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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
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To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (108944)2/25/2010 12:07:43 AM
From: Hawkmoon1 Recommendation  Read Replies (1) of 116555
 
No the point hawk is that some of your allies might think US policy a tad imperialistic also..

I hear you.. and it's incumbent upon the American people and it's government that when we go to war it's for a reason that can justify the cost in blood and treasure.

Whether we should have gone to war in Iraq is certainly debatable among reasonable people. My view is that we should have thrown Saddam out in 1991 and not deluded ourselves that he would "change his spots". We had the moral high-ground then and no one could legitimately dispute the legitimacy of punishing him for invading and brutalizing Kuwait.

But what we uncovered after the invasion in 2003 was just HOW EXTENSIVE support for Saddam's regime had been amongst the French, Russians, and Chinese (among a few other nations).

Those governments were responsible for keeping that regime in power and they did it in order to benefit economically by exploiting the resources of Iraq. But no one likes to talk about that form of support for Imperialism.

And no one likes to talk about the fact that over 40 nations were ALSO involved in overthrowing Saddam. Everyone just conveniently focuses upon the US role since we were the major actor in Saddam's overthrow.

I'm never going to claim that the FP of the US isn't influenced by corporate interests. That would be naive and unrealistic. But what I'm seeing in the aftermath of our pullout is hardly justifiable of being called Imperialism.

Afghanistan is a different story in that the Taliban were providing safe harbor to a terrorist group that had declared war on the US in 1998 and had acted numerous times to carry their war against America. The African Embassy bombings, the USS Cole, and then 9/11 were all believed to be the acts of Al Qaida, therefore we had a national interest in destroying, as well as their allies.

But even now, the US is called Imperialist despite the fact that Canadians, Germans, French, and a whole gamut of NATO allies are involved as well. If we're Imperialist, then by default all the other NATO nations are Imperialist as well.

Everyone focuses on the loss of civilian life as a result of errors or negligence at the hands of American soldiers. But no one bothers to pay attention to the DELIBERATE ACTS of violence against civilians by the Taliban.

Just the other day some of our SpecOps folks apparently called an air strike on what they believed were Taliban fighters in mini-buses. Turned out they were civilians and Gen. McChrystal was required to apologize publicly for the error.

Take this article for example.. The lead story is the errant air strike. But in the very last part of the story, there are a only a few words about the DELIBERATE terrorist bombing that killed 14 civilians.

news.sympatico.ctv.ca

No one makes the Taliban apologize for DELIBERATELY being responsible for 70% of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

And no one gave a rat's @ss about the Afghans civilians who died prior to 2001 under the oppression of the Taliban.

It's just not important, I guess.

But if people want to talk about Imperialism I can point them to any number of public pronouncements by Islamic Militants proclaiming their plans to conquer the world in the name of Islam and restore and expand the former Islamic Empire.

Again.. that's a story no one wants to talk about.

Sorry for my ranting TBS.. But my view of these people calling Americans Imperialists are the very same people who are supporting the Imperialism of terrorists and tyrants.

Hawk
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