>If we didn't have bases all around the world it's more than likely that things would be a lot worse everywhere than they are now.
That is such an arrogant statement, typical of the perception the world has of us Americans. Sad but true.
>Our presence probably has a dampening effect on the actions that people would be taking, whether you think so or not.
Other than that's also another arrogant statement, our presence and conduct around the world had such an effect that it now hit home:(
>No matter how bad some place is, it might, it just might be a lot worse if we wern't around. Have you ever considered that?
Yes. But taking a look at the hellish conditions in some countries/places where our goverment got involved, it is inconceivable to think that they could be much worse than they already are!
This is what I think and I am sticking to it. Life goes on.
Here is an article that shows a point of view in trying to answer the question "Why they attack us". Yeah, I know it is from a liberal source but it's certainly worth reading and it's a question our leaders better get right before they make this sh*t worse
antiwar.com
Why They Attack Us
by Samuel Francis
September 15, 2001
"We're at war," the young waitress, her voice catching,
informed me when I first heard of the terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon this week. She was hardly the only
one. "America at war," the Washington Times' lead editorial
pronounced the next day. "It's WAR," screamed its editorial cartoon.
A "new kind of war has been declared on the world's democracies,"
the Wall Street Journal's editorial pontificated.
"The War Against America" was the subject of the New York Times
editorial. "A state of war," the Washington Post called it. "This is
war," pronounced columnist Charles Krauthammer. "They were acts
of war," confirmed the President of the United States.
Well, it probably is – except that, even as everyone from waitresses to
the president was declaring war or howling for it, nobody was exactly
sure who we were at war with. The usual suspect was the shadowy
Osama bin Laden, though some experts said the attacks didn't fit his
profile, and even if we were sure, no one seemed able to say how we
should wage the war, how we could win it, or what would constitute
victory.
Mainly, what most Americans wanted to do – entirely understandably
– was to blow the hell out of somebody or something. No doubt, in
time, we will.
But the blunt truth is that the United States has been at war for years
– at least a decade, since we launched a war against Iraq in 1991, even
though Iraq had done absolutely nothing to harm
the United States or any American. Our bombing attacks on Iraq
certainly caused civilian casualties, and if they were not deliberate,
nobody beating the war drums at the time felt much regret for them.
For ten years, we have maintained economic sanctions on Iraq that
have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, and we
have repeatedly bombed it whenever it failed to abide by standards we
imposed on it.
Under Bill Clinton, we again launched bombing raids against civilians –
once against so-called "terrorist training camps" supposedly under bin
Laden's control in Afghanistan and at the same time against a
purported "chemical weapons factory" in Sudan that almost certainly
was no such thing. The attacks just happened to occur on the same
day as Monica Lewinsky's grand jury testimony that she had engaged
in sex with the president. "This is unfortunately the war of the future,"
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said in justifying the U.S. raids,
officially launched in retaliation for terrorist attacks on American
embassies.
Later the same year, Mr. Clinton ordered (but later countermanded)
yet more missile attacks on Iraq – the day after the Paula Jones sex
scandal was settled in court. Later, yet again, Mr. Clinton ordered
more bombings in Iraq the day before Congress was scheduled to vote
on his impeachment. Then there are the Balkans, where the United
States has waddled forth to war for no compelling reason, and where
it has also slaughtered civilians with its unprovoked bombings.
In all the buckets of media gabble about the terrorist attacks in New
York and Washington, not once have I heard any journalist ask any
expert the simple question, "Why did the terrorists attack us?"
There is, of course, an implicit answer to the unasked question: It's
because the terrorists are "evil"; they "hate democracy"; they are
"fanatics," "barbarians" and "cowards." Those, of course, are answers
that can satisfy only children. Some day it might actually dawn on
someone in this country that the grown-up but unwelcome answer is
that the terrorists attacked us because they were paying us back for
what we started.
Let us hear no more about how the "terrorists" have "declared war on
America." Any nation that allows a criminal chief executive to use its
military power to slaughter civilians in unprovoked and legally
unauthorized attacks for his own personal political purposes can
expect whatever the "terrorists" dish out to it. If, as President Bush
told us this week, we should make no distinction between those who
harbor terrorists and those who commit terrorist acts, neither can any
distinction be made between those who tolerate the murderous policies
of a criminal in power and the criminal himself.
The blunt and quite ugly truth is that the United States has been at war
for years – that it started the war in the name of "spreading
democracy," "building nations," "waging peace," "stopping
aggression," "enforcing human rights," and all the other pious lies that
warmongers always invoke to mask the truth, and that it continued the
war simply to save a crook from political ruin. What is new is merely
that this week, for the first time, the war we started came home – and
all of a sudden, Americans don't seem to care for it so much. |
