When will we learn?

[Barry]

I'm not a political or historical scholar by any means but in my own simplistic way I keep seeing a pattern of the US helping the lesser of many evils only to have them come back and bite us in the ass. Something I think even Rick Monroe wouldn't enjoy. This has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats or whatever. The pattern transcends which party is in "power".

 

We armed Iraq in their war with the then current BIG evil, Iran. Now they are the BIG evil (rightfully so) since they have weapons and technology we gave them and are threatening us and others with it. Go figure.

 

I won't go into Iran/Contra or the many things we have done in South America.

 

Then we armed the Taliban in their fight against Russia. Follow that with "befriending" Pakistan in order to overthrow the Taliban. Now our new buddy...Nuclear Pakistan is helping North Korea.

 

I grew up with the cold war, the Cuban missle crisis, Vietnam and fallout shelters. Somehow those times seem simpler to me now.

 

:-( Barry

 

Follow the link........

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/24/international/asia/24KORE.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5062&en=ab75b82c5f75e2aa&ex=1038718800&partner=GOOGLE

[BuckyXTC]

Philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it."

 

And Pogo said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

 

As a nation, we never seem to learn from our prior mistakes, hence we keep making the same mistakes again and again.

 

Watched a news segment earlier this evening that addressed the issue of inequalilty in education.........focusing on urban and suburban school funding and the gross disparity between the meager $7,000 spent annually per student in urban Philly schools as compared to double that amount in the wealthy suburbs. The state legislators just throw up their hands and say they don't know the answer to the problem. They're lying, pure and simple. The answer is to take all the taxes collected for schools from across the state and redistribute them equally. Of course, that's not politically popular with Joe Lawyer and Suzy SoccerMom who live in the suburbs, hence the system never gets changed.

 

As for the international messes we're always involved with, a Wall Street Journal writer by the name of Jonathan Kwitny wrote a book back in the eighties called "Endless Enemies", the premise of which is that in our ideological fervor (then against communism) we put corrupt leaders into power for our perceived interests, only to have them come back and bite us on the ass. It was a good book, but the powers that be paid it no mind.

 

More bleak times ahead. Stay tuned.:-(