It's also why they let Germany rebuild so much after WWI. They are greedy, elitist snobs.
=== more interested in making money than creating a stable world.
Is that what we've been doing since Korea? Creating a stable world?
If I'm not mistaken, Saddam (and his initial superior) were just two of scores of our interventions/connections for "stability" purposes which have blown up in our faces ... around the world ... though none quite as spectacularly as "Tim Osman" / Osama bin Ladin.
And naturally, when I think of our cleaning up at a French Connection, I think of Viet Nam.
How is it possible that appeasing? the Chicoms by stopping overflights of Burmese poppy fields and having the CIA crank the Golden Triangle OUT of China proper was intended to create a more "stable" world in the longterm?
Wouldn't we have stemmed the tide of some serious blowback in the whole of Latin America if we'd gone to Cuba instead of Viet Nam?
If Stabilization is the name of the game, outside the occasional retribution as part of the War on Terror, I think we ought to finish just ONE job that we start before taking on others.
We've yet to stabilize Haiti, really ... not that it keeps us from taking on the trafficking nexus in Kosovo, opting to build a landbridge to the 'Stans instead liberating Kabul for Christmas and -- currently in the process of bribing recalcitrant regions in Iraq with the BILLIONS we are spending on improvements (so that our Private Contractors already busy-busy-busy risking kidnapping the getting's so good can cash in with running water and real roads at their disposal) and other curious Extra Credit Items on our tick-list of Democratizing the world.