cosmicforce,
I'm not sure why you people do not get it. America is a meddlesome and obnoxious pig of a nation. This has not always been the case, though there has always been a tiny, aggressive and vocal minority of imperialists among us. For the better part of 225 years, we have kept these obnoxious and immoral greedheads under control. It is only in certain periods like the administrations of Polk, McKinley and King George II that the heathens have run roughshod over the planet.
Your call for humanitarian intervention across the planet strikes me as being every bit as goofy an idea as is the rape & pillage approach that the neo-cons are now engaged in in Mesopotamia. How about we just leave people alone? I'm sure that if the 96% of the planet WHO ARE NOT AMERICANS AND DON'T WANT TO BE were asked about the situation, they'd vote in huge majorities to tell the "Yanquis -- Go Home!"
Re: SO, while chuck's crass presentation needs some attention, the principle behind subversion of one's enemy as being preferred to their outright death should be considered one of the most important forms of political calculus in the armory of a powerful nation-state. And one of the more morally persuasive.
Chuck's crass presentation is much more honest about the moral turpitude involved in his grasping than is some humanitarian gloss applied to a more benign form of imperial nanny intervention. You're just putting lipstick on a pig.
America's greatness has always been that it is extremely well endowed with natural resources, with a world-class educational system and hard working population. The cleverness of Americans led to a remarkable inventiveness that led the world for decades.
Somehow we've fallen behind in most measures of intellectual pioneering. We're no longer #1 in much of anything, other than belligerence, military hardware and imperial outposts. This is not the hallmark of a great nation, but rather of one that is in rapid decline. If not militarily, just yet, then certainly on the scales of morality, finances and intellectual achievement. |
