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Originally Posted by MissChievous
Team America World Police. Woo hoo.
It's odd that the States tend to get themselves into a lot of these issues in the first place due to their aggressive foreign policies. It's preposterous to say that the US is "picking up the slack" that the rest of the world negged out on in Iraq. Iraq is worse off now than it was before, there's no denying that. There's dictators the world over; Saddam used to also be an uncomfortable ally of the USA, but an ally nonetheless. So no, I don't think this the world's mess to clean up whatsoever.
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I'll deny it.
The nation itself IS destabilized, but children are being fed, vaccinated, and provided with medical care, women are being protected from barbaric behavior, and infrastructure is being built.
Those things are being done because the American military is there to stand between (as best it can, we're bound by rules and conventions the insurgents completely ignore) the civilians and the noncombatants.
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| The UN is not perfect by a long shot, but it's the best thing we've got at the moment of a type of global forum. If anyone thinks the US is on some kind of benign mission to rescue impoverished people from evil and malevolent dictators, simply for the good of mankind, well, that's just naive. I mean let's face it, the Iraq war was just plain unconstitutional and carried out through deceit. |
No one has said the US is benign. We're certainly not, we're a materialistic capitalistic narcissistic society.
We're also foolish enough to have hearts of gold, wherein we feel a compulsion to send our nation's protectors to other countries to try to bring about some kind of change in them, whether it's medical, material, or idealistic.
I would LOVE for the American public to be able to look at other countries and say "eat my ass. You deal with it." when it comes to their own problems. I would LOVE, for example, to have spent the aid we sent to the tsunami area, physical and monetary, on people within our own boundaries. I would love to be in a world where we as a nation could be isolationist in our views and not have to deal with the crap other countries are doing, whether it's starving or slaughtering their own people, or raping their infants, or whatever. Why? Not because of a lack of compassion on my part because God knows I look at the situations and my heart fucking
breaks for all who are caught in it, but because there's a resounding lack of even the merest "Thank you." from ANYONE in the world theater who isn't a direct recipient of the aid. And, there are quite a few times that those who DO receive the aid aren't grateful either.
I'm not talking accolades or trophies or anything like that. Just a simple "Thanks" instead of the constant diatribe from people who don't live here about how bad our country sucks.
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| This isn't me trying to be anti-USA, the US was a great crutch to Europe for example after WW2 with the Marshall Plan, and their contribution to NATO is important, but the ever-repeated statement about the USA being some kind of benign world police really irritates me. |
It really irritates me to see soldiers deployed on 'peace keeping' missions, or 'rebuilding missions' in various countries where civil war has been rampant, and without military presence women and children are slaughtered, raped, and killed.
And, I'm sorry to point it out, but the majority of your posts on the subject of American politics and military ARE anti-American, to the point that rarely, if ever, do I see you post anything to do with the good of the American society, political system, or people.
And most of all, it
really irritates me to hear people who have never served in the military, have no knowledge of how it works or really what the brotherhood within it stands for, sit and lambast American military procedures, policies, and presences. One can only observe so much, but without that direct tie, the observation is simply that, observation, not experience.
