.
The law and order they wished to force where kleptocracies that no American would tolerate.
Not Pinochet. He invited Freidman's "Chicago Boys" down to Santiago to introduce free market reforms. Chile has a private Social Security system as a result. Grape pickers who never thought they would be able to save a dime have ten or twenty thousand tucked away now. That has been a boon for the Chilean economy as the money has been invested in the economy and created jobs.
Allende was the thief. A traitor too. Thousands of secret police from Cuba, East Germany and Czechoslovakia were in the country on his invitation. Had Pinochet not acted when he did (with great reluctance by the way), Chile would have become another Cuba or Cambodia.
I'm not as up on Pinochet as I am Somoza.
In the latter case, I think we need to acknowledge our mistakes and treat others as we would wish to be treated.
Ending collaboration with the House of Saud would be a simple start.
The sad fact of the matter is America had no choice but to become allies with authoritarian regimes in order to defeat totalitarian ones during the Cold War. We did spell out what we were doing. Some, such as Pinochet, were good authoritarians who reformed their countries and stepped aside for free elections. Others were not.
All the mideast regimes are a hold over from the Cold War. We wanted to reform them but the time was never right. The Soviets were always threatening and, in many cases, we knew encouraging elections would lead to even worse leaders gaining power (think Arafat is not going to be elected in a landslide this winter if they hold elections?).
Now we don't want to dare disrupt our oil supplies. We should have a crash program to open up all domestic sources of energy but Democrats will not support that. Lieberman threatened to filibuster opening up a measly 2,000 acres in a part of Alaska not one American in 1,000 has ever seen or cares to see. Makes no sense to me. The less money we send to the Saudis, the better.
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