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Originally Posted by matthew330
The younger generation of Europeans want to hate us. Iraq, Bush, etc have nothing to do with it. We are who we are and we play the role we play. Our purpose hasn't changed in 50 years. We protect the world, and the world would have it no other way.
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I can't see how anyone could say that Iraq, Bush, etc have nothing to do with current world opinion of the U.S.
As for our purpose not changing in 50 years, it seems to me it has drastically changed. During that time we dealt with a Cold War where each side manipulated other parts of the world to antagonize the other side. This has all changed - now we are dealing with parts of the world that we manipulated coming back to bite us. To express either disbelief or shock at this rather significant change is a myopic view. We do not protect the world - we protect ourselves, and in the process we attempt to bend the world to our concept of civility, justice, righteousness and morality.