The White Man's Burden

[Bat Vader]

The problem is people.

For example all these spineless muppets that whitter on about how bad it was for the US to intervene (WRONG kiddos it was bad that the US didn't finish what it started the first time, but it wasn't allowed to by ... spineless liberal muppets).

No replace the words Iraq with German and travel back in time 40 years. Problem solved.

The OP is talking about people who think that they are better than others and other people are lesser creatures(So liberals then). Human beings are so inherently insular and shortsighted this problem will never be resolved we cant see beyond our gene squirt

Having trained with teachers who say outloud in public in front of people who can hear 'I dont see why we have to teach christian children about muslims and jews, we shouldnt be advocating choice or options (I paraphrase)' and working with nurses who dont know how HIV is contracted or what an OD is, I dont beleive we should have nations.

Just stop rutting for a few decades, have a few choice births with no parent having the same skin colour until theres a global population of 1 billion, set fire to all the maps and fire up a nice individual input democracy with a global unearned wage and robots to work the power stations and sewage works

We were drawn into WWII though by the Japanese. Actually liberals just want to be left alone and have freedoms. The conservatives feel they are better than everyone else. On Fox new's red eye show the conservative host says America is the greatest country in the world and universe. That sounds like trying to be better than everyone else.

You sound like you want people to have their choices taken away. I mean that isn't right. If I want to believe in god I should have that choice.

In the end of it all though, I believe that politics is just a bunch of opinions that are trying to be enforced onto other people.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

"
America can't win, and it bothers me. We're never allowed to be right. If we interfere in a foreign country (Iraq), and free their citizens from an evil dictator, we're imperialist dogs. If we fail to interfere in a foreign country (Sudan), we're amoral bastards. Pick a gear and stay in it a while. Either we're the world's police officers, and supposed to go in and stop injustice, or we aren't, but don't ask us to do both.
.

There lies the problem with a lot of people's atitude in America.

No one is asking you to do either.

 

[dunnace]

Hey! England is a super power! Oh who am I kidding...
Interesting this, I suppose the US gets a lot of rap because... the last war you got involved in that was (in my eyes) justified was WW2. I say you, I'm English so I'll refer to the US in the second person. And I'm well aware we got involved with Iraq... not happy about that at all.

Vietnam was pretty unfair, I have studied it, US screwed up there, and the cold war was just a swaggering match between you and Russia, the whole "Communism is evil" thing is just narrow minded, there was no reason to just agree to accept them, at least not to my knowledge. They might have disagreed with how countries are run, but they're not running your country!

 

[Satki]

I think the problem in Iraq was the complete lack of social skills and the isolationism shown by the US army to the people in Iraq when patrolling, such as treating every civilian as a possible hostile... this is the main reason why the British soldiers have had much more (relative success), and so Iraqi opinion has turned against the US.

Not what I heard from people who've actually BEEN there, but I'll agree that posing one's self as a cold, well-armed occupier is no good for winning over hearts and minds.

Should've never gone in the first place.

... you get hungry?[/quote]

True, I havent't been there and I have no desire to, but I got that response from one of John Simpon's autobiographies (BBC journalist), who spends a lot of time in Iraq

 

[Seldon2639]

"
America can't win, and it bothers me. We're never allowed to be right. If we interfere in a foreign country (Iraq), and free their citizens from an evil dictator, we're imperialist dogs. If we fail to interfere in a foreign country (Sudan), we're amoral bastards. Pick a gear and stay in it a while. Either we're the world's police officers, and supposed to go in and stop injustice, or we aren't, but don't ask us to do both.
.

There lies the problem with a lot of people's atitude in America.

No one is asking you to do either.

I'm sorry, but I had to jump back in to respond to this. Of course they're asking us to. Read the international press, especially things coming out of the UN and Europe. It's less fervent now (what with everyone focused on the world economy), but for a good while during the Bush Administration, it was at least once a week I would read a foreign leader explaining how evil America is for not intervening in Sudan. It was especially funny to hear France say how horrible it is of us not to step in, and not to have the UN step in, since either way it'd be American troops on the ground getting shot, and France certainly wasn't ponying up the manpower.

We can discuss whether America should intervene anywhere, but please don't pretend that the international community doesn't make that kind of demand of us.

 

[IronDuke]

First off its United States of America, not just America. You are the united states of a huge landmass that includes Canada and Mexico etc.

And Australia is the Commonwealth of Australia, a Commonwealth on a huge continent that includes New Guinea, or else does not include Tasmania.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_(continent)

When people from the Commonwealth of Australia stop calling their country 'Australia' then people from the United States of America will stop calling themselves 'America'.

Uhhh did you read the wikipedia article you linked and the one for the commonwealth of australia? Both seem to contradict your argument, according to the OED definition of a continent. Geologists may refer to the continental shelf, but that is of no consequence to anyone on any of the surrounding islands or the mainland beyond scientific curiosity. The continuous landmass is the more commonly accepted definition of a continent.

And while none of us really want to have Tasmania in our states, it is the opposite situation. We aren't claiming a whole continent to be ours (in name) when we only make up a small portion of land ownership, our country covers the entire landmass of the generally defined continent, and spills over to several surrounding islands, so we have more than the physical continent in our ownership.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

"
America can't win, and it bothers me. We're never allowed to be right. If we interfere in a foreign country (Iraq), and free their citizens from an evil dictator, we're imperialist dogs. If we fail to interfere in a foreign country (Sudan), we're amoral bastards. Pick a gear and stay in it a while. Either we're the world's police officers, and supposed to go in and stop injustice, or we aren't, but don't ask us to do both.
.

There lies the problem with a lot of people's atitude in America.

No one is asking you to do either.

I'm sorry, but I had to jump back in to respond to this. Of course they're asking us to. Read the international press, especially things coming out of the UN and Europe. It's less fervent now (what with everyone focused on the world economy), but for a good while during the Bush Administration, it was at least once a week I would read a foreign leader explaining how evil America is for not intervening in Sudan. It was especially funny to hear France say how horrible it is of us not to step in, and not to have the UN step in, since either way it'd be American troops on the ground getting shot, and France certainly wasn't ponying up the manpower.

We can discuss whether America should intervene anywhere, but please don't pretend that the international community doesn't make that kind of demand of us.

The international community makes demands upon the U.N., who are supposed to be the international body that keep international peace. Its not the US specifically who they make these demands on. (The US also tends to ignore UN law when it feels like it)

I'm from Ireland, and any criticisms in our press towards the US not going into Sudan etc were usually making a point that it is just as bad a situation as Iraq yet because the US had no financial or economic gains to be had from controlling Sudan (as they would with Iraq) then it seemed suspicous to the world that they only want to overthrow the dictators of countries with major oil or other resources.

Our government is just as fucking bad too, during the Iraq war there were huge protests because they let US warplanes refuel at our airports when we're supposed to be a neutral country.