Re: US involvement with the Taliban

There are gaps in our individual knowlege of relationships with other
countries, so be careful about assuming no support or close ties where you or
I are unaware of relationship history.  US relationships with some nations
have run for longer time periods & what we are exposed to is heavily
dependent on the languages we know & what shows up in our news media.  Except
for CNN, US media seems to have largely dropped having foreign correspondents
& when they do, they are in "hot spots" as opposed to educating us about our
friends.

I was struck by a post on another list by a resident of Ireland who feared
that WW III was imminent, after seeing the images of World Trade Center on
TV.  My employer does global business & we have e-mail from like Egypt
expressing condolences.

One thing that is amazing about the close ties today between US UK Canada is
how we have been at war with these guys in our past, but are bosum buddies
today.

In the war of 1812, the American army torched Toronto, released gangsters
from the jails & had them join with the American soldiers in looting private
homes, then when the Canadian army under British leadership conquered
Washington DC, they only torched government buildings.

In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, the Tories were brutally
discriminated against & so many of them fled to Ontario, that it distorted
Canadian politics ... for many generations, a large chunk of the Ontario
population were descendants of refugees from what happened in America.

History is written by the winners, and those texts often do not tell much
about the losers or parts of history where our side not victorious.  So
perhaps just as US history books are largely silent on the War of 1812
between the USA and Canada, so are the British history books largely silent
on the wars where colonies of USA & India gained independence from Britain.

So perhaps new generations are able to grow up in ignorance of the hatreds of
earlier generations.

To understand why foreign policy that throws money & resources at a problem
is sometimes not appreciated by the recipients, look at how the federal
government throws money at local problems.  To an extent there is the
taxpayer annoyance that the mix of benefits might not match what they want,
which would not be true for foreign recipients, but a shared annoyance is
strings that come attached with aid.

An annoyance for foreign countries that probably not happen with domestic, is
that at least during the Cold War, the aid was for large scale actions that
were extremely susceptible to dictators transferring a lot of the loot to
their Swiss Bank accounts instead of serving their people.  What is needed in
the aftermath of the Cold War is for foreign aid to focus more on raising the
middle class and rule of law in nations that are inexperienced in such things.

It is amazing to me that I am managing to do my 40 hours a week at work & get
new software completed, some of which I started on after Sep 11, and also
carry on several threads in several discussion groups, although some aspects
of my life still suffering & some threads left a bit open.

> From: rbaird@esourceconsulting.com (Richard B Baird)

>  This has always a huge problem - We've always tried to curry favor from
>  various regemes or rebels by throwing money and/or assistance at them and
> the recievers never appreciate it.
>
>  We helped the 1980 rebels in afghanistan (including bin Laden) to push out
the
>  USSR, and they turned on us.  Now we will probably help the "current
rebels"
>  in afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and they will eventually turn on us
>  too.
>
>  No one has ever appreciated U.S. help - except the UK and Canada.  They are
>  really the only countries in the world that have stood by us thick and
thin.
>
>  rick
>
>  -----midrange-nontech-admin@midrange.com wrote: -----
>  Subject: US involvement with the Taliban
>
>  I haven't had a chance to read more than 40% of Al Mac's posts and links,
> soplease forgive me if this is redundant:http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/
> n922/a09.html[1]_______________________________________________

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)

Sep 11 Links:
http://www.semitrue.com/thankyou/
Great discussion archives
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TYR
http://lists.midrange.com/cgi-bin/listinfo/midrange-nontech

Newspapers World Wide
http://www.wheretodoresearch.com/news/foreign_newspapers.htm
http://www.wheretodoresearch.com/news/US_Newspapers.htm

Intelligence Briefings by country
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/09/17/asia.support/
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/af.html
http://www.economist.com/countries
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/search/list/index.html
http://www.debka.com/
http://www.stratfor.com