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Originally posted by shakran
I see. So we only invade the countries that we can easilly defeat. . . .the ones that pose no threat to us in other words. You're saying we should get rid of evil dictators only when it's really easy. Funny, but that doesn't sound very moral to me.
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I read my post again and saw that I said nothing of the sort.
What I did say is that there are other considerations. For example, sure we could invade North Korea and they would immediately launch an attack that would kill a couple of million South Koreans. Plus we might not have the support of our allies.
So while I wouldn't lose sleep over that crackpot either, I can understand why we don't invade right now.
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Well scratch no more, because I'm not saying that. It's not a bad thing that Saddam is out of power. What I AM saying is that it was not OUR place to remove him. We are not, nor does the world want us to be, the world's policeman. Ever since we started assuming that role, world opinion of our country has gotten worse and worse because we are now seen as a swaggering bully, attacking any country we disagree with.
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That is your opinion that the world looks at us as a bully. Sure, stroll the streets of Paris or Rome and you can find people who think so. You can also find people who think otherwise.
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What if someone had looked at the United States back when slavery was legal, and said we were being cruel (we were) and we should therefore be defeated and occupied indefinitely. Think that would have been a good idea?
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What if, what if, what if...
Not interested in the "what if" game.
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We as a country looked at Korea when they started fighting with each other and decided we just HAD to butt in. That worked REAL well. Got umpteen thousands of our soldiers killed, and now, decades later, Korea is still divided and they still hate each other.
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Reread your history book. The
UN stepped into Korea and things would have been fine if
China hadn't butted in.
So in otherwords, China butted in on a UN operation.
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We looked at Vietnam when the north and south were fighting with each other and decided we just HAD to butt in. That also worked real well for us. Got a staggering number of soldiers killed while doing nothing but pissing the world off at us. Again.
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Thank the French for starting that mess.
But we would have done ok if we had waged real war from the start. By the time we started, the American people had lost the will to fight and the war was over.
But the world was pissed off at us? I don't recall hearing or reading such.
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We looked at Iran and decided we didn't like the democratically elected leader. So we had him removed in a coup and installed the Ayatollah. Yeah. Good move.
We looked at Cuba and said we just HAVE to support Castro's coup to take power in 1959. Gee. Good idea there.
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Uh, we did neither. We supported the Shah in Iran and Batista in Cuba. While I think we were myopic in our fight against communism, I can at least understand why it happened. But if you're gonna slam us, get your history right.
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Chile, 1973. We supported the overthrow of Salvador Allende to put Pinochet in office. Pinochet was the mastermind of Operation Condor, the international terrorist network formed to eliminate any opponents of Pinochet's regime. Chalk another dazzling success up for the US of A.
1983, the US supports CIA agent Manuel Noriega in his takeover of the Panamanian armed forces. One year later, the US would work with Noriega to rig the Panamanian election, while simultaneously praising it as democracy in action. Noriega would go on to control this, and the next president of Panama, in effect a shadow-president. Another wonderful example of the US making life better for the world.
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I have only a passing knowledge of Pinochet and some of Noriega, so I can't comment yes or no.
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In short, every single time we have butted in where we don't belong to try to force our values on others, it's bitten us in the butt and made the world a worse place.
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Tell that to East Berlin, Grenada, South Korea, Panama, and Serbia/Bosnia to name a few. Or perhaps tell that to the victims that Saddam won't kill.
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I am all for making sure our interests are protected. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who attacks us or tries to do us harm should be annihilated. But if they're not messing with us, then <i> it is not our place or our right to mess with them.</i>
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No, you're an isolationist straight out of the early 20th Century.
And your policy was a failure then and you have said nothing to convince me that things have changed.