I'm old enough to have had anti-war protests during Vietnam; since then we've turned our backs on "the good we've done", as you say it.
I can't think of any war/intervention since and including then - with the possible exception of Yugoslavia - where we've done anything but meddle/
interfere with other countrys rights of self rule/determination.
My beef with Hilary is Libya - another misadventure where we took a stable state under auspice of a 'UN No Fly zone', and turned it into a targeted assasination of Qaddafi.
Which was regime change/assassination, and created the terrorist state Libya has become post Qaddafi. The US led NATO on this.
Both Hillary and Susan Rice pushse the "Viagra rape" crap that Libyan forces were uising rape as a weapon of war.
Not saying there wasn't some commanders that might have done so - but unfortunately rape is all too common in African wars.
Hillary hyped it -also the Bengazi fiasco has to rest on her hands, I mean Obama and Company are very good at deflecting any accountability
but someone had to know about the poor security there.
IMHO ( and i can't prove it) Hillary knowingly left Bengazi under secure to cover up Libayn weapons smuggling to Syria.
If you need references, i'll try to find them/ tired of continuously making this point on various messageboards, but will do so. if need be,
Well, again, I take exception to what you are, seemingly, attempting lay down as the whole of American Exceptionalism... it is more than just where we use our military/which wars we have been in.
Despite that, and while I do not have a very high regard for this kind of stuff as I do think we, often, just need to let things flow their natural way... but going into Somalia and, after, going into Haiti, I think those were good-hearted efforts that were not aimed at just American interests... I think getting rid of the "Pineapple" in Panama probably did that country some good overall, as did booting the commies in Grenada and aiding the Contras against the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua... I have been there, talked to many and, while divided on this Reagan assistance, I would say more appreciated the help at the time than didn't.
While I cannot know the inner workings of what might really be going on, I don't think we went into Iraq twice for any other reason than to push Saddam back, keep him from invading/intimidating his neighbors and killing his own people... and we thought he had WMD programs that he had agreed to stop, not just put into suspense until we weren't looking, with the agreed to cease fire in the first Gulf War. While many thought we just went there for oil, can we see some evidence of that... what oil did we get? We kept oil in the region flowing to the world, which indeed helps us as if the oil didn't flow they would all be flocking to our sources driving the price sky high...sure...but, I think we did the right thing going in there. And, we obviously had a reason to hit Afghanistan after 9 11.
American exceptionalism includes the fact that we produce more patents than any other country, our system has unleashed so many people to be better than they might have been elsewhere, we are still the immigrant capital of the world with people around the world hating us, but at the same time clamoring to come here and be a part...
I would say much has gone downhill in the last decade or so, I fear for the America I grew up in, but its always a struggle...I would have feared it if I grew up in the pushing towards socialism times of FDR with all the powerful predators beginning to stand up on their hind legs, clawing at the rest of the world until we had that big war... and the Iron Curtain dropping down afterwards...always a struggle, that is what life is, I guess.
So we are always remaking America, some try to push it in a less prudent direction, I am thinking that is what happened with Obama and this debacle of a health care plan... and the American people, good-hearted, get sucked in at the beginning and, suddenly, start seeing things much more clearly. We need to get more back to our roots, to the Feds only being responsible for what they were intended to be responsible for so that we can go back to being more free individuals, which is what this country was all about in the beginning... freedom for us.
I agree with you on the Benghazi fiasco... could tell there was something strange going down there right from the beginning, just stank to high heaven, nothing the admin was saying was quite plausible... and we still don't know. Why we helped eliminate a guy that was complying, Gaddafi had given up his WMDs and he was not a big trouble, similar to whats his name in Egypt, why are we eliminating, pushing aside these guys who are not great guys necessarily, but wow, in that part of the world to keep order, who could be really?
If you keep running into the same arguments, and you get to pick and choose, why not bookmark your sources or put some of them on a Word doc and then you have them ready for the next go round. No use reinventing the wheel every time. Just a suggestion.
