Details US Taxes Funded Coup Attempt vs. Demo Elected Leader of Venezuela

It was funny seeing Jimmy Carter go on his little goodwill trip to Venezuela to try and bring both sides together.......

Too bad the "other side" is the entire ******* country.

 

Carter still supported the right wingists in El Salvador. That's where he was wrong. I understand there was a cold war going on, and that was part of the problem. It was almost as if the Soviets said the flu was bad, then the U.S. automatically would say the Flu was good, just take the opposite stand. They often didn't look at the actual issues.

Often groups that rebelled against wealthy, corrupt govts. that were propped up by greedy corrupt land owners, were increasingly leaning toward the Soviets because that's where their support came from. If there support came instead from the U.S., and we helped to train, and prepare them, then they wouldn't turn down our aid. They needed help. This could have also undercut the Soviet influence.

Maybe. This leaves two options. One would be not to get involved. Another would be to fund the peasants and not the oppressors. Then make continued funding dependent upon human rights. Carter did have the right idea to link foreign aid to human rights but, sadly it was executed poorly, and later totally distorted.

I wasn't trying to defend the Soviet record on civil rights by any means

I listed actual facts. There was a Time magazine article from the 80's that talked about the public gatherings and how people were allowed to criticize the govt. It's true that it was limited to a certain area and certain times during the day, but it's more than people had under the Samoza regime.

The fact that Ortega did allow an opposition news paper even while under attack from the Contras is amazing. Consider Condoleezza Rices calls to ask U.S. networks not to show tapes of Bin Laden, because it migh dampen support for the U.S. war on terrorism.

Surely some of those things did happen under Ortega, but I disagree that they were mirror images of the kinds of oppression under the Samoza regime, and I've listed examples concerning free speech and how they differed.

The policy of training people who were known to be advocates of torture, and murder is poor policy IMO.

I was mostly just curious. I wasn't making a huge distinction, just relating it to supporting a standing govt, or taking sides between two countries.

I agree, but there was corruption, oppressive land owners, and elite abusing peasants. By supporting the peasants in favor of change from the kinds of corruption going on, then the U.S. would also get some influence in the direction of any new govt. The U.S. could have done some real good for these people.

Here is kind of where a lot of the problems existed. In order to accomplish this the U.S. would have to have been more involved and stayed involved throughout the development of the new democracy. That generally hasn't been the M.O. of govt. intervention.

They were left overs from the oppressive Samosa regime. It would have been better to support Ortega, and help influence his policies to be more just.