riddle@im4u.UUCP (08/20/85)
>> I am neither defending the South African government. In the first place, >> it needs no defending, and in the second (as you and your ilk love to point >> out with respect to Viet Nam and Nicaragua) this is an internal affair and >> none of anybody else's substantive business. Nonsense. White minority rule in South Africa is an artificial arrangement created under colonialism and maintained with the implicit and explicit support of the Western powers, our own included. Were the South African government not dependent on our continued arms and investments, the "internal affairs" argument might hold some water, and our proper course of action might be limited to moral indignation; as it is, we contribute directly to the continuation of apartheid every day we pretend to pursue a policy of "constructive engagement," and our responsibility to stop doing so is clear. As to the cases of Viet Nam and Nicaragua, there is one crucial distinction you fail to mention: no one that I know is suggesting that we intervene militarily in South Africa, a course we pursued in Southeast Asia and are pursuing now in Central America. Military intervention raises us immediately to a level of involvement in the internal affairs of a country which we are almost never prepared to competently handle. I happen to favor democracy in South Africa, which ultimately means black majority rule, but I have no illusions as to our ability to impose democracy on South Africa by force -- if we were crazy enough to try such a stunt, we would almost certainly botch it. Unfortunately, that is exactly the stunt that we tried in Viet Nam and which the Reagan administration claims to be trying today in Central America (even though it's fairly easy to see that real democracy appears nowhere on their true agenda). Democracy, peace and justice are difficult goals that people can only reach by their own efforts. Our chief responsibility is to stop shoring up the obstacles (like the racist regime currently running South Africa) that we have put in their paths. --- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.") --- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech}!ut-sally!riddle riddle@ut-sally.UUCP --- riddle@ut-sally.ARPA, riddle%zotz@ut-sally, riddle%im4u@ut-sally