So USG demands to be THE champion of liberty and justice. LOL
The citizens of Earth are laughing to your hypocrisy, or anyway all
who are not too scared under your carpet and stoneage bombings.
Laughing between tears.
I suppose that it won't help to say pleeeease to stop bullying the
world and come to your senses.
You know that the Statue of Liberty was a gift of France to the people
of the United States?
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http://informationclearinghouse.info/article13046.htm
Appealing to the United States is not very appealing
By William Blum
05/15/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- With his recent letter to
President Bush, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become part
of a long tradition of Third-World leaders who, under imminent military
or political threat from the United States, communicated with
Washington officials in the hope of removing that threat. Let us hope
that Ahmadinejad's effort doesn't result in the equally traditional
outright US rejection.
Under the apparently hopeful belief that it was all a misunderstanding,
that the United States was not really intent upon crushing them and
their movements for social change, the Guatemalan foreign minister in
1954, President Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana in 1961, and Maurice
Bishop, leader of Grenada, in 1983 all made their appeals to be left in
peace, Jagan doing so at the White House in a talk with President John
F. Kennedy.(1) All were crushed anyhow. In 1961, Che Guevara offered a
Kennedy aide several important Cuban concessions if Washington would
call off the dogs of war. To no avail.(2)
In 2002, before the coup in Venezuela that ousted Hugo Chavez, some of
the plotters went to Washington to get a green light from the Bush
administration. Chavez learned of this visit and was so distressed by
it that he sent officials from his government to plead his own case in
Washington. The success of this endeavor can be judged by the fact that
the coup took place soon thereafter.(3)
Shortly before the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Iraqi officials,
including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, informed
Washington, through a Lebanese-American businessman, that they wanted
the United States to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass
destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts and
"2000 FBI agents" to conduct a search. The Iraqis also offered to hand
over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing
in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. The Iraqis, moreover, pledged to
hold UN-supervised free elections; surely free elections is something
the United States believes in, the Iraqis reasoned, and will be moved
by. They also offered full support for any US plan in the Arab-Israeli
peace process. "If this is about oil," said the intelligence official,
"we will talk about US oil concessions." These proposals were portrayed
by the Iraqi officials as having the approval of President Saddam
Hussein.(NYT 11-6-03) The United States completely ignored these
overtures.
The above incidents reflect Third World leaders apparent belief that
the United States was open to negotiation, to discussion, to being
reasonable. Undoubtedly, fear and desperation played a major role in
producing this mental state, but also perhaps the mystique of America,
which has captured the world's heart and imagination for two centuries.
In 1945 and 1946, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh wrote at least eight
letters to US President Harry Truman and the State Department asking
for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French.
He wrote that world peace was being endangered by French efforts to
reconquer Indochina and he requested that "the four powers" (US, Soviet
Union, China, and Great Britain) intervene in order to mediate a fair
settlement and bring the Indochinese issue before the United
Nations.(4) This was a remarkable repeat of history. In 1919, at the
Versailles Peace Conference following the First World War, Ho Chi Minh
had appealed to US Secretary of State Robert Lansing (uncle of Allen
Dulles and John Foster Dulles, whom Lansing appointed to the US
delegation) for America's help in achieving basic civil liberties and
an improvement in the living conditions for the colonial subjects of
French Indochina. His plea was ignored.(5)
His pleas following the Second World War were likewise ignored, with
consequences for Vietnam, the rest of Indochina, and the United States
we all know only too well. Ho Chi Minh's pleas were ignored because he
was, after all, some sort of communist; yet he and his Vietminh
followers had in fact been long-time admirers of the United States. Ho
trusted the United States more than he did the Soviet Union and
reportedly had a picture of George Washington and a copy of the
American Declaration of Independence on his desk. According to a former
American intelligence officer, Ho sought his advice on framing the
Vietminh's own declaration of independence. The actual declaration of
1945 begins: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their
creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness."(6)
Now comes the president of Iran with a lengthy personal letter to
President Bush. It has the same purpose as the communications mentioned
above: to dissuade the American pit bull from attacking and destroying,
from adding to the level of suffering in this sad old world. But if the
White House has already decided upon an attack, Ahmadinejad's letter
will have no effect. Was there anything Czechoslovakia could have done
to prevent a Nazi invasion in 1938? Or Poland in 1939?
NOTES
(1) Guatemala: Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, "Bitter Fruit:
The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala" (1982), p.183;
Jagan: Arthur Schlesinger, "A Thousand Days" (1965), pp.774-9; Bishop:
Associated Press, May 29, 1983, "Leftist Government Officials Visit
United States"
(2) Miami Herald, April 29, 1996, p.1
(3) New York Times, April 16, 2002
(4) "The Pentagon Papers" (NY Times edition, Bantam Books, 1971), pp.4,
5, 8, 26.
(5) Washington Post, September 14, 1969, p.25
(6) Archimedes L.A. Patti, "Why Vietnam? Prelude to America's
Albatross" (1980). Patti is the former intelligence officer (OSS)
consulted by Ho; Chester Cooper, "The Lost Crusade: The Full Story of
US Involvement in Vietnam from Roosevelt to Nixon" (1971) pp.22, 25-7,
40.
William Blum is the author of "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War 2 " and "Rogue State: A Guide to the
World's Only Superpower". < www.killinghope.org > He publishes a free
monthly newsletter, Anti-Empire Report, which can be subscribed to by
sending an email to < >
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