South Osetia under attack

[Kermit de frog]

The citizens'.
200 years ago the United States fought for independence from the most powerful country in the world, and won, because we didn't like the way they taxed us.
The most we should have done in that situation was helped out a resistance movement with equipment and maybe training. It is not America's job to play world police.

Then who's job is it?  The U.N.?  What if they are not doing their job?

[Motherland]

IMO it's no one's job. Countries should deal with their internal affairs on their own.

[Elfie]

The citizens'.
200 years ago the United States fought for independence from the most powerful country in the world, and won, because we didn't like the way they taxed us.
The most we should have done in that situation was helped out a resistance movement with equipment and maybe training. It is not America's job to play world police.

You are forgetting that the French not only supplied weapons and ammunition but also an entire fleet for a blockade. The blockade ensured that Cornwallis and his army could not escape. Without outside help the American Revolution would not have ended when it did.

[Ack-Ack]

The most we should have done in that situation was helped out a resistance movement with equipment and maybe training. It is not America's job to play world police.

We have a habit to give lip service to spreading democracy but when it's challenged, we usually just sit back and watch.  Just look at we did with Hungary in the 1950s when they tried to throw out the Soviets and were ultimately crushed.


ack-ack

[Elfie]

We have a habit to give lip service to spreading democracy but when it's challenged, we usually just sit back and watch.  Just look at we did with Hungary in the 1950s when they tried to throw out the Soviets and were ultimately crushed.


ack-ack

The Hungarians did throw out the Soviet garrison for a few days. Then new Soviet units arrived from the east and crushed the Hungarian uprising.

[angelsandair]

It is not America's job to play world police.

But we're blood thirsty Nazis if we dont, and we're blood thirsty Nazis if we do. One person gets killed because of collateral damage, and we're awful. If we dont invade and 1000 people are killed, we're awful. 

[FrodeMk3]

I have not seen any information that indicates we helped put Saddam in power.

Links Please!

Revolutionary sentiment was characteristic of the era in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. In Iraq progressives and socialists assailed traditional political elites (colonial era bureaucrats and landowners, wealthy merchants and tribal chiefs, monarchists).[12] Moreover, the pan-Arab nationalism of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt would profoundly influence young Ba'athists like Saddam. The rise of Nasser foreshadowed a wave of revolutions throughout the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s, which would see the collapse of the monarchies of Iraq, Egypt, and Libya. Nasser inspired nationalists throughout the Middle East for standing up to the British and the French during the Suez Crisis of 1956, and for striving to modernize Egypt and unite the Arab world politically. (Humphreys, 68)

In 1958, a year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq. The Ba'athists opposed the new government, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted United States-backed plot to assassinate Qassim.[13]


Rise to power
 
Saddam Hussein after the successful 1963 Ba'ath party coup
Saddam Hussein in Cairo after fleeing there following the failed assassination attempt against QassimArmy officers with ties to the Ba'ath Party overthrew Qassim in a coup in 1963. Ba'athist leaders were appointed to the cabinet and Abdul Salam Arif became president. Arif dismissed and arrested the Ba'athist leaders later that year. Saddam returned to Iraq, but was imprisoned in 1964. Just prior to his imprisonment and until 1968, Saddam held the position of Ba'ath party secretary.[14] He escaped prison in 1967 and quickly became a leading member of the party. In 1968, Saddam participated in a bloodless coup led by Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr that overthrew Abdul Rahman Arif. Al-Bakr was named president and Saddam was named his deputy, and deputy chairman of the Baathist Revolutionary Command Council. According to biographers, Saddam never forgot the tensions within the first Ba'athist government, which formed the basis for his measures to promote Ba'ath party unity as well as his resolve to maintain power and programs to ensure social stability.

Various U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials have asserted that Saddam was strongly linked with the CIA, and that U.S. intelligence, under President John F. Kennedy, helped Saddam's party seize power for the first time in 1963. [15] [16]

Saddam Hussein in the past was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism in the 1960s and 1970s.[16] His first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with ousting then Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim.[17]

Although Saddam was al-Bakr's deputy, he was a strong behind-the-scenes party politician. Al-Bakr was the older and more prestigious of the two, but by 1969 Saddam Hussein clearly had become the moving force behind the party.

Now, due to it's nature of having open-editing, that clip from Wikipedia should most likely be taken with a grain of salt. You don't know how biased someone might be whenever they make Wiki-entries. However, if you want to take a look at the whole page, here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein

[FrodeMk3]

You're kidding right? If we hadn't been tugging on the reins Israel would already have decimated Iran's dreams of nuclear grandeur.

I don't know. I'm trying to figure out why instead of keeping the element of suprise and just doing it, they turned around and just made everything public, turning it into a threat. There might be some other factors' at work there, which we might not be priivy to know.

[Elfie]

Interesting Frode.

[AKIron]

I don't know. I'm trying to figure out why instead of keeping the element of suprise and just doing it, they turned around and just made everything public, turning it into a threat. There might be some other factors' at work there, which we might not be priivy to know.

I'm thinking it's called fair warning. Of course I'm sure Israel would rather not go to war with Iran but they sure don't want to stand idly by and let a country that has threatened to wipe them off the map several times develop the real ability to make good on said threat.

[Ack-Ack]

The Hungarians did throw out the Soviet garrison for a few days. Then new Soviet units arrived from the east and crushed the Hungarian uprising.

My comment was referencing this episode during the Hungarian revolt.

Yet Washington's role in the Hungarian revolution soon became mired in controversy. One of the most successful weapons in the East-West battle for the hearts and minds of Eastern Europe was the CIA-administered Radio Free Europe. But in the wake of the uprising, RFE's broadcasts into Hungary sometimes took on a much more aggressive tone, encouraging the rebels to believe that Western support was imminent, and even giving tactical advice on how to fight the Soviets. The hopes that were raised, then dashed, by these broadcasts cast an even darker shadow over the Hungarian tragedy that leaves many Hungarians embittered to this day.

ack-ack

[Elfie]

Yet Washington's role in the Hungarian revolution soon became mired in controversy. One of the most successful weapons in the East-West battle for the hearts and minds of Eastern Europe was the CIA-administered Radio Free Europe. But in the wake of the uprising, RFE's broadcasts into Hungary sometimes took on a much more aggressive tone, encouraging the rebels to believe that Western support was imminent, and even giving tactical advice on how to fight the Soviets. The hopes that were raised, then dashed, by these broadcasts cast an even darker shadow over the Hungarian tragedy that leaves many Hungarians embittered to this day.

I know that happened as well. Sad that the Hungarian revolution held out so long simply because they thought American troops were on the way to help when in fact, there was no help coming. Lives were lost that didn't need to be lost.

[Boroda]

The Hungarians did throw out the Soviet garrison for a few days. Then new Soviet units arrived from the east and crushed the Hungarian uprising.

There was a full-scale civil war in Hungary, and USSR sent troops against insurgents who started hanging Soviet people on lamp posts.

If Mexico will start doing so to US citizens there (on vacation or working) - what should be the US reactions

[Elfie]

There was a full-scale civil war in Hungary, and USSR sent troops against insurgents who started hanging Soviet people on lamp posts.

The *Soviets* who were hung in Hungary were as I recall, Hungarians who had been colaborating with the Soviets. These people were viewed as traitors to Hungary and as such were executed.

The Soviets also used MiG's to bomb the Hungarian forces, tanks fired at buildings, blowing them apart, just because they saw movement in the building. The Soviets had to bring in troops from the east because the garrison troops had gotten to know the Hungarians and weren't ruthless enough.

Don't start spewing your Soviet propaganda on this one Boroda. I've read many of the eyewitness accounts from participants who escaped during the aftermath. What the Soviets did in Budapest was reprehensible.

[Dowding]

I've been to Budapest and the unassuming block used by the Soviets to kill and torture. Everyone should see those cells. They have part of the museum dedicated to the rising. It's very moving. The West betrayed them.

Toad - I was replying to the post before yours. Regardless of the state of readiness of the Russian troops, I think Russia had legitimate grounds to push Georgian forcces out. They then over stepped the line of credulity and are now currentlytaking the piss, regardless of what comrade boroda believes.