On Wed, 6 Feb 2008 16:27:14 -0600, "Adam Corolla"
wrote:


All true indeed. Though we never went out and colonized half the world
with the Maxim Gun. In fact..I dont know of any US colonies.

The US doesn't colonize, it hegemonizes.

Oh..like France, Germany, Japan, Vietnam, Cuba, Grenada and so forth?

We tend
to go out, kick some ass, defend our friends, then go home again.

We go out, kill five thousand soldiers and a few hundred thousand civilians
in a nation that poses no threat to us, and call that kicking ass.

Oh, like Germany and Japan?


As for supporting dictators, true enough at times. The rational being
that better a US friendly dictator, than a puppet of the USSR who
hates the US.

Hello? The USSR doesn't exist anymore, but the US is still supporting
dictators. The REAL rationale is that if we had to choose between allowing
a country to have a democracy which might be opposed to US policies in their
country, or supporting a dictator who enslaves and kills his own people but
can be bribed by the US to do what we want, the latter is the only option,
because the brown people don't matter. Guess what? Some of the brown
people have the unmitigated gall to dislike the US for this reason.

Why doesnt the USSR exist anymore?

And there is some validity to that outlook. Depending of
course on who is looking from what direction.

Of course it has validity, if you believe the US should put itself above all
other countries even if it means a small financial gain for Americans in
exchange for sacrificing the freedom or lives of millions of non-Americans.
Unless you consider the fact that the short-term benefits are outweighed by
the expense of higher taxes on account of the fact that we have to maintain
a huge, bloated military to protect ourselves from all the enemies we've
created. Oh, and the token wars to make it look like we're retaliating for
the terrorist attacks.


On the other hand, we dont have a history of 400 yrs of colonial rule
and when we pull out of an occupied and defeated enemy, we generally
leave it in much better shape than we found it. Germany and Japan,
South Korea etc are examples.

Yes, but they are in the minority. What about the other 25 countries we've
attacked since WW2, none of which ever attacked us?

Name them.


The fact of the matter, we could have simply sat on our hands and
watched the rest of the planet murder and enslave us.


I can't believe you could be so brainwashed as to believe that. Try looking
at the facts for once. Since WW2, no country has threatened the US. During
the cold war, the US and the USSR/Red China fought each other indirectly by
trying to take over smaller, weaker countries and keeping the fighting
within them. However when the USSR collapsed and China stopped their
military agression, the US continued to practice forced hegemony, especially
in central and south America and the middle East. 9/11 was the first really
big retalitory strike by the people of some of those countries.


Name them and which ones are under our authority.

And then 20 yrs
down the road, have the now larger and unified enemy be a much much
larger problem when they decided to take us on. Germany and Japan are
prime examples, as is the USSR.

In fact, the Third World War started in 1945 and didnt end until
December 8th, 1991

Yes, but how did it end? Did Ronnie Reagan end the cold war by driving
Russia bankrupt with the arms buildup? He helped, I'll give him that! But
the collapse of the USSR started ten years earlier when they invaded
Afghanistan, an impoverished third-world country. The USSR, with the
largest and most powerful military the world had ever seen, couldn't gain a
decisive victory after ten years of fighting. Why? Because the US had
learned from Vietnam that invasion is easy, but occupation of a hostile
country is extremely expensive.

Oh..you mean Afghanistan, where we trained the locals and gave them
Stingers? Odd..that didnt impoverish the USSR, did it?

Drawing on these lessons learned in Vietnam, the CIA trained Afghanis and
Mideasterners from all over who came to Afghanistan on how to use guerrilla
tactics to fight the Soviets: for example use $100 worth or moartar rounds
to take out $1,000,000 worth of equipment and a few soldiers, repeat,
repeat, etc. and during the day work your regular jobs so no one knows who
you are. This was how and why al Qaeda formed at that time. After ten
years of extremely expensive occupation, the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan,
bankrupt.

Afghanistan was paid for by Russian petty cash.

Bin Laden has stated that he was hoping to draw the US into a war in the
Mideast with the 9/11 attacks. The US kindly obliged him with two wars.
Now we are essentially in the same boat as the USSR was: we can't win, and
if we withdraw it'll look bad. The Taliban still exists and is still
fighting and killing our soldiers, and the "insurgents" in Iraq are doing
the same.

Odd..even the Democrats say we are winning. You know more than
Hillary and Co.?

Without the US playing Big Brother in 1918, 1942 and from 1945 to
1991..the geopolitical face of the planet would have looked vastly
different, and none of us would likely be in any position to be
discussing this issue, least of all in English.

The US didn't stop playing big brother in 1991, because the reason for doing
it after 1945 was not solely to protect the US from being taken over; it was
largely to gain power and influence in the world.

We already had power and influence in the world as the sole remaining
super power.

Its a dirty job, but someone has to play Big Brother. The alternative
is unthinkable.

What a load of crap. Defending the country and our allies is one thing, but
you can't seem to separate that from military action for the sake of
hegemony. It's the same few tired old mantras of all invaders everywhe

Those countries under our control are which ones again?

"We're saving them from themselves"
"They were going to attack us so we had to strike first"
"They're better off with our system, so we're improving their lives"

Etc. It's the same thing throughout history. It's really easy to believe
your nation is good and righteous when its ways have given you the
opportunity to have a great life.

Read my sig

Gunner