From: HADCRJAM@admin.uh.edu (MILLER, JIMMY A.)
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.somalia
Subject: Re: somalia?!?  This has almost nothing to with Somalia!
Date: 12 Jan 1993 19:25:32 GMT
Organization: University of Houston Administrative Computing
Distribution: world
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In <1993Jan12.181206.28470@lynx.dac.northeastern.edu> awells@lynx.dac.northeastern.edu writes:

> Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit
> 
> Civilization and a few aircraft carriers
> 
> By Deirdre Griswold

  I found bits of this so humorous I had to comment.  I personally feel
the author made a valid point here and there, but the balance of this tirade
falls via the author's failure to realize a fundamental point about the
world we live in.  I shall highlight a passage or three to demonstrate:

> It doesn't take a masters degree in world affairs to know that
> Lewis and the others are saying that the United States and
> Western Europe are the great civilizing influences in the world
> today, and therefore must take on the burden of policing the
> globe.

  If one describes "civilized" as being mostly well-fed, generally well-edu-
cated, and technologically advanced, then, yes they are.

> Look at Somalia. It would be ludicrous if it weren't so ominous.
> To disarm at the most a few thousand "technicals" in a small and
> impoverished land, the U.S. and its NATO allies are spending
> hundreds of millions of dollars on aircraft carriers,
> communications centers, tank companies, swarms of helicopters,
> and who knows what-all psywar experts and dirty tricksters.

  Thats tens of thousands of armed clansmen.  Also road repair, airstrip
maintenance, fixing up the seaport...And by all means, lets make any fighting
as "even" as possible!


> Sure, it gives them a quick rush, an exhilarating high at being
> the invincibles, the world's supercops. They've done it
> before--the Pentagon in Grenada, then Panama, then Iraq, Britain
> in the Malvinas, France in Chad.

  The Falklands were invaded in high-handed fashion by the generals in 
Argentina.  The inhabitants of the islands have consistently stated they wish
to remain British subjects.  There was no long-smouldering rebellion--there
was an out-and-out invasion by another country.  Whatever happened to self-
determination?  The French actions in Chad were *against* Libyan incursions 
into chad, and had the support of the people of Chad.  Please pay attention
to the small details.

> It is no accident that the United States, which has built the
> biggest military juggernaut in history, also now lags miserably
> in so many indices of social progress. And this in a country that
> spans a whole continent and enjoys the most bounteous natural
> resources.

  Quite so.  Meanwhile, much of the rest of the world was content to remain
behind the US protective umbrella and build cars.

> The most wretched manifestation of the utter bankruptcy of the
> capitalism system is the permanent army of unemployed that fills
> the crevices of every big city and sinks deeper and deeper into
> homelessness, disease and despair.

  Hello.  The "bankrupt" capitalist system?  Tell it to the Japanese.  Tell it
the Chinese, who are Communist in name only.  Tell it to all the failed
communist experiments of the world.  Tell it ot the Swedes, who are learning
that strong socialism is beginning to kill thier productivity.

  Communism is a failure.  It does not work.  It cannot work, becuase it
depends on everybody to work.  When one slacks, others will start to slack, and
soon the whole damn system crumbles.  Capitalism *works* by harnessing man's
natural avarice and making it work for all concerned.  It's not perfect by
any means, but its the best thing going.

> Oh yes, the world needs civilizing alright. The kind of
> civilizing that the Chinese workers and peasants accomplished by
> the millions when they kicked out the bloodsucking landlords and
> the imperialists.

  Don't forget the Cultural Revolution, and the millions who died there.
And the descendants of those peasants, who ordered the massacre in Tianemen.
And the repression, and the censorship.

  And don't forget, the peasants have decided that market economies work better
than socialism.

> The civilizing that Cuba's rebel army achieved
> when it overpowered the corrupt gangsters of Batista,
> nationalized U.S. companies that had been sucking out their
> wealth, ended peonage for agricultural workers, wiped out
> prostitution, and brought literacy and health care to the entire
> population.

  And ushered in an era of repression and dictatorship as bad as the one it
replaced, which saw Cuban military "advisors" spending long stretches in
African nations, political prisoners, sponsored terrorism in central america
and thousands of refugees.

> Can the workers in the imperialist countries also shake off the
> ideological hold of the ruling class and struggle in their own
> interests? Why not?

  Why should they?  Most of them are doing okay.

> In fact, the constantly deteriorating social conditions are
> paving the way for it. It will be the end of "Western
> civilization as we have known it." But it will be the beginning
> of true human civilization.

  If your examples are what you mean by true human civilization, then I'm
backing the barbarians.  Enough, I think everyone gets the picture now.


  The fact that this was put on the net by Andrew Wells explains many things
I've often wondered about him.  Now I know.  Funny how almost the only
true socialists left are the ones who don't live in socialist nations.  Ever
wonder about that?


semper fi,

Jammer Jim Miller 
Texas A&M University '89 and '91
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