Die BREMSSPUR wrote on Sun, 06 May 2007 17:40 |
Yeah,
Most people think I'm arrogant.
Maybe...
If you'd pull your head out of your ass, you could possibly name about fifty or so countries we have helped acquire freedom...
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Oh really? Name them.
You're probably going to name countries liberated in the second world war, well they hardly qualify as examples of some moral crusade, the US was two years late joining the party, Germany declared war on the US, not vice-versa, and in the meantime the US profited from both sides.
Not saying your help wasn't much appreciated when it happened, nor do I mean any disrespect to those who fought and died, just that the image often portrayed of America the wonderful altruistically going to the aid of Europe is rather distorted.
Since then, how many countries have you helped to liberate through force? Off the top of my head I can think of South Korea and Kuwait, both of which were as parts of large coalitions (as was World War 2 in fact).
And more relevantly in this context, how many countries have you helped to liberate by force not from a foreign invader, but from their own government, and which have ended up better than they started?
And how many dictators have you installed or helped keep in power?
What problems have you solved in Iraq?
For the rest of the world, you've taken a country which was no danger to them, and turned it into a terrorist recruitment advert.
For Iraq's immediate neighbours you've increased islamic militancy, making it harder for moderates to influence government and society... notice how Iran, where the moderates were actually getting somewhere, has gone more hardline since the invasion?
As for Iraq itself, you've got rid of a single evil threat (Saddam) but the vaccuum created allowed a bunch of evil threats to get in. So where in the past the people just had to worry about Saddam and co, now if they're too nice to the Sunnis, the Shias will kill them, if they're too nice to the Shias, the Sunnis will kill them, and if they manage to avoid getting killed by both those lots, and to avoid illness and death through the destruction of their infrastructure, then they could end up getting killed by the Americans.
You've talked about the poverty in Iraq, well the main reason for the extreme poverty in Iraq before the invasion was that some bright spark had the idea of imposing trade sanctions on the country. For some reason they thought that the way to get a psychopathic and sociopathic dictator to do what you want him to is to make his people suffer... huh??
Since then what has been done to help? Well the first step was to destroy their infrastructure... erm ok... then to throw away 11 billion of THEIR money (oil revenues that had been held onto by the United Nations and were released to the US on the understanding that they were to be used for the rebuilding of Iraq), which was squandered, embezelled, lost and stolen. The US has also used its position to grant huge rebuilding contracts to US firms.
so if it your duty and obligation to go around the world solving problems, you really need to get a hell of a lot better at your job.