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Originally Posted by Elphaba
Certainly, how our women dress could not possibly represent our moral standing in the world. Parents are allowing their little girls to dress like Brittany Spears slut-wanna-be's, so I am inclined to ask if the head scarf isn't the moral high ground? It was once required of Catholic women while attending church in this country.
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One can certainly argue whether or not allowing one's daughters to dress like whores is immoral. However, the truth or falsehood or that claim has no bearing on whether forcing women to wear the veil is wrong. Also, the Catholic church example is a poor one because those women could always choose not to go to church: Saudi Arabian women can't very well choose to never leave their homes...
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Originally Posted by Elphaba
I remember those bad 'ol days when rape was an acceptable excuse based upon what the girl or woman was wearing... "She asked for it" was all that needed to be said. If a sovereign country has a cultural requirement that insists on women covering their body/sexuality in public, how is it that they are oppressed, as opposed to our young girls being sexually exploited by friggin "fashion?"
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Again, you may well be right that our cultural practices are immoral. However, claiming that American women are being oppressed does not affect the truth of the claim that Saudi Arabian women are being oppressed.
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Originally Posted by Elphaba
Our involvement in any nation should be limited to protecting the life of it's citizens, as in the case of genocide or ethnic cleansing, and more importantly in providing food and health resources in times of need. I further believe that the United Nations is the best forum to achieve positive results in afflicted nations.
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What good comes from limiting our involvement to the lives of the citizens? Why not life, liberty, and property? Should we involve ourselves if the regime is torturing people? Raping people? Taking away private property?
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Originally Posted by Elphaba
I readily admit that my opinion has nothing whatsoever to do with the current administration's foreign policy. Frankly, I can't give you a single example of any altruistic intervention by our government in it's entire history that wasn't motivated by at least a quid pro quo.
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The lack of an ideal example of cosmopolitan interventionist foreign policy does not speak to the normative policy we should strive towards. If anything, dissatisfaction with past and present policy makes it more important to study the ideal.
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Originally Posted by Elphaba
The United States of America lost it's right to claim moral leadership long ago, but it has been cemented with this administration.
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From one U.S. resident to another, I would dispute this claim. First off, there is no nation I would rather live in than the United States, primarily because the government affords its citizens with very generous liberties and protections. Moreover, our foreign policy, riddled though it may be with self-interested decisions, has had some extremely positive effects on the world as a whole. We did, after all, defeat slavery, facism, nazism, communism, and a host of evil dictators while we were at it. Does this excuse us supporting other dictators, killing democratically elected leaders, etc? Definitely not in all cases. It remains a serious stretch, however, to claim that the United States has lost the high ground.
Why shouldn't we help the citizens of other nations to enjoy the rights that we take for granted as U.S. citizens?