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What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect?

Should America involve itself in foreign conflict?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 2 11.8%

  • No.

    Votes: 7 41.2%

  • Other.

    Votes: 8 47.1%
  • Total voters
    17
Smeagol

Smeagol

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In the wake of 9/11 I could not understand how and why people with whom we had not ill feelings toward could carry out the most massive act of mass-murder in American history and claim by doing so they were doing Almighty God a favor. I get the fact that crazy people exist and it is true that the people carrying out the evil of 9/11 were just a couple of dozen extremists. This however does not explain people in certain corners were dancing in the streets in celebration as Americans mourned the senseless loss of 3000 innocent people.

My curiosity and quest for understanding led me to online discussion board very similar to this one but with a few key differences. The Internet has no borders and that discussion board was based overseas. Additionally although the membership spoke English, its participants were made up of people who identified with and supported a world view more common in the Middle-East than what is common in America. So I had my golden opportunity, to finally learn what the heck was these people's problem.

I honestly was expecting to see posts like infidels must be put to death and western values like letting women drive cars, wear bikinis and normalizing homosexuality were corrupting the world but I was wrong. Instead I got one of the biggest eye-openers of my life, so much so that I doubted the things they were saying. What I learned and independently confirmed was various covert acts of US aggression that were relatively unknown in America were common knowledge in other parts of the world. I thought I was the informed one and they were ignorant to what was going on the world but it turned out the opposite was true. Examples:

- Going back to 1953 while CLAIMING to make the world safe for democracy we overthrew the first democratically elected President of Iran and installed a brutal puppet dictator. Why? Because the democratically elected president wanted to charge western corporations for their country's only natural resource, oil and they wanted it for free. After 30 years of living under a homicidal tyrant, it was this act that motivated the Iranian hostage crisis and fostered the strong theocratic, anti-western reign of the Ayatollahs when they would have had a pro-western democracy.

- Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq because America supported a coup that brought the Bath Party to power. Eventually Hussein rose to become its leader.

- In the 1950s the first democratically elected government of Congo was overthrown by Belgium but orders were also given to US operatives to do the same; Belgium just got to it first. Its first ever democratically elected Prime Minister was tortured to death and since then there has been continual war in the region.

- Ironically, on 9/11 but in the year 1973 the US overthrew the government of Chile and installed another brutal dictator. Various reports and investigations claim that between 1,200 and 3,200 people were killed, up to 80,000 people were interned and as many as 30,000 were tortured during the rule of our US backed dictator. Why did we overthrow their government and install a murderous dictator? Their government threated to curb the sales of Cola-Cola in Chile and they had to go.

- Most disturbing was our overthrow of the government of East Timor as killers armed with American supplied weapons massacre of between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians.

Then add Iran-Contra, Desert Storm that could have been prevented had not our ambassador essentially told Saddam to go ahead and invade Kuwait, helping Saddam brutalize his people by punishing them with no food or medicine that international observers said caused 500,000 innocent children their lives and then our Secretary of State said "was worth it."

Likely more aware of this history than the average political pundit, in 2009 President Obama spoke a various venues around the world signaling a new era of mutual respect. His clueless American critics cynically labeled it the "Obama Apology Tour."

In more recent times President Obama has been accused of being "weak" costing America international respect for not backing a dictator in Egypt, not taking sides in in terms of military action in Syria where there are no "good guys" to back on either side and now I guess they want him to nuke Russia over Ukraine. Should we return to the 20th Century model of US foreign relations that ends up leading to America being seen as a hypocritical bully or should we keep out and let people work out their own issues?
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

I think it's time to tell our government to quit policing the world. Close our borders(north and south) and put Americans first. No more aid and no more protection.
Smeagol said:
In the wake of 9/11 I could not understand how and why people with whom we had not ill feelings toward could carry out the most massive act of mass-murder in American history and claim by doing so they were doing Almighty God a favor. I get the fact that crazy people exist and it is true that the people carrying out the evil of 9/11 were just a couple of dozen extremists. This however does not explain people in certain corners were dancing in the streets in celebration as Americans mourned the senseless loss of 3000 innocent people.

My curiosity and quest for understanding led me to online discussion board very similar to this one but with a few key differences. The Internet has no borders and that discussion board was based overseas. Additionally although the membership spoke English, its participants were made up of people who identified with and supported a world view more common in the Middle-East than what is common in America. So I had my golden opportunity, to finally learn what the heck was these people's problem.

I honestly was expecting to see posts like infidels must be put to death and western values like letting women drive cars, wear bikinis and normalizing homosexuality were corrupting the world but I was wrong. Instead I got one of the biggest eye-openers of my life, so much so that I doubted the things they were saying. What I learned and independently confirmed was various covert acts of US aggression that were relatively unknown in America were common knowledge in other parts of the world. I thought I was the informed one and they were ignorant to what was going on the world but it turned out the opposite was true. Examples:

- Going back to 1953 while CLAIMING to make the world safe for democracy we overthrew the first democratically elected President of Iran and installed a brutal puppet dictator. Why? Because the democratically elected president wanted to charge western corporations for their country's only natural resource, oil and they wanted it for free. After 30 years of living under a homicidal tyrant, it was this act that motivated the Iranian hostage crisis and fostered the strong theocratic, anti-western reign of the Ayatollahs when they would have had a pro-western democracy.

- Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq because America supported a coup that brought the Bath Party to power. Eventually Hussein rose to become its leader.

- In the 1950s the first democratically elected government of Congo was overthrown by Belgium but orders were also given to US operatives to do the same; Belgium just got to it first. Its first ever democratically elected Prime Minister was tortured to death and since then there has been continual war in the region.

- Ironically, on 9/11 but in the year 1973 the US overthrew the government of Chile and installed another brutal dictator. Various reports and investigations claim that between 1,200 and 3,200 people were killed, up to 80,000 people were interned and as many as 30,000 were tortured during the rule of our US backed dictator. Why did we overthrow their government and install a murderous dictator? Their government threated to curb the sales of Cola-Cola in Chile and they had to go.

- Most disturbing was our overthrow of the government of East Timor as killers armed with American supplied weapons massacre of between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians.

Then add Iran-Contra, Desert Storm that could have been prevented had not our ambassador essentially told Saddam to go ahead and invade Kuwait, helping Saddam brutalize his people by punishing them with no food or medicine that international observers said caused 500,000 innocent children their lives and then our Secretary of State said "was worth it."

Likely more aware of this history than the average political pundit, in 2009 President Obama spoke a various venues around the world signaling a new era of mutual respect. His clueless American critics cynically labeled it the "Obama Apology Tour."

In more recent times President Obama has been accused of being "weak" costing America international respect for not backing a dictator in Egypt, not taking sides in in terms of military action in Syria where there are no "good guys" to back on either side and now I guess they want him to nuke Russia over Ukraine. Should we return to the 20th Century model of US foreign relations that ends up leading to America being seen as a hypocritical bully or should we keep out and let people work out their own issues?
Click to expand...
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

I'm glad you've had your eyes opened. I absolutely can't stand the fact that so many Americans think "It's because of our christianity and liberty that they hate us." No, it's because we bomb the **** out of them indiscriminately every chance we get and we've been pushing imperialism on them for decades. We always involve ourselves in places we don't belong and often manage to end up supporting the wrong side. We trained and supplied the Taliban in the 80's, for god's sake.

Combine the violence and death we send out into the world with extreme arrogance and exceptionalism, and you have pretty much the core reason so many people hate us. Don't get me wrong, I'm a proud American, but we need to cool it and stop trying to control the world.
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

Short of treaty obligations, the United States should avoid military conflict....period. It is abundantly clear that when we decide to get involved in conflicts in other countries, our people die, their people die, and there will always be individuals and groups that seek revenge and hate us.

If we are attacked, yes....we need to destroy the attacker completely. But, other than that we need to stay out of it.
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

Smeagol said:
In the wake of 9/11 I could not understand how and why people with whom we had not ill feelings toward could carry out the most massive act of mass-murder in American history and claim by doing so they were doing Almighty God a favor. I get the fact that crazy people exist and it is true that the people carrying out the evil of 9/11 were just a couple of dozen extremists. This however does not explain people in certain corners were dancing in the streets in celebration as Americans mourned the senseless loss of 3000 innocent people.

My curiosity and quest for understanding led me to online discussion board very similar to this one but with a few key differences. The Internet has no borders and that discussion board was based overseas. Additionally although the membership spoke English, its participants were made up of people who identified with and supported a world view more common in the Middle-East than what is common in America. So I had my golden opportunity, to finally learn what the heck was these people's problem.

I honestly was expecting to see posts like infidels must be put to death and western values like letting women drive cars, wear bikinis and normalizing homosexuality were corrupting the world but I was wrong. Instead I got one of the biggest eye-openers of my life, so much so that I doubted the things they were saying. What I learned and independently confirmed was various covert acts of US aggression that were relatively unknown in America were common knowledge in other parts of the world. I thought I was the informed one and they were ignorant to what was going on the world but it turned out the opposite was true. Examples:

- Going back to 1953 while CLAIMING to make the world safe for democracy we overthrew the first democratically elected President of Iran and installed a brutal puppet dictator. Why? Because the democratically elected president wanted to charge western corporations for their country's only natural resource, oil and they wanted it for free. After 30 years of living under a homicidal tyrant, it was this act that motivated the Iranian hostage crisis and fostered the strong theocratic, anti-western reign of the Ayatollahs when they would have had a pro-western democracy.

- Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq because America supported a coup that brought the Bath Party to power. Eventually Hussein rose to become its leader.

- In the 1950s the first democratically elected government of Congo was overthrown by Belgium but orders were also given to US operatives to do the same; Belgium just got to it first. Its first ever democratically elected Prime Minister was tortured to death and since then there has been continual war in the region.

- Ironically, on 9/11 but in the year 1973 the US overthrew the government of Chile and installed another brutal dictator. Various reports and investigations claim that between 1,200 and 3,200 people were killed, up to 80,000 people were interned and as many as 30,000 were tortured during the rule of our US backed dictator. Why did we overthrow their government and install a murderous dictator? Their government threated to curb the sales of Cola-Cola in Chile and they had to go.

- Most disturbing was our overthrow of the government of East Timor as killers armed with American supplied weapons massacre of between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians.

Then add Iran-Contra, Desert Storm that could have been prevented had not our ambassador essentially told Saddam to go ahead and invade Kuwait, helping Saddam brutalize his people by punishing them with no food or medicine that international observers said caused 500,000 innocent children their lives and then our Secretary of State said "was worth it."

Likely more aware of this history than the average political pundit, in 2009 President Obama spoke a various venues around the world signaling a new era of mutual respect. His clueless American critics cynically labeled it the "Obama Apology Tour."

In more recent times President Obama has been accused of being "weak" costing America international respect for not backing a dictator in Egypt, not taking sides in in terms of military action in Syria where there are no "good guys" to back on either side and now I guess they want him to nuke Russia over Ukraine. Should we return to the 20th Century model of US foreign relations that ends up leading to America being seen as a hypocritical bully or should we keep out and let people work out their own issues?
Click to expand...

So basically you are asking: a) Whether you should continue being a hypocritical bully of the world and spare countries in need to be free from intervention, or b) respect other countries and leave them be in peace under the oppression of other countries not necessarily USA. This is a false dichotomy that does not take into consideration what kind of rule do superpowers offer.

The USA corporates do want resources from other countries, but they freaking purchase them with dollars. Okay dollars run more on faith than gold today but that is another issue.

Other superpowers offer brutal medieval rule by use of force and not only gain access to resources for free but also enslave and assimilate its people's culture, identity, and rule with an iron grip. This is a la Russian rule of oppression and China should be the same too.

Now I may be biased but the former sounds a better kind of rule than the later. A country is free to be itself culturally rather than be assimilated, build itself an economy rather than stay idle while corruption evaporates the goods, trade its resources rather than hand them over for free, build itself an army rather then force its young soldiers to serve in a foreign army, and cooperate with allies rather than be in a bully control from another superpower.

Lately though I have been thinking that whether the former is better or not depends on the people. Some people in various countries of the world just do not seem to get it that the former is better. Those countries may fall under the later form of rule with greater ease for they understand and abide by such rules in their lives more. In other words I think they are what you call "backward" people.

Perhaps they may be in peace while in oppression as strange as this may sound. Perhaps in time they would change and embrace the later rule better. In which case we then should be more ready to move in.

Ukraine though is not among such people. It is in Europe and they are more intelligent than that. Hence Russia should stay the F out of Ukraine. For its own sake!
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

Dorder to get a grip on the past I think it would important to look at the international environment existing at that time and try to understand the options available and the consequences and risks to the USA implied. To do this in full for even one example exceeds our present possibilities here. In general terms, however, there seem to me to have been ample reasons to install a strongman, where the us position was endangered, considering the weight and duration of the effort and the enormity of the dangers to the American people.

This must be separated from the actions after winning the cold war and the challenges now evolving. Each set is totally different and requires correspondingly different responses.
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

DDD said:
So basically you are asking: a) Whether you should continue being a hypocritical bully of the world and spare countries in need to be free from intervention, or b) respect other countries and leave them be in peace under the oppression of other countries not necessarily USA. This is a false dichotomy that does not take into consideration what kind of rule do superpowers offer.

The USA corporates do want resources from other countries, but they freaking purchase them with dollars. Okay dollars run more on faith than gold today but that is another issue.

Other superpowers offer brutal medieval rule by use of force and not only gain access to resources for free but also enslave and assimilate its people's culture, identity, and rule with an iron grip. This is a la Russian rule of oppression and China should be the same too.

Now I may be biased but the former sounds a better kind of rule than the later. A country is free to be itself culturally rather than be assimilated, build itself an economy rather than stay idle while corruption evaporates the goods, trade its resources rather than hand them over for free, build itself an army rather then force its young soldiers to serve in a foreign army, and cooperate with allies rather than be in a bully control from another superpower.

Lately though I have been thinking that whether the former is better or not depends on the people. Some people in various countries of the world just do not seem to get it that the former is better. Those countries may fall under the later form of rule with greater ease for they understand and abide by such rules in their lives more. In other words I think they are what you call "backward" people.

Perhaps they may be in peace while in oppression as strange as this may sound. Perhaps in time they would change and embrace the later rule better. In which case we then should be more ready to move in.

Ukraine though is not among such people. It is in Europe and they are more intelligent than that. Hence Russia should stay the F out of Ukraine. For its own sake!
Click to expand...

That is a very interesting comment.
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

joG said:
That is a very interesting comment.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

Well we should know and have a say about superpower offerings. We have been under one superpower or the other ever since we fall to the Roman Empire before the new era.

This one is the best thus far ;)
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

DDD said:
Thanks.

Well we should know and have a say about superpower offerings. We have been under one superpower or the other ever since we fall to the Roman Empire before the new era.

This one is the best thus far ;)
Click to expand...

Yep. Always helps one's judgment to have a comparison.
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

RabidAlpaca said:
I'm glad you've had your eyes opened. I absolutely can't stand the fact that so many Americans think "It's because of our christianity and liberty that they hate us." No, it's because we bomb the **** out of them indiscriminately every chance we get and we've been pushing imperialism on them for decades. We always involve ourselves in places we don't belong and often manage to end up supporting the wrong side. We trained and supplied the Taliban in the 80's, for god's sake.

Combine the violence and death we send out into the world with extreme arrogance and exceptionalism, and you have pretty much the core reason so many people hate us. Don't get me wrong, I'm a proud American, but we need to cool it and stop trying to control the world.
Click to expand...


We bombed the heck out of Germany and Japan and they don't hate us. We fought two wars with England and they don't hate us. We tried to invade Canada and they don't hate us. I'm not even sure that Mexico really hates us and we took over 1/3 of their country. I would even wager that Vietnam doesn't hate us and would love to do more business with us they we do.

I wonder why that is?
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

Smeagol said:
In the wake of 9/11 I could not understand how and why people with whom we had not ill feelings toward could carry out the most massive act of mass-murder in American history and claim by doing so they were doing Almighty God a favor. I get the fact that crazy people exist and it is true that the people carrying out the evil of 9/11 were just a couple of dozen extremists. This however does not explain people in certain corners were dancing in the streets in celebration as Americans mourned the senseless loss of 3000 innocent people.

My curiosity and quest for understanding led me to online discussion board very similar to this one but with a few key differences. The Internet has no borders and that discussion board was based overseas. Additionally although the membership spoke English, its participants were made up of people who identified with and supported a world view more common in the Middle-East than what is common in America. So I had my golden opportunity, to finally learn what the heck was these people's problem.

I honestly was expecting to see posts like infidels must be put to death and western values like letting women drive cars, wear bikinis and normalizing homosexuality were corrupting the world but I was wrong. Instead I got one of the biggest eye-openers of my life, so much so that I doubted the things they were saying. What I learned and independently confirmed was various covert acts of US aggression that were relatively unknown in America were common knowledge in other parts of the world. I thought I was the informed one and they were ignorant to what was going on the world but it turned out the opposite was true. Examples:

- Going back to 1953 while CLAIMING to make the world safe for democracy we overthrew the first democratically elected President of Iran and installed a brutal puppet dictator. Why? Because the democratically elected president wanted to charge western corporations for their country's only natural resource, oil and they wanted it for free. After 30 years of living under a homicidal tyrant, it was this act that motivated the Iranian hostage crisis and fostered the strong theocratic, anti-western reign of the Ayatollahs when they would have had a pro-western democracy.

- Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq because America supported a coup that brought the Bath Party to power. Eventually Hussein rose to become its leader.

- In the 1950s the first democratically elected government of Congo was overthrown by Belgium but orders were also given to US operatives to do the same; Belgium just got to it first. Its first ever democratically elected Prime Minister was tortured to death and since then there has been continual war in the region.

- Ironically, on 9/11 but in the year 1973 the US overthrew the government of Chile and installed another brutal dictator. Various reports and investigations claim that between 1,200 and 3,200 people were killed, up to 80,000 people were interned and as many as 30,000 were tortured during the rule of our US backed dictator. Why did we overthrow their government and install a murderous dictator? Their government threated to curb the sales of Cola-Cola in Chile and they had to go.

- Most disturbing was our overthrow of the government of East Timor as killers armed with American supplied weapons massacre of between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians.

Then add Iran-Contra, Desert Storm that could have been prevented had not our ambassador essentially told Saddam to go ahead and invade Kuwait, helping Saddam brutalize his people by punishing them with no food or medicine that international observers said caused 500,000 innocent children their lives and then our Secretary of State said "was worth it."

Likely more aware of this history than the average political pundit, in 2009 President Obama spoke a various venues around the world signaling a new era of mutual respect. His clueless American critics cynically labeled it the "Obama Apology Tour."

In more recent times President Obama has been accused of being "weak" costing America international respect for not backing a dictator in Egypt, not taking sides in in terms of military action in Syria where there are no "good guys" to back on either side and now I guess they want him to nuke Russia over Ukraine. Should we return to the 20th Century model of US foreign relations that ends up leading to America being seen as a hypocritical bully or should we keep out and let people work out their own issues?
Click to expand...
I voted no.I could care less if the rest of the world respects or fears us.I come to the realization that the lives of my fellow countrymen are worth more than the lives of foreigners and resources in other countries and the fact that helping a country out could come back and bite us in the ass years later.
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

With power and wealth comes great responsibility.

We can thank the global financial oligarchy for all this evil in this world.
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

Del Zeppnile said:
We bombed the heck out of Germany and Japan and they don't hate us. We fought two wars with England and they don't hate us. We tried to invade Canada and they don't hate us. I'm not even sure that Mexico really hates us and we took over 1/3 of their country. I would even wager that Vietnam doesn't hate us and would love to do more business with us they we do.

I wonder why that is?
Click to expand...

Germany and Japan were aggressors on an international level in an international war. After we defeated them, we stop killing them. That is absolutely not the case in the middle east. Hardly a week goes by without an incident with one of our drones wiping out a city block, or in some cases, a wedding procession. We manipulate them for our best interest, and it almost always is against their best interest. We meddle and meddle and meddle in their affairs, then wonder why they hate us. It must be the liberty and jesus!
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

RabidAlpaca said:
Germany and Japan were aggressors on an international level in an international war. After we defeated them, we stop killing them. That is absolutely not the case in the middle east. Hardly a week goes by without an incident with one of our drones wiping out a city block, or in some cases, a wedding procession. We manipulate them for our best interest, and it almost always is against their best interest. We meddle and meddle and meddle in their affairs, then wonder why they hate us. It must be the liberty and jesus!
Click to expand...

I'm pragmatic enough to realize its not likely we have the fortitude to stand on principle and do the right thing when our economy is utterly dependent upon other people's natural resources to function. This is especially so when that natural resource aka petroleum, operates as a monopoly over the American people. People who think oil is not the key factor in our drive to "bring freedom and liberty" to these people by military force that ends up supporting and in some cases installing US friendly homicidal dictators, IMHO you're like I was; somewhere between blissfully ignorant and intellectually dishonest. If freedom, liberty and human rights were what we truly cared about (at least pre-Obama and to some extent pre-W. Bush, and pre-Clinton) we would have brought freedom, liberty and human rights to The Congo, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Iraq back in the late 70s, South Africa in the 1950s, etc.

In my humble view, the best opportunity we have at breaking our utter dependency on petroleum is to diversify our energy consumption like its the emergency it is, chiefly by getting behind electric car technology. If all you care about is money, this is far less expensive to do than enforcing no-fly zones in the Middle East that trigger responses for militant extremists who consider our presence in their countries as defiling and desecrating the "the sacred land of Mohamed." Then have to pay through the nose to fight the War on Terror and the War in Iraq to defend ourselves. BTW: the doctrine of driving out the infidels from their midst was taught by the Wahhabi Madrassas (aka the Saudi public school system) and nearly all of the 9/11 terrorists attended that we indirectly we paid for through our gasoline purchases as my best guess is the Saudi dictatorship figured if they make the most devout form of Islam a part of the public school system there, the peasant masses wouldn't care about materialism and they could live the glamorous life with no public objection.
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

sneakosview said:
I think it's time to tell our government to quit policing the world. Close our borders(north and south) and put Americans first. No more aid and no more protection.
Click to expand...


I'm personally okay with defending our treaty allies, leading coalitions to stop crimes against humanity and using our military to aid in humanitarian relief. What I do not support is using any of that as false pretense to seize control of other countries' resources or installing puppet regimes that will hand over their resources and oil is my biggest concern.
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

I'm just not sold on the worlds keeper thing but it's not my call.
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

Smeagol said:
In the wake of 9/11 I could not understand how and why people with whom we had not ill feelings toward could carry out the most massive act of mass-murder in American history and claim by doing so they were doing Almighty God a favor. I get the fact that crazy people exist and it is true that the people carrying out the evil of 9/11 were just a couple of dozen extremists. This however does not explain people in certain corners were dancing in the streets in celebration as Americans mourned the senseless loss of 3000 innocent people.

My curiosity and quest for understanding led me to online discussion board very similar to this one but with a few key differences. The Internet has no borders and that discussion board was based overseas. Additionally although the membership spoke English, its participants were made up of people who identified with and supported a world view more common in the Middle-East than what is common in America. So I had my golden opportunity, to finally learn what the heck was these people's problem.

I honestly was expecting to see posts like infidels must be put to death and western values like letting women drive cars, wear bikinis and normalizing homosexuality were corrupting the world but I was wrong. Instead I got one of the biggest eye-openers of my life, so much so that I doubted the things they were saying. What I learned and independently confirmed was various covert acts of US aggression that were relatively unknown in America were common knowledge in other parts of the world. I thought I was the informed one and they were ignorant to what was going on the world but it turned out the opposite was true. Examples:

- Going back to 1953 while CLAIMING to make the world safe for democracy we overthrew the first democratically elected President of Iran and installed a brutal puppet dictator. Why? Because the democratically elected president wanted to charge western corporations for their country's only natural resource, oil and they wanted it for free. After 30 years of living under a homicidal tyrant, it was this act that motivated the Iranian hostage crisis and fostered the strong theocratic, anti-western reign of the Ayatollahs when they would have had a pro-western democracy.

- Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq because America supported a coup that brought the Bath Party to power. Eventually Hussein rose to become its leader.

- In the 1950s the first democratically elected government of Congo was overthrown by Belgium but orders were also given to US operatives to do the same; Belgium just got to it first. Its first ever democratically elected Prime Minister was tortured to death and since then there has been continual war in the region.

- Ironically, on 9/11 but in the year 1973 the US overthrew the government of Chile and installed another brutal dictator. Various reports and investigations claim that between 1,200 and 3,200 people were killed, up to 80,000 people were interned and as many as 30,000 were tortured during the rule of our US backed dictator. Why did we overthrow their government and install a murderous dictator? Their government threated to curb the sales of Cola-Cola in Chile and they had to go.

- Most disturbing was our overthrow of the government of East Timor as killers armed with American supplied weapons massacre of between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians.

Then add Iran-Contra, Desert Storm that could have been prevented had not our ambassador essentially told Saddam to go ahead and invade Kuwait, helping Saddam brutalize his people by punishing them with no food or medicine that international observers said caused 500,000 innocent children their lives and then our Secretary of State said "was worth it."

Likely more aware of this history than the average political pundit, in 2009 President Obama spoke a various venues around the world signaling a new era of mutual respect. His clueless American critics cynically labeled it the "Obama Apology Tour."

In more recent times President Obama has been accused of being "weak" costing America international respect for not backing a dictator in Egypt, not taking sides in in terms of military action in Syria where there are no "good guys" to back on either side and now I guess they want him to nuke Russia over Ukraine. Should we return to the 20th Century model of US foreign relations that ends up leading to America being seen as a hypocritical bully or should we keep out and let people work out their own issues?
Click to expand...

Just looking at the highlighted paragraphs in your post--I didn't check out any of the other points made--, I wonder what was the source of your information? First the CIA was not involved in the Baath Party coming to power in Iraq, but the U.S. and U.K. did support the new, far more democratic, and less brutal Baath party that ousted Qasam in mid Twentieth Century. The USA had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein eventually rising to power within that party and turning out to be an even more brutal and conscienceless dictator than Qasam was. It is a legitimate debate, however, whether the U.S. helping Iraq sufficiently to keep Iran from controlling a huge portion of the Middle East oil fields was a good move to prevent a massive destabilization of the Middle East.

And April Glaspie did not 'essentially tell Saddam to invade Kuwait' as the story the internet gossip and rumor mill is fond of supporting. Neither she nor anybody else had any clue he intended to do so until it was being done. And certainly nobody in the USA was promoting Saddam invading Saudi Arabia as the Saudi's were convinced he intended to do since he had a large portion of his army amassing on their border.

The basics of your OP are spot on and offer a subject worthy of discussion. But we do need to be careful that the anti-US propaganda machine is not overly active and we should utilize history as honest as we can find when we discuss it.
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

RabidAlpaca said:
Germany and Japan were aggressors on an international level in an international war. That is absolutely not the case in the middle east.
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Germany and Japan both had been under the thumb of other Imperialist nations (aggressors) prior to WW2. They were wrong, but they still had "their reasons". Isn't that what you are saying is the same with certain Middle East nations?

RabidAlpaca said:
After we defeated them [Germany & Japan], we stop killing them.
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Sounds like you are saying we just need to defeat those middle Eastern nations and then we can stop killing them. Maybe we just haven't "gone Roman" enough on them yet?

RabidAlpaca said:
Hardly a week goes by without an incident with one of our drones wiping out a city block, or in some cases, a wedding procession. We manipulate them for our best interest, and it almost always is against their best interest. We meddle and meddle and meddle in their affairs, then wonder why they hate us. It must be the liberty and jesus!
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During the Allied invasion of France in June & July of 1944 it is estimated that 70,000 French civilians were killed from Allied bombs in the effort to retake the French coastline and break through the German lines and force the enemy further inland.

Sure, it must have been the "liberty and Jesus".
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

RabidAlpaca said:
Germany and Japan were aggressors on an international level in an international war. After we defeated them, we stop killing them. That is absolutely not the case in the middle east. Hardly a week goes by without an incident with one of our drones wiping out a city block, or in some cases, a wedding procession. We manipulate them for our best interest, and it almost always is against their best interest. We meddle and meddle and meddle in their affairs, then wonder why they hate us. It must be the liberty and jesus!
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This is perhaps too silly, but it could be...christened.... the Meddle East?
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

sneakosview said:
I think it's time to tell our government to quit policing the world. Close our borders(north and south) and put Americans first. No more aid and no more protection.
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The problem with that is....we consume a bunch of **** that other areas of the world produce.

We would either have to do without those things, or make/gather them our selves.

We want our stuff too much to close our borders.
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

We are gonna have to figure this all out before Europeans run the US.
The Mark said:
The problem with that is....we consume a bunch of **** that other areas of the world produce.

We would either have to do without those things, or make/gather them our selves.

We want our stuff too much to close our borders.
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Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

DDD said:
So basically you are asking: a) Whether you should continue being a hypocritical bully of the world and spare countries in need to be free from intervention, or b) respect other countries and leave them be in peace under the oppression of other countries not necessarily USA. This is a false dichotomy that does not take into consideration what kind of rule do superpowers offer.

The USA corporates do want resources from other countries, but they freaking purchase them with dollars. Okay dollars run more on faith than gold today but that is another issue.

Other superpowers offer brutal medieval rule by use of force and not only gain access to resources for free but also enslave and assimilate its people's culture, identity, and rule with an iron grip. This is a la Russian rule of oppression and China should be the same too.

Now I may be biased but the former sounds a better kind of rule than the later. A country is free to be itself culturally rather than be assimilated, build itself an economy rather than stay idle while corruption evaporates the goods, trade its resources rather than hand them over for free, build itself an army rather then force its young soldiers to serve in a foreign army, and cooperate with allies rather than be in a bully control from another superpower.

Lately though I have been thinking that whether the former is better or not depends on the people. Some people in various countries of the world just do not seem to get it that the former is better. Those countries may fall under the later form of rule with greater ease for they understand and abide by such rules in their lives more. In other words I think they are what you call "backward" people.

Perhaps they may be in peace while in oppression as strange as this may sound. Perhaps in time they would change and embrace the later rule better. In which case we then should be more ready to move in.

Ukraine though is not among such people. It is in Europe and they are more intelligent than that. Hence Russia should stay the F out of Ukraine. For its own sake!
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A fair opinion. The United States has also instituted morally questionable policies, but it isn't much to say that our allies and "protectorates" have improved through their relationship with us more than the allies of Russia and the former Soviet Union. Mostly because Russia seeks out corrupt oligarchs whose dispositions and economic interests match those of the Kremlin and not those of their own people.
 
Re: What helps America more in terms of credibility as a nation: agression or respect

Morality Games said:
A fair opinion. The United States has also instituted morally questionable policies, but it isn't much to say that our allies and "protectorates" have improved through their relationship with us more than the allies of Russia and the former Soviet Union. Mostly because Russia seeks out corrupt oligarchs whose dispositions and economic interests match those of the Kremlin and not those of their own people.
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Yep as long as you promote diversity and are more interested in trading it should all go well.
 
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