I was listening to Jesse Ventura do an interview this morning while I was driving. He is the former NAVY Seal / Pro-Wrestler / Governor of Minnesota and is surprisingly well spoken. He went into a trip he took to Cuba where he met Castro and was overall very impressed with the Cuban people. One thing that struck me was that the first thing Castro said to him was "Your a brave person for being here", and Ventura was struck by that because Castro himself is one of the most courageous people whether you agree with him or not.
Anyways Ventura then went down how the US for years was trying to kill Castro and overthrow his government. I knew this of course but he then put the word terror into the mix and explained how it really was terrorism. It took me a little time but I can see where he and the Cuban people could see it this way. I myself would call it terrorism as really the CIA for years was slipping people into the country with arms and bombs to do nothing but disrupt and kill people, that sounds like terrorism to me.
Ventura then goes off the deep end a bit with a 9/11 conspiracy that I did not agree with and I eventually had to go so I was able to listen to the rest but he was very interesting and very smart.
Once I got a moment I thought about the other nations where the US has had influence and where else could we have done similar things. Its not hard to see how we think that our "helping revolutionaries" is justified and is good for the people but that is certainly not the case. I think you can go through the 50's - now and find all kinds of examples where we have funded or supplied people to help them. These actions always lead to violence that in some way hurts those people that we might have wanted to help. You can go from Latin America to the Middle East and find these situations.
A quick search on the internet shows our aid to the Contras in Nicaragua, our aid to the Taliban in Afghanistan to help them kill Russians, all the way back to our aid to the Texans as they fought Mexico for Independence. To us it seems justified but to the other side its meddling in a national struggle, in most cases can be seen as Terrorism.
To an innocent person in Nicaragua in the 80's you might not like the Sandanista's but they are the Govt. When Reagan funds the Contras and they begin waging war in the country, they are either revolutionaries or terrorists depending on your viewpoint. Perhaps not the best angle but it is certainly true.
Even in Iraq we were sponsoring terrorist tactics in the 90's because we wanted to destabilize Saddam's government. The leader of that group (Iyad Allawi) went on to help in the war but we had the relationship with him from his days as leading the terrorist activities for us. To us we see that Saddam was a cruel dictator but to those innocent civilians we supported the terrorists.
And I read there were / are two groups in Iran that are rumored to be supported by the US. This may be in no way true but if it makes its to the rumor stage then its as good as true to many people. That only hurts our credibility once again.
Its all about the viewpoint of each person, even in one family one person might it is helping fight the evil govt. while the other might say its aiding a terrorist. Its an intereting way to now look back through history and try to see things through the "enemies" eyes and see how they could see the US as a terrorist state.
PS - I will probably read Jesse Ventura's book because I did find him very interesting even if he did get a little crazy at times.
