Americans are imperialists
People that say Americans are imperialists don’t understand America (or what imperialism means).
~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2017-05-19 |
People that say Americans are imperialists don’t understand America (or what imperialism means). America has the largest court system in the world, with bulging prisons and more lawyers and lawsuits per capita because we will not tolerate injustice. Americans inherited the England's laissez-faire attitude of "live and let live"... and we live that motto - right up to point where we believe we have been wronged, or see others doing wrong. The Europeans have more tolerance of wrongdoing; they turn their heads, or say "that doesn't concern me" or “that’s just the way things are”. They tolerate the intolerable. But we want to leave the world a better place, and not just take profits exploiting the suffering of others; like the Europeans
Live and let live...[edit | edit source]
This isn’t new. One of our flags in the America revolution said, "Don't Tread on Me." We were willing to take on the most powerful military in the world, just because they put a nominal tax on our morning brew. We'd be damned if we were going to come to this wilderness, build a new life, and then let them push us around and have them cart away the fruits of our labor. We had strong ties to England, but we were willing to throw away that relationship and go it alone because it was unjust.
That’s what motivates Americans; our pricklish sense of honor and justice.
Look at our past:
- The Native American Indians continually violated our honor; they attacked without warning, abducted women and children, killed the helpless or wounded and used deception and torture. The Indians had their own highly developed honor system (and from their view, we were the honorees and unjust ones) -- but the point isn't who was right, it was that we perceived them as dishonorable, so we created justice.
- The Japanese fought dirty in WWII; attacked us without warning and treated our prisoners poorly. We were willing to lose hundreds of thousands of our soldiers invading their homeland, firebombing and nuking their cities, and would burn their country to bare earth if that's what it took to defeat them an create justice.
- The next most warrior nation in modern times was Germany - look at what happened to them. Hitler thought we were a "Mongrel Nation." He learned the hard way that we are pretty scrappy mutts.
- The USSR was the next most warrior nation; where are they now?
And so on.
Meddling isn't Imperialism[edit | edit source]
We understand that there are causes for Arab and European frustration, but the cause never justifies the means and there are lines that you can cross. 40 or 50 years of terror is enough. The terrorists are using exactly the wrong method to solve their problems.
We are one of the countries that in our position of power has shared it better than any other nation in the history of the world. We get that giving up some control and sharing wealth helps all. That's why we do so much of it.
- We created the League of Nations
- We create the U.N. to share power that we did not need to share
- We funded them more than any other nation has.
- We gave 40% of their budget to them, not counting many forms of assistance.
- We give more than all of Europe combined, and the Europeans love to criticize us for not doing more, or for occasionally going our own route after exhausting attempts for decades to work with them. I guess it is easier to point fingers than look in the mirror.
- We did the same with NATO, charities, and so on.
- Countries that were taken over by us (like Germany and Japan) would not consider themselves territories of the U.S. -- and not because we couldn't have made them such.
We do meddle in foreign countries affairs, as all countries do. We have a lot of force/ power and often bumble around trying to help make the world a better place. But that's something totally different from imperialism. We're far from perfect -- but calling us imperialistic only reflects on the ignorance of the speaker, not our intent or actions. We're always looking for the fastest way to hand control of our "con- quests" back to the people and go home, where we are happiest. Often we stay be- cause they beg us to, and complain when we leave. We want trading partners and al- lies, not puppets and have a far better history than most of those that criticize us the loudest.
Americans don't fight to take other people’s money, land, power, ego -- we have enough of our on that. We also seldom fight over past resentments or grievances; we have short memories and forgive pretty easily. So we aren’t occupiers; we hate hav- ing our troops overseas, and most of our troops just want to come home. Ask France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Panama, Korea, if they feel like they are part of our empire. We were more re-builders than occupiers, happy to leave. So using the term imperi- alism shows complete ignorance of history; their world view is so distorted as to be beneath contempt and unteachable or so biased as to be irrational
👁️ See also
- Iraq War - Disagree with American policy or bumbling implementations of that policy. Be anti-war. Just be honest and consistent
- Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 - The war on Islamic terror didn't start on 9/11 and wasn't about Osama Bin Laden, they were symptoms of something bigger.
- Preemptive War - Iraq was the first preemptive war except for all the others.
- Legality of Iraq war - No war is legal or illegal, there's only moral or immoral -- and all wars are immoral (some just more than others).
- Give it more time... - Some have said we should have waited for France or the U.N. to change their minds, or for sanctions to work...
- Violence never solved anything - Some say war/violence is wrong or that it never solves anything. It ended many wars and most mass murderers just fine.
- Bush lied - Bush didn't lie: the world's intelligence disagreed on specifics, but all agreed that Saddam was trying to get WMD's.
- Valerie Plame - Ex-CIA agent lies that she was outted by Bush Admin. Media perpetuates the lies for years.
- Quotes/Iraq War - Leftists want to pretend they had nothing to do with the Iraq War. History (and these quotes) begs to differ.
- Muslims can't do democracy - Muslims aren't capable of a successful democracy".
- Iraq/Set a date for withdrawal - Some claimed we should set a hard date and pull out of Iraq. That's stupid. Never telegraph your moves to the opposition.
- America made Saddam - During the mid 2000's it was popular among the dim of wit, and big of mouth, to claim that Saddam was created by America.
- Iraq is because of Israel-Palestine - Israel/Palestine is a convenient scapegoat for all problems in the middle east. But only rubes buy it as the root problem.
- Iraq is because of oil - All the time I hear people say that the U.S. invaded Iraq because of oil, money, or some other dumber reason. Oil is not a dumb reason.
- The U.S. targeted innocents - I’m flabbergasted that such stupidity is ever said, let alone how often I’ve heard it repeated.
- Iraq War Costs - Everything comes with costs, action or inaction. The price of war, the price of peace.
- Patriot Act - The 2002 version doens't bug me, what it might devolve into does. (Is it a slippery slope).
- Halliburton - NYT invented “evil conspiracy” to pay off a company for cheating us. The rubes believed it.
- Guantanamo - The left made a big deal about Guantanamo, where we had the right to treat people far worse than we did.
- Abu Ghraib - Abu Ghraib was one small group of U.S. Soldiers that something bad things, were caught and punished quickly.
- Security in Iraq - Militarily Iraq was one of the greatest successes in the history of mankind. Sociologically? We'll see.
- Americans are imperialists - People that say Americans are imperialists don’t understand America (or what imperialism means).
- Iraq's impact on Terrorism - Poverty doesn't cause terrorism; totalitarianism and a lack of control does.
- We should have done nothing - Of course we can’t know if doing nothing is ever the better choice or not. But we can look at some facts.
🔗 More
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Tags: Terms Iraq War NATO Iraq War/Consequences
