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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (142987)	2/28/2002 12:33:53 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1574262

"What unpopular stance specifically are you talking about and how does it make us look like a bully" Tim, you just posted a link today that was some survey which polled people in at least 15 Middle Eastern countries...of whom the overwhelming majority believe we are acting inappropriately and don't even believe that 9/11 was done by Arabs/Muslims. I wasn't trying to imply that there where no unpopular stances that the US takes, I just needed something more specific to respond to. If you detail a specific unpopular stance or action I can respond but otherwise I can only guess, and my guess could be something entirely different then what you had in mind. Why should we base our reactions to attacks against us on the opinions of people who are either ignorant or not thinking rationally or both (i.e. the people who don't think 9/11 was done by Arabs/Muslims)? Bush is threatening any country believed to be harboring terrorists with military intervention. That's at least 15 countries in the world. Would you not expect there would be some repercussions? Do you not think that they are pssed that we are making those threats? Sure I can see that they would get pissed but if we are to defend ourselves against terrorists, we have to strike at the terrorists. If someone protects the terrorists and provides them with resources and perhaps even works with them to determine targets then they are also guilty of threatening America. In the past we thought these threats where relatively minor. Post 9/11 America realizes the severity of the terrorist threat. If you attack or threaten and prepare to attack a superpower there can be severe consequences. If more people realize that, less of them will want to engage in such dangerous activity. Someone like bin Laden might not be deterred. He might think if he dies he just become a martyr. But most of the governments who might protect and support people like him think more about practical details like maintaining their power and less about some jihad against a country who will swat them if they go to far. If you mean that the Europeans rather then the countries that support terrorism are pissed, well no I don't expect them to be pissed. Ok, really I am not surprised that some of them are but I don't think it is entirely a rational response. Being concerned would be rational. I can understand some of them counseling restraint, but being pissed doesn't makes sense at this point. So far we have shown restraint. Outside of Afghanistan the only interventions that we have made have been to work with and train the military of countries who are fighting terrorists. Even if we attack Iraq we have a lot of justification. If we go to war on Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and Syria then we will have shown a lack of restraint. I don't think this will happen. Tim, you need to go back and read what was written........I said that Europeans are surprised by the quick shift to the right. No where did I say it was bad. What I did say is that people have trouble dealing with significant change. Did they have trouble dealing with Clinton's shift to the left when he became president? The current administration is a shift to the right from Clinton but not from say Reagan, and only a moderate shift from Bush Sr, so if it represents a big rightward shift then Clinton must have been a big leftward shift. But I guess it might have been less of a problem for them because most of Europe is to the left of the US on many issues. " BTW do we get to complain about shifts to the left when socialists or labor parties take over in Europe?" This is bs......I don't see the point to these questions. However, I will say that as I understand it, in Europe there are multiple parties and they tend to be more centrists except for the radical fringe and so the spread between conservatives and liberals I think may be smaller than here in the US where we have only two parties main parties. So the Bush administration seems markedly different than the Clinton administration. Its not BS at all. If they are upset at us shifting to the right, what is BS about us being upset about them shifting to the left?. What is BS is the contention that the differences between the parties in Europe is smaller then the differences in the US. The Republicans and Democrats are often far closer to each other then competing European parties. Europe has had socialist parties run countries, and green parties that had significant power within coalitions. The parties in Europe are wider apart then they are in the US. However in the European countries with parliamentary systems the need to form coalitions can reduce the change when a new government comes to power. If a party that is radically different comes to power it may have only a plurarity of the seats in the parliament and made need coalitions partners who might tone down the changes. Of course it doesn't always work this way because the new party can get a majority or it might partner with other radical parties (say an alliance between socialists and greens, or two far right parties) Okay, there is nothing different between Bush and Clinton. So why did you vote for Bush? In fact, why did you bother to vote?* There is a lot of difference betwen Bush and Clinton. On the Kyoto issue (since it was mentioned) Clinton would have kept up the polite lie. On other issues (for example taxes) there is an actual practical difference but internal issues are not really Europe's business. On foreign policy/security issues Bush has been a bit more forceful, but that strikes me as appropriate post 9/11. We just bombed the hell out of a country and we are threatening to do the same to at least three others. You don't think that's perceived as militarily aggressive. Forget our motivation for doing so.... No you can't forget our motivations for doing so, because the motivation is what makes it a defensive action rather then aggression. As for it being inaccurately being perceived as aggression, I don't think that American foreign policy should be determined by the delusions of some foreign people or governments. We might consider these delusions when we attempt to figure out how they may respond to US policy but they should not be the driving force behind, or the main determent of US policy. This is senseless.....I am trying to explain to you what are some of the other world viewpoints and in response, when you are not attacking the messenger[me], you are being defensive. Those are not my views but what I hear and read. We don't live in a vacuum nor is this world big enough for us to run around half cocked as we are the only remaining super power. Its just the facts. I'm not attacking you. Have I been running around calling you a jerk or and idiot or worse? I have not made this personal. I am attacking the ideas that you post. They may or may not be your ideas but yours but either way they are wrong. We don't live in a vacuum but we should base our domestic and security polices on rational ideas and our interests. Consulting with friends is fine but the decisions are ours. The US has not been running off half cocked. Half cocked is acting dangerously without thinking, not acting before the whole world agrees with you. You don't think Europeans know what's going on internally here........they are way more informed about us than we are about them. Things like the above color their perception for good or for bad. Maybe they know about it but they have no reason to be upset about it, and we have no reason to care about them being upset. No one wants to be in the scenario where one person/one country controls the situation.....where there are no choices should things get bad with the US. But there are choices. The US might lobby and influence European countries and the EU but they are not part of an American empire. We usually don't even lobby or complain about their internal policies. We do lobby them about the "European Army" because we don't want them to drift away from NATO, but if they choose to do so we would not prevent them. In this issue its more European attempts to control the US. To tell us what to do. It usually doesn't have much effect, and maybe they don't even expect it to have a lot of effect, but IMO Europe does try to tell America what to do more then we try to boss them around. Then when we do what we want to do anyway you say its like we were saying FU to them, but its not. We have a position in the world that can't be ignored or forgotten and that acts as a brake on our behavior. If we throw off the brake, there will be an out cry every time. That's the way it is. The only way it is a brake on our behavior is the idea that "with great power comes great responsibility". Other then that it isn't a brake on our behavior. In a practical sense there is less of a brake on our behavior, and as long as we avoid being senselessly destructive I don't see any reason why the US should have less freedom to do or say what it wants then Australia. We might get more complaints if we do what others don't want us to do because we get more attention then Australia do to our wealth and power, but that does not mean there is anyhing worse about us acting or that we should let the complaints drive our policies. If they are just emotional reactions we can either ignore them or be diplomatic and try to smooth things over. If they are rational arguments against our policies then we should listent to them, respond to them, and sometimes even change our mind because of them, but only because we determine that they are correct not because some European country said they where correct. Also we have more need to act. We are more likely to be the target of groups like Al Qaida and we have no friendly powerful super power to turn to if things are difficult, we have to rely primarily on our own power. If we do get help it is usualy because we have taken the lead and our friends want to join in. The UK and perhaps other European countries might help the US respond to threats against the US but they wont just say "you sit this one out, we'll take care of it". Tim