Dude has the right idea. superpowers belong to what SHOULD be a dying age. Tryin to lord it over ones peepz ain't cool dawg. Y'all needz ta step back an chill out ya dig?
But if the US doesn't dominate every nation, the terrorists win! Right?!?! </sarcasm> He's got the right idea there, people need to learn to live and let live. Leaving people alone is not a sign of weakness, and asserting dominance on others does not make you a bigger man then someone else.
There will always be people out there who will strive for power,and most of the people who do are in a position to do so. If the United States did not police the rest of the world. The world would be cought in world war 3. There are palces like north Korea and Iran trying to "bully" other countries around. I'm really sick of hearing people bash bush because of the war, theres one less dictator in the world because of it. yeah we didnt have the best reason to go in there but, we cant pull out our troops now. The United States is the world poliece becase no one else will do anything about countries like north korea and iran.
Nor will we apparently as we went to Iraq instead of the actual threat of North Korea or the high likelihood threat in making of Iran.
Actually, it is pretty much world opinion that US foreign policy has made the world a much less safe place. Lessee, now: - Iraq: Saddam was a *******, but he was a ******* in control of his country. The US should know: it helped him in the saddle in the 70's. That's right: Saddam the tyrant once was our bestest friend in the Middle East. We even have pictures of his Vice-Premier Aziz shaking hands with Rumsfeld. He had some chemical and biological weapons because the US and Europe had sold these to him, even after he gassed the Kurdish village Halabja (although didn't the US say at the time that it was the Iranians who did it?), so that he could sustain his war against Iran (we'll come back to that later, by the way). The US even told him to feel free to take those oil fields in Kuwait if he fancied them (nice one, ambassador April Glaspie). It was not until Saddam took the whole of Kuwait (who would have thought?) and Saudi Arabia objected that the US suddenly decided that he might be a problem. Since Saddam was kicked out of power, Iraq has been a terrorist theme park. Saudi Arabia is building a big wall; Iran is looking for recruits amongst the insurgents. - Afghanistan: The US actually encouraged the formation of a Taliban regime in 1997 after they helped the Mujahedin kick out the Ruskies. It made a perverse kind of sense: lots of vital gas pipes (and planned oil pipes) running through the region. It needed order and stability; it certainly didn't need to be the centre of opiate production. And if anyone could deliver on those two counts, it was the Taliban. So what if they were fundamentalist, woman-beating tyrants? They would maintain control --that is what mattered. Since the Taliban were kicked out of power, Afghanistan has again reverted to an unstable feudal system of drug lords, war lords, and religious fundamentalists all fighting for control. Those pipes sure are safe now. - Iran: Once a Western-oriented mellow democracy, voted for the people, by the people. But then its Prime Minister, Dr. Mossadegh talked about nationalising its oil industry. That was crazy talk, since the Uk and US felt entitled to all the oil. He had to go. In 1953 the democracy was overthrown and the Shah installed, wielding a regime that Amnesty International has called one of the cruellest in the world. Consider it a compliment: the CIA taught the Iranian Secret Police (the SAVAK) all it knew... In 1979 the people revolt, the Shah is overthrown and the Ayatollah takes over, burning American flags, and taking American Embassy hostages. The tyrant is gone; long live the tyrant. Of course, the US again decided that he had to go. Luckily they had just the chap for it in Iraq: an ambitious upstart called Saddam Hussein... I could go on a bit, including how these interventions sowed a deep mistrust and hatred of the West in the Middle East, the impact on politics between Israel, Palestine, Lebanon etc. (guess who provided the bombs for Israel to bomb civilians in Lebanon recently? the US, using the UK as a stop-over), how Lybia got framed for Lockerbie... I could also talk about selling nuclear technology to Pakistan, while its government is teetering on the brink of being overthrown by the Taliban and waging nuclear war with India (but don't worry, the UK was flogging jets to India at the same time --nothing like stoking a conflict), and all the crap that the US has been up to in South America and Africa. And yes, North Korea is another problem we engineered. Perhaps you just ought to study this for a while... With "police" like that, you don't need criminals...
As much as it makes me feel like a yes-man, that post just demands some net-language responses. My recommendations: -QFT -Pwned.
Wow - I thoght Gorbachev was dead - wonder how it feels to see the USSR turn to what it is now after being in charge !
Pretty bad, I suspect. Just how bad is reflected by the fact that Gorbachev is actually in favour of Putin. Gorby had the right idea: make the USSR more liberal, but do it slowly. It was not able to handle full-blown capitalism from day one, especially not that half-baked moronic free market economy that the American economic advisors had dreamt up for Jeltsin.
