Quote: (04-04-2012 08:06 PM)ZamboniJones Wrote:
Absolutely America creates its own enemies. Being the superpower that it was in the 1900's and continues to be today, eventually parts of the world are going to get tired of American presence everywhere. We haven't exactly been the models of morality with our history in the states.
Ron Paul had the audacity to argue this in the primaries but got booed for suggesting that our overly-aggressive foreign policy creates enemies.
I think a lot of Americans are woefully misled in thinking that our problems can be fixed just by, say, destroying Al Qaeda or toppling an Arab regime. The real problem lies within America's knack for creating enemies and interfering too much around the world.
Really though? A lot of people criticize the actions the US has taken, without truly understanding what the alternatives could have been.
If Saddam Hussain was allowed to invade Kuwait without restraint, he would have controlled *25%* of the world's oil reserves. He'd effectively be able to blackmail most of the world's oil-dependent countries and would be a price cartel all by himself.
If the US wasn't actively watching and operating in Iran, they'd probably have developed nukes and blew up Israel by now.
It's easy to say "we shouldn't be in those countries," but the reality is none of us really know what all the alternatives were. No action is often a much worst alternative than action that causes the world to hate us.
I'm just saying, I don't even pretend to understand these issues. I'm not uneducated and I believe I actually know more than most people. Which is why I know just how much I don't know.
The world does need a police. Being that police costs money and costs lives. The reality is, nobody else wants that role, nor can anybody else really take that role. We're the world's largest GDP. We can either step up to the plate or let things fall apart when nobody steps in those shoes. So, we step up to the plate.
I'm not hardcore on either side of the issue, I'm just saying there's much more to the issue than "we're making people hate us."
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