More botched foreign policy (or: Just how fscked we really are)

[giza]

It's been awhile since I posted anything subversive, so I figured it's time to criticise the current administration again. What I'd like to talk about today is an article in the Sunday Herald that I saw linked to from IO ERROR recently.

The article talks about a rather blunt "strategic communications" report from the Pentagon. Here are some choice blurbs from the article:

On “the war of ideas or the struggle for hearts and minds”, the report says, “American efforts have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended”.

“American direct intervention in the Muslim world has paradoxically elevated the stature of, and support for, radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single digits in some Arab societies.”

And here's another one:

Referring to the repeated mantra from the White House that those who oppose the US in the Middle East “hate our freedoms”, the report says: “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedoms’, but rather, they hate our policies. [...]

And my response would be: bingo! I twitch every time I hear someone say how the terrorists "hate our way of life and our freedoms". Hogwash. They don't care how we live our life over here, but they do care about how they are treated by us. Whether suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism are justified over this is another matter entirely, one thing is very clear: there are lots of people who are very angry at us.

“Americans are convinced that the US is a benevolent ‘superpower’ that elevates values emphasising freedom … deep down we assume that everyone should naturally support our policies. Yet the world of Islam – by overwhelming majorities at this time – sees things differently. Muslims see American policies as inimical to their values, American rhetoric about freedom and democracy as hypocritical and American actions as deeply threatening.

“In two years the jihadi message – that strongly attacks American values – is being accepted by more moderate and non-violent Muslims. This in turn implies that negative opinion of the US has not yet bottomed out"

This is also kind of sad. Us Americans tend to be isolated, sitting over here in one big country that stretches from one end of this continent to the other, and we tend to forget that there is a whole world out there, and if we mess around with the structure of other countries, people in those countries are naturally going to become unhappy with us. Make them angry enough, and there can be very real consequences for our people, both overseas and domestically.

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Here's a fun little experiment to try for those who live in the USA. Pick a foreign country. Prefarably a nice big one, such as Russia or China. Germany, France, and England are also good choices. Now, pretend for a moment that you've just heard that they intend to place a military base with a few thousand troops just outside of the nearest major city, and that the United States Government happily lets them do this. Such a base would merely be to "guard their interests in the country", of course.

How would you feel about this? Would you be angry? Upset? Scared? Would you be concerned that the other country might have some sort of agenda, and that they might be placing parts of their own military in your country just to keep it in line? People in other countries sure are suspicious of the US's movtives for doing this.

Feel free to discuss.

Comments

[drleo.livejournal.com]

It's a lot of "might makes right" on the part of some of the dumber Americans. We're mighty, so what we believe must be correct. Lots of Americans are also not that well-informed about what really has been going on. And we feel impervious since, except for the one event, there aren't attacks on American soil -- as far as most people are concerned, anyway. So people feel invincible. So do whatever we want! We're invincible. So many people just don't think logically about such things. They just care that they feel safe, they can watch football on TV and drink beer, and as long as the idiot king keeps that the case, then they support him.

On the other hand, if you're living somewhere like London where the IRA might blow something up at any time.. you don't feel quite so invincible.

I've thought for some time that the US is going to try its hand at having an empire. The English tried it, the French tried it, the Spanish tried it, the Germans tried it, the Russians tried it, the Chinese tried it... we haven't really made a bona fide effort at it. Maybe this will be the decline of our once-great nation.

[rigelkitty.livejournal.com]

Why do you hate America? ;)

[branwyn.livejournal.com]

You are more sensible than I once imagined.

I'm glad there are some Americans who realize that, despite America's supposed good intentions, their actions can easily appear suspect. All it takes is asking "what if someone did this to us?" That's a good "test" for anything, from governmental operations to one's own personal interactions.

Sadly and ironically, it comes down to the Biblical "golden rule" - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Simple.

B.

[doco.livejournal.com]

From my viewpoint, what makes up a large part of the US mindset is that America has never experienced a serious, potentially devastating war with a foreign entity on its own soil for nearly 200 years.

Meanwhile, the other nations on the continent have been busy shredding themselves, tearing each other apart and blowing the other guy's house up.

For the Americans, however, armed conflict always was a thing something else did. Sure, they contributed to WWII and sent people to Vietnam and Iraq, but did Hitler bomb Boston? Were people dying in San Francisco air raid shelters? Did they have to fight the guerilla in Texas? No. They were living ordinary lives, filling their refrigerators and getting a new car. For generations and generations.

It all boils down to the fact that the American common conscience doesn't know what the suffering of armed combat truly means to the civilians. There may be a fair share of war veterans, but these fail to reach critical mass - a mere two and a half million WWII and Vietnam vets can't change the public opinion of a country of nearly 250 million.

Other parts of the world, like Europe and Asia, on the other hand, considered themselves lucky if a country didn't fall apart after twenty or thirty years. Hatred between people (who are far less homogenous than the USA populattion) built up and released itself in the terror of WWI and WWII.

It was only until 1945 - with most of Europe in ruins, split between the occupation troops of the Soviet and American empires - that people realized it's a better thing to embrace your neighbor than to fight him. Consequently, there has been no large-scale warfare there during the past sixty years.

Also, the traumatic experience of WWII, and, to a lesser extent, WWI, has left great scars in the common conscience of especially the European and Japanese people. We've been taught the mantra "War is evil. Fighting is bad." for the past half-century - contrary to America, where even the word 'war' has been treated disrespectful, as in "War against Communism, War against Drugs, War against Terrorism"...if your only resolution is to go to 'war' against someone, democracy has failed already.

[silver-huskey.livejournal.com]

How would you feel about this?
On edge, but somewhat apathetic. I probably wouldn't view it much different from our governmental affairs. As in they're all suspect. XD