I Think Not
Salutations!
You’re a proud American and that’s just swell, but having the power and opportunity to conquer the world and citing the fact that the United States didn’t do it and expecting to rally support on that basis is a peculiar argument in battling “Anti-Americanism”!
It’s like claiming moral superiority for not having committed a crime when presented with the opportunity. Britain was so busy fighting France and Spain and establishing empire all over the place (China, India, Canada, and Africa etc. etc. that it didn’t squash the thirteen colonies. Is it then reasonable to laud the British Empire for its history? Maybe there wouldn’t be so much Anti-Americanism if Britain had!
I’ve been participating in forums all over the world for more than ten years and the topic of American “evil” arises time and time again. And I’m willing to bet that this frequency of “Anti-Americanism” arises not because America has managed to NOT inflict great damage on other societies and cultures but because it has.
Great energy was expended both overtly and insidiously blowing the “threat” of communism into a giant bogyman. American military actions in many places all over the world were undertaken in the name of fighting communism. The Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, American interference in Nicaragua, support for Suharto and Pinochet and a lengthy list of not so very nice folk hasn’t convinced the world to trust America. The war in Viet Nam, support for the Marcos regime in the Philippines, insurrections in East Timor and countless other petro-sites around the world instigated funded and supported by the United States are facts of history, not myths dreamed up by someone with an axe to grind.
It was both Soviet Russia and the United States of America that gave the world the Cold War and necessitated such wonderful phraseology as MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) and who both now control sufficient nuclear weapons to destroy the earth several times over… and you’re suggesting America should get a pat on the back for this?
Empires come and go, and so do politicians, but to pretend that the United States hasn’t participated in and been responsible for creating abetting and promulgating great hardship death and destruction all over the planet is nonsense.
Our current geopolitical dynamic is a direct result of America playing both sides of many many dirty little wars all over the place.
Great wealth (whereby the U.S. can supply weapons to both Iraq and Iran to name two) brings with it great responsibility. And America has wasted the far greater opportunity it has enjoyed to bring peace to the world in a variety of ways other than not flexing its military muscles.
The people of the United States present the largest single marketplace and appetite for everything from cocaine and heroin to methamphetamines and yet America has wailed about Afghans growing poppies and selling drugs as a means of raising money for the Taliban. The same goes for Venezuela Bolivia Columbia, Thailand, Mexico and so on. The finger is pointed at the suppliers and those nations and people are identified as the evil folk but the reality is that it is the United States that is the demand driving that particular marketplace.
The combination of Britain and the United States gave the world Israel and decades of simmering volatility that has forced Palestinians (Arab nations in general) to take up the cause of the Palestinian people in fighting an occupying force given that opportunity and supported in doing so by the United States and Britain. The United States supplies weapons of all kinds to Israel (won’t admit to nukes but everyone knows this to be true as well) and billions upon billions of dollars to Israel and turns a blind eye to the atrocities and inhumanity of the IDF and was happy to identify Arafat as a terrorist while completely ignoring the terrorism that Sharon has been documented as committing.
Many highly respected American authors statesmen and educators have soundly renounced many policies of the United States for decades. Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, for instance. Most recently Kurt Vonnegut was interviewed on CBC and all but cried for the level of corruption and witness of the rapid decline of American integrity and the actions of both the Clinton and the Bush administrations.
Benjamin Barber, Michael Adams and many many authors have (cuz they really like selling books and making money) taken significant time examining the American ethos and found significant issues of injustice and deep-seated malaise within the American “culture”.
Now the ‘come-back’ on much of the criticism leveled at America is that these kinds of issues are as valid in examining many nations not just America, but America NEVER admits to anything and swaggers around with pompous superiority telling the world that the American hold on moral behaviour and the “moral high road” belongs to America when the rest of the world knows this simply isn’t the case.
I’m not Anti-American I’m Anti-Bullshit and if that’s offensive to your patriotic sensibilities, then we’ll just have to agree to disagree but don’t think for a moment that the halo you’d have bobbing around the heads of Americans is believed by anyone!
Americans have treated the world with arrogance and disdain for a very long time.
The current undermining of the United Nations over the hoax of WMD in Iraq and the embarrassment that Colin Powel suffered presenting that pack of lies to the UN will never be forgotten by anyone. The Bush agenda of neo-conservative petro and econo-imperialism in conjunction with the chutzpah of telling the world that it is the right of America to tell nations who and who may not develop nuclear weapons is destroying America.
Is North Korea a nasty bad place run by a manman?? Maybe but the solution of building missile defense shields and promoting energy weapons development as the U.S. has done for years isn’t movement to peace but an invitation to practice asymmetrical warfare on a bully with no conscience and who’s demonstrated repeatedly that the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is in fact just what Bob Zimmerman called it years ago, the Neighbourhood Bully.
Be proud, Americans have a great deal to be proud of….but don’t imagine for a moment that America is faultless in the mess this planet is in.
Salutations!
You’re a proud American and that’s just swell, but having the power and opportunity to conquer the world and citing the fact that the United States didn’t do it and expecting to rally support on that basis is a peculiar argument in battling “Anti-Americanism”!
It’s like claiming moral superiority for not having committed a crime when presented with the opportunity. Britain was so busy fighting France and Spain and establishing empire all over the place (China, India, Canada, and Africa etc. etc. that it didn’t squash the thirteen colonies. Is it then reasonable to laud the British Empire for its history? Maybe there wouldn’t be so much Anti-Americanism if Britain had!
I’ve been participating in forums all over the world for more than ten years and the topic of American “evil” arises time and time again. And I’m willing to bet that this frequency of “Anti-Americanism” arises not because America has managed to NOT inflict great damage on other societies and cultures but because it has.
Great energy was expended both overtly and insidiously blowing the “threat” of communism into a giant bogyman. American military actions in many places all over the world were undertaken in the name of fighting communism. The Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, American interference in Nicaragua, support for Suharto and Pinochet and a lengthy list of not so very nice folk hasn’t convinced the world to trust America. The war in Viet Nam, support for the Marcos regime in the Philippines, insurrections in East Timor and countless other petro-sites around the world instigated funded and supported by the United States are facts of history, not myths dreamed up by someone with an axe to grind.
It was both Soviet Russia and the United States of America that gave the world the Cold War and necessitated such wonderful phraseology as MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) and who both now control sufficient nuclear weapons to destroy the earth several times over… and you’re suggesting America should get a pat on the back for this?
Empires come and go, and so do politicians, but to pretend that the United States hasn’t participated in and been responsible for creating abetting and promulgating great hardship death and destruction all over the planet is nonsense.
Our current geopolitical dynamic is a direct result of America playing both sides of many many dirty little wars all over the place.
Great wealth (whereby the U.S. can supply weapons to both Iraq and Iran to name two) brings with it great responsibility. And America has wasted the far greater opportunity it has enjoyed to bring peace to the world in a variety of ways other than not flexing its military muscles.
The people of the United States present the largest single marketplace and appetite for everything from cocaine and heroin to methamphetamines and yet America has wailed about Afghans growing poppies and selling drugs as a means of raising money for the Taliban. The same goes for Venezuela Bolivia Columbia, Thailand, Mexico and so on. The finger is pointed at the suppliers and those nations and people are identified as the evil folk but the reality is that it is the United States that is the demand driving that particular marketplace.
The combination of Britain and the United States gave the world Israel and decades of simmering volatility that has forced Palestinians (Arab nations in general) to take up the cause of the Palestinian people in fighting an occupying force given that opportunity and supported in doing so by the United States and Britain. The United States supplies weapons of all kinds to Israel (won’t admit to nukes but everyone knows this to be true as well) and billions upon billions of dollars to Israel and turns a blind eye to the atrocities and inhumanity of the IDF and was happy to identify Arafat as a terrorist while completely ignoring the terrorism that Sharon has been documented as committing.
Many highly respected American authors statesmen and educators have soundly renounced many policies of the United States for decades. Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, for instance. Most recently Kurt Vonnegut was interviewed on CBC and all but cried for the level of corruption and witness of the rapid decline of American integrity and the actions of both the Clinton and the Bush administrations.
Benjamin Barber, Michael Adams and many many authors have (cuz they really like selling books and making money) taken significant time examining the American ethos and found significant issues of injustice and deep-seated malaise within the American “culture”.
Now the ‘come-back’ on much of the criticism leveled at America is that these kinds of issues are as valid in examining many nations not just America, but America NEVER admits to anything and swaggers around with pompous superiority telling the world that the American hold on moral behaviour and the “moral high road” belongs to America when the rest of the world knows this simply isn’t the case.
I’m not Anti-American I’m Anti-Bullshit and if that’s offensive to your patriotic sensibilities, then we’ll just have to agree to disagree but don’t think for a moment that the halo you’d have bobbing around the heads of Americans is believed by anyone!
Americans have treated the world with arrogance and disdain for a very long time.
The current undermining of the United Nations over the hoax of WMD in Iraq and the embarrassment that Colin Powel suffered presenting that pack of lies to the UN will never be forgotten by anyone. The Bush agenda of neo-conservative petro and econo-imperialism in conjunction with the chutzpah of telling the world that it is the right of America to tell nations who and who may not develop nuclear weapons is destroying America.
Is North Korea a nasty bad place run by a manman?? Maybe but the solution of building missile defense shields and promoting energy weapons development as the U.S. has done for years isn’t movement to peace but an invitation to practice asymmetrical warfare on a bully with no conscience and who’s demonstrated repeatedly that the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is in fact just what Bob Zimmerman called it years ago, the Neighbourhood Bully.
Be proud, Americans have a great deal to be proud of….but don’t imagine for a moment that America is faultless in the mess this planet is in.
