TwistedCopper said:
Special_K said:
The perception, simply put, is that the U.S. does whatever is in our own excessive financial self-interest and then tries to put a noble picture on it. At home, too many of us only see that noble picture and many of us darn near break our arms patting ourselves on the back for being so noble.
Honestly, you have a worse view of our people than they do. Some of us have a lot more sense than you give us credit for, and I also know you look at our country with the intent to find a reason to criticize. I have read enough of your posts to say that confidently.
Excessive financial self-interest... please. Like those countries are just docile little communities trying to life live in peace and keep to themselves. Wake up man.
I can say a lot of good things about my country....but there's enough of that and that is my point. In fact there is usually too much of that, becuase then you have that side represented at the expense of appreciating the real issues that we're dealing with and you can only begin to resolve a problem when you appreciate the real causes of that problem. There is much more often a lack, in these types of discussions, of the other side of the coin. That is the side more often than not, that I weigh in on. It's not my sole opinion, just the severely underrepresented one.
When have you acknowledged some of the justifiable reasons that other people have to be disgruntled with America? Is it because there are none? Do you believe we're the white knight riding in on every single occasion to rescue these little countries from themselves? Is the anti-American sentiment around the world due to people that hate our freedoms? Wake up man.
TwistedCopper said:
Special_K said:
The notion that the Muslim world should be grateful to us for liberating them from Saddam is akin to a person raping someone then giving them a loaf of bread for their starving family and the wondering why the person doesn't seem to appreciate them for having been so kind as to give them bread for their starving family. They may not reject the bread, but you aren't going to be loved or showered with praise.
The support we have given them in the past was support for their country's defense in order to try to maintain a balance over there. It was not for him to abuse people. Unbalance in the midde east costs us a lot of money and makes the entire world unstable.
A better analogy would depict it as you gave a kid a job to help him get a start in life, but instead he took the $$$ he earned and built a drug ring. Sometimes you throw someone a line and they hang themselves with it. He bit the hand that fed him and he paid dearly for it.
Okay, as for your analogy, that's fine. I do recognize and look at the potential virtues and good intentions of some otherwise smelly deals or actions...believe me, that's not lost on me. I see something like that, however minor, almost every month if not every other week and often acknowledge the sheer necessity of it. But even so, the question is not why do I hate America...I don't. The question is why do THEY hate us...and therefore you have to take into account THEIR perspective. No matter what your well-intentioned reasons were, we have supported, and actually have a reputation in many areas for supporting, brutal dictators or corrupt leaders (on occasion, at the expense of decent leaders) yet we espouse democracy, so how might this come across to the locals? Could this be a reason why soem of them hate us or don't believe us? ...why they think our government chronically lies to the world? ...why they are suspicious of our spoken motives? ...why we are referred to in some cultures as the Great Satan?
You have two choices...dismiss the logic of those people ("they hate us becuase of our freedoms") or consider, right or wrong, the real reasons that might cause millions of otherwise logical people around the world to hate us so passionately.
And yes, while some of our actions are well-intentioned, I wouldn't be so quick to think for a minute that all of them are. See there's this thing about politicians, greed, and human nature that's universal...it's certainly not exclusively an American problem, but America isn't exempt from it either. But even if you assume that our smellier actions are well-intentioned, there's the question of whether the ends justify the means. Problem is, we never get there because the more questionable "means" are hardly ever even acknowledged and when they are, the person that points them out is, at best, accused of being excessively critical of their own country.
If the opinions on these types of issues were excessively and unjustifiably on the negative side of the spectrum and equally as far away from reality...I could and would provide points to counter the negatives and get it back closer to reality. But in my experience, has never, ever been the problem in the typical public forum in America.
TwistedCopper said:
Your post makes it sound like we knowingly and willingly funded him so he could abuse his power. Heck even you should be able to see we wouldnt do that.
The more I have read over the past few years about the history over there the more I see how our country has helped to avoid alot of bloodshed in the middle east, and not just in Isreal.
We knowingly and willingly funded him (the now-Secretary of Defense was intimately involved in the transactions at the time). We knew he was abusing his power (that was kind of, uhhh, noticeable). So where does that leave us?