If they want to go their own way, fine.
But that's not what we do.
Our history of interventions in the past twenty or thirty years shows clearly that we aren't willing to let others go their own way. A brief list: Haiti, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, just to mention a few of the more prominent ones I can name off the top of my head.
We insist on imposing our values on others whether or not they want our values.
And it's not simply defending ourselves against them. Yugoslavia was doing nothing to us. Somalia was doing nothing to us.
The only excuse for invading Grenada was that some Americans had freely chosen to go to medical school there and felt threatened. I could be misremembering, but I don't recall any Americans being killed there. And this site, seeming on its surface to be fairly objective, doesn't mention any American deaths or any direct threat to America either.
mtholyoke.edu
Given our history of intervention and invasion on skimpy, at best, justification, it's no wonder we aren't seen as benevolent people by much of the world.
Personally, I agree with what you are saying, that we should take care of ourselves and let other countries take care of themselves. That, IMO, is responsible foreign policy. Pushing around small countries because we have the power to isn't, IMO. |
