Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker
The key point being "a country that doesn't really matter".
It does seem as though the ideals spoken of in the US involvements only seem to come into play in certain worldly incidents. Mostly those of money benefits to the US.
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Well there is a great irony there, really. For example, the US has historically paid 22% of the funding for the UN, yet of course only comprises 5% of the world population. The US also tends to shoulder most of the financial, material, and human costs of these so-called "peacekeeping" actions.
If I were the cold-hearted, business-minded politician that we generally see running the US, I would be hard pressed to send our young men out, armed and funded entirely on the back of the US tax rolls, to be the moral fiber of the world. Perhaps if other nations were to invest similarly (in proportion) of their blood, sweat, and toil, to achieve a more peaceful and proud world, then we might see these other "non-economically beneficial" situations dealt with more readily. As it stands, if you look at the wartime costs of the US military budget, as well as the state that our military personnel are in, I can hardly see how anyone could complain about which problems the US gets their hands dirty in.
Of course, this assumes that everything that the US trifles with, is in fact something that they are -right- in doing. Also, it implies that there is actually some real benefit. Thus far in Iraq for example, we have caused enormous loss of life, incredible instability in the Middle East, and allowed some of our wealthiest corporations to reap record profits off price-gouging our own citizens, as a result of that instability. Seems to me that the only people who have actually benefited thus far form the war in Iraq, are the wealthiest and most powerful in America. Now, that said, I refer back to my earlier postulate, that if the other members of the UN had invested a comparable and proportionate amount of their budget and manpower towards resolving the conflict - it likely would have been long over, as even if we had borne 22% of the load (as we pay 22% of the cost of the UN itself), and the rest of the world had shouldered a comparative load, then we would have been looking at 4x the number of feet on the ground, and it seems unlikely that the true instigators of inter-continental terrorism would have been able to hide from that.
This whole issue is riddled with circular arguments, and unrealistic attitudes on the part of many of the players, and will continue to do so because of the terrible handling of the situation by the US government. But it still bears mentioning that if in the future such military engagements were more focused, thought out, and called for - that they would be awfully quick procedures, if the rest of the world cooperated in making such actions involve such overwhelming force.
Heck, if the evil-doers of the world saw how ferocious and thorough the good people of the world could be in eradicating such civil abuses, they might just start to straighten up themselves, knowing there is no way they can get away with doing wrong for very long - or escape from the rule of law once it comes their turn to be removed from power.