Message-ID: <2FB8E683@msmail.winrock.org> Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 12:52:00 CDT From: Joy Morgenstern <mailto:JAM@DCMAIL.WINROCK.ORG> Subject: Africa To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L
At 01:11 95-5-16 -0640, James Mccoy wrote: >Get real Nick. By no stretch of the imagination can you blame Zaire's
problems >on the US. The US did provide AID to the Zairean government and if Mobutu
stole >most of it what are we to do - cut it off and be accused of victimizing the
>poor and destitute or impinge on the independence of an independent state
and >tell him how to run his internal affairs...
Actually, if you check just about any historical source, you'll find that Mobutu was put into power in the mid-60s by a CIA-led coup that overthrew Patrice Lumumba, the legally and popularly-elected president. Lumumba was democratic, nationalist, left-leaning but not a communist. The U.S. government's cold-war policies at the time saw him as a threat and the CIA had him removed. So if you want to "get real" about the situation in this particular country, Mr. Mccoy, you might want to read its history and I think you'll see that one can, in fact, blame a lot of Zaire's problems on the U.S. - or at least Zaire's main problem - Mobutu, a bloodthirsty, criminal dictator who was put in power by OUR government with OUR tax money and maintained there with OUR money for 30 years.