LETTER: America not the enemy
Editor,
I love all the liberal extremists coming out to give us all the little history lessons they have prepared.
A previous letter told us all about our support of repressive regimes in Iraq, Iran, Honduras and so on. Unfortunately, they don’t present these “lessons” in the correct context.
They would have you believe that the United States supported these regimes just for the hell of it, I guess.
Support was given to these regimes in the ’70s and ’80s, but we also need to remember what the MAJOR conflict of the ’70s and ’80s was: the Cold War, then in its 40th year of existence, the most costly war in world history.
To prevent the spread of communism in places like the Middle East, which contains roughly 80 percent of the world’s oil reserves, and Central America, which is pretty much right in our own backyard, the United States was sometimes forced to support regimes that would never have been approved of in times of peace.
We have to remember that the fall of the Shah in Iran produced an anti-western government that’s official government slogan was “Death to America” (look it up). They are responsible for taking over the American embassy and holding 52 American hostages for 444 days!
That affected American views about Iran’s capabilities. It was big news at the time. Iran was a much bigger threat than the then, relatively unknown, Saddam Hussein.
It was a no-brainer to support Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. The war needed to end, because stability in the Middle East has a lot to do with stability in the world as a whole.
It should also be mentioned that the United States did not support Iraq while it was gassing the Kurds. Rather it established no-fly zones, sent in special forces personnel to rebuild villages, treat the rampant epidemics and give them millions of dollars in aid.
These are all things we did out of generosity. We did not have to get involved. Read about it, or even ask a Kurd who lived through it. When people feel the need to share with us their “America is the supreme evil” history lessons, they might also want to include the nations we have given freedom to, including France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Panama, Philippines, Grenada, and indirectly as a result of winning the Cold War, Russia, and all of Eastern Europe.
And that’s all in a 100-year period! So maybe some people would like the Cold War to still go on with most of the world’s oil supply being held by communists who enable them to keep up with Reagan’s Cold War economy instead of collapsing.
Or maybe they would rather have ballistic missiles pointed at us from a communist bloc-controlled Central America. Maybe they’re just making the point that since America has been responsible for some of the world’s problems, we should not be allowed to go back into Iraq and other places and fix them.
Or maybe we should follow their line of thinking and destroy our own country so that everyone will be “equal” and “fair” instead of helping bring other countries up to our level of economic and social freedom. Remember Vietnam, North Korea, and Iran are not the countries in this world with an immigration problem.
Matt Gause