shrug It’s a lot closer to reality than your silly comparison of the US to the mafia.
-XT
Describe the mafia for me.
More American exceptionalism. The unspoken factor in your entire argument is that you don’t think it counts when America attacks or coerces or subverts some other country. America has been running wild across the world since WWII attacking, corrupting, coercing; funding wars, instigating coups, training & encouraging terrorists, death squads, rapists and torturers; warping the economies of any nations too weak or corrupt to resist them for its profit and to evangelize its amoral & plutocratic version of capitalism. And it was just as bad to its near neighbors before then.
And I doubt my assessment of America is “stunning” anywhere outside America.
This.
Not stunning to me in America, but then there is no exceptionalism to our badness, every dominant empire in history has done the same. Humanity is the pooch screwed.
Hmm … well, the Sunni/Shi’ite, Arab/Persian splits in the Middle East means that, while a lot of MENA states don’t like the United States hanging around, they still see teh United States as a necessary counterweight to Iran. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and others are not at all happy at the prospect of Iran as a nuclear power, for various reasons they can’t openly work with Israel, and the United States is pretty much the only outside power than can project some military muscle into the area. What’s more, the United States does have some serious leverage with Israel (and I suspect that American influence has prevented some reckless Israeli air raids and commando strikes in Iran). Sure, everybody hates the Yankees, but the politics are complicated as hell, and the bottom line is that the rest of the world expects us to keep the oil flowing. Withdraw American influence from the area, and … well, hell, nobody really knows what would happen. It probably wouldn’t do the world economy a hell of a lot of good.
That’s surprising to me, I guess I was just making the assumption the Okinawan opinion was only a little more anti-American troop presence than the rest of Japan. I know in Okinawa the military presence is detested.
Might be true anyway but polls are often engineered to get a specific result or just bad. You’d have to look at the guts of it, who funded it, ect. For instance for presidential polling if you read 538’s analysis of polls he constantly comments on the validity of various polls, which ones have shown better track records, methodology, ect, and a 10% swing between polls that are supposed to be on the same issue are not uncommon.
Its not that unreasonable for the Japanese to like us there anyway, we are strong allies.
Well, it’s also possible to recognize the need to have someone as a political or military ally, and still not like them very much.
It could be a NIMBY attitude.
“We want the Amreican military in Japan, just not here.”
74 percent of the American soldiers in Japan are in Okinawa, the other 25 percent scattered over many locations on the main island. I’d probably be pissed too if I was Okinawan.
I haven’t read the replies here so I am not sure what others have said, but my take on it is that the World wants the US to be involved when it is convenient for them. We are a good and moral people and do try to stand up for what is right in this world. I think that many countries take advantage of that for it is easier to spend out money and use our troops lives than use their own. The problem is, when they want our handouts everything is okay, but if we ask for something in return ie: a say in what is happening in that particular region then they want us out.
I don’t think that it can work both ways. If you want the US to be your muscle or if you want the US to supply money, food and supplies then we have a vested interest in what happens in your part of the world. Pretty much like living in your parents house. You want out shelter, food and money and that’s fine, but our house our rules type of thing. I am not saying that because we lend assistance that we should have total control over a nation. But I don’t see any benefit for us to provide assistance without influence.
I personally would rather much have the US be the military “presence” in the South East Asia region (I’m in Singapore, FTR), than anyone else in the region. Seriously, the countries in this area do not have good reputations for being well adjusted with military power, the current exception being Japan, but they have a major ubermench complex and it wasn’t that long ago… you know. World Wars and all that.
So no. As much as I hate militarism, the alternative, at least in this region, is FAR FAR worse. Hegmon away.
I see it more that we are so subjected to US involvement in everything, from military muscle to financial meddling, that it gets to the point that if using the US would be advantageous then you’d be an idiot to not use them.
The general population may well be, but you’d have to be really amazingly naïve to believe that about the US government.
Also, define “right”.
N.B.: By no means all American troops abroad got where they are/were by invitation.
Suffice it to say that the world be quite different if the US were not “the world’s policeman”. The little action in Libya, and it was little as those things go, could not have happened without the US. You might argue that the world would be a better place , but it would certainly be different-- ie, more conflicts similar to Iraq’s fun adventure in Kuwait 20 years ago.
So, I’ll take this non-answer as ‘I don’t want to deal with actual history and instead will just continue my rantage about America’. Fair enough…I didn’t expect anything else, to be honest.
It’s more ‘American exceptionalism’ to point out that the world IS a safer place, and that the US DOES have a key role in the worlds security? Well then…yeah. We are exceptional.
As to my ‘unspoken factor’, I never said that everything the US does is good and right. Over all, however, the US does more good than harm…and the world HAS been a safer and more stable place since the US Pax Americana kicked in. And it will continue along those lines until the US (and the alliances that the US has built world wide) finally are unable to maintain sufficient strength on a global scale to make it not worth while for countries to get ideas along serious military lines. And before you turn that ranting tape recorder back on, just ask Gaddaffi how things worked out for him.
You misunderheard. The ‘stunning’ was said tongue in cheek and was directed at myself and perhaps others being militantly stunned that you would take up an Anti-American position in a thread like this. I know I was just STUNNED that you would do something like this, considering your past track record.
-XT
I should think that the United States probably requires it…
Ya think? Who actually wants to invade us lately?
Well, that wacky Chavez is a pretty unpredictable guy…
Well, go ahead - what are these risks, how are you quantifying them? Prove that the world has been more stable in the last 50 years (the years that include Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq I, Iraq II, Iran-Iraq, Afghanistan, DRC, Sudan, etc.)
Just from an African perspective, the years since 1970 have probably been the bloodiest in the last 100 years. Ditto for South/Central America - American hegemony wasn’t kind there, either.