Love you, love you not. A world trying to hate the US

The Times (U.K.) ^ | 12/07/2002 | Ben MacIntyre

[Lurker]

Monty Pythons Flying Circus said it first, and said it far better.

L

[537 Votes]

Number One acts, everyone else whines.

That's why Number One is Number One and everyone else is everyone else.

[anniegetyourgun]

Perhaps the world needs to stop coming here to go to college, taking our charity, going to our doctors, etc.

[McGavin999]

It's just the way of the world. Face it, if they didn't KNOW that America is a benevolent power, not one of them would open their mouths. They complain because they can.

Trust me, if the USSR had won the cold war, there would be absolute silence about europes new master.

[What Is Ain't]

Much of the world sees America as vain, aggressive, unheeding, ignorant of world problems and increasingly oblivious to the disparity between rich and poor.

They've been reading too much American press.

[TheHound]

We're the hegemon, the Brit's used to be the hegemon, everybody hates the hegemon, everybody loves the hegemon. Here is a lesson, don't p*ss off the hegemon by blowing up 3,000 of the hegemon's people and destroying one of the hegemon's big buildings because the hegemon will whack your *ss.

[RAY]

The USA -- my nation, to defend, right or wrong, and the hell with the rest of the world. They are simply like jackals yipping and nipping as we pass them by -- expect it and keep doing what is right.

[MoJo2001]

It's amazing because most Americans are working hard to pay for all those damn programs that the rest of the world feels they must have. Never once have we ever been polled about what we think about the rest of the world. I suspect if we did..We'd Hurt Their Feelings!! I say..START POLLING NOW!

[weikel]

They've bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers' fathers.
LORETTA:
And from our fathers' fathers' fathers.
REG:
Yeah.
LORETTA:
And from our fathers' fathers' fathers' fathers.
REG:
Yeah. All right, Stan. Don't labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!
XERXES:
The aqueduct?
REG:
What?
XERXES:
The aqueduct.
REG:
Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah.
COMMANDO #3:
And the sanitation.
LORETTA:
Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?
REG:
Yeah. All right. I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.
MATTHIAS:
And the roads.
REG:
Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads--
COMMANDO:
Irrigation.
XERXES:
Medicine.
COMMANDOS:
Huh? Heh? Huh...
COMMANDO #2:
Education.
COMMANDOS:
Ohh...
REG:
Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.
COMMANDO #1:
And the wine.
COMMANDOS:
Oh, yes. Yeah...
FRANCIS:
Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.
COMMANDO:
Public baths.
LORETTA:
And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.
FRANCIS:
Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it. They're the only ones who could in a place like this.
COMMANDOS:
Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.
REG:
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
XERXES:
Brought peace.
REG:
Oh. Peace? Shut up!

[Billthedrill]

Well, life isn't a popularity contest, and there is a very large number of ideologues so bitter over losing the Cold War that were we to disband our armed forces and transfer the entire national treasury into a UN fund for despots, they'd still find a way to hate us for what we were, and to demand still more. Our collective death, for example. I'm not exaggerating, incidentally - that is precisely the aim of armed, radical Islam. Unarmed, radical Europe would be cheering them on. After that things might not go so well, but we wouldn't be in a position to care.

I am giving a good deal of thought to what might constitute a program of deliberate, stepped disengagement from first world policing, then world economy. Not the neo-isolationist theoretical fairyland of certain conservative thinkers, but real, practical steps to effect such a situation and what might be the consequences for various parties should we decide - and this we can certainly accomplish - to return the world to a multipolar Great Power configuration. Whether this would be in the long-term best interests of the United States is a matter of great difficulty (and people having a good opinion of us is not, IMHO, one of those interests); whether it is in the best interest of the world in general is another matter and quite frankly, I'm not sure we have the right to decide that. I'm not sure such a thing as "best interest of the world" even exists.

An interesting mind game for the weekend and beyond. For example, what if we suddenly decided to freeze all operations against Iraq and allow them to proceed with the NBC programs that so many seem curiously unafraid of. (This is, after all, pretty much what the "peace" movement desires insofar as it desires any coherent course of action). In one scenario Tel Aviv goes up in smoke in a year or so, and shortly thereafter in reply so do the capitols of sundry Arabic states as well. Qui bono? Assuming the biologics are restricted to that part of the world the Europeans should probably be more concerned than we, and, of course, the Indians and anyone else downwind. Not us.

I think that Rushdie may be onto something in this. Giving an ungrateful and uncooperative world a taste of Pax Americana may not be worth the very great effort it will entail, and is highly unassured of any success, lasting or otherwise. Doing anything else and not getting killed in the process, there's the rub. I haven't any answers, but I'd bet a year's salary I'm not the only one thinking about it.

[kcar]

False and stupid analogy. The Roman empire exacted huge taxes on the conquered lands. They had no notion of Progress, which is a you-win, I-win wealth accretive process where value is created via voluntary contractual exchanges. They believed wealth was static (it was then by and large!) and you acquired by taking. They took too much and collapsed by the stretched ratio of predators to prey.

What does "Pax-Americana" involuntarily take? If anything, we "give" more to struggling nations to help bring them into the fold of open societies creating value for mankind via voluntary contractual (peaceable) means.

Stupid premise for a typical leftwing brow-beating anti-American tirade. Screw em all.

[Arpege92]

Where are the anti-muslim-terrorists on the global list of opinions? Probably at the bottom! For a long time now, American's kept silent when bashed and I think that has all changed since 9/11. I for one, don't give a rats A$$ what they think of us and if we are such a bad country, then keep your A$$'s at home WHERE YOU BELONG!

[Libertarianize the GOP]

The reason for European anti-Americanism is simple. If you are a typical European you feel like an insignificant person living in an insignificant Country watching world changing events knowing that neither you nor your Country can make any difference in the outcome; it must be awfully scary to be such an impotent observer.

[kcar]

Yes the EU-nicks are the Alfred J Prufrocks of early-21.
"Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers and stroll upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they shall sing to me.
We have lingered by the chambers of the sea, by mermaids wreathed in seaweed red and brown, till human voices wake us, and we drown."

[Libertarianize the GOP]

bump

[section9]

I think that Rushdie may be onto something in this. Giving an ungrateful and uncooperative world a taste of Pax Americana may not be worth the very great effort it will entail, and is highly unassured of any success, lasting or otherwise. Doing anything else and not getting killed in the process, there's the rub. I haven't any answers, but I'd bet a year's salary I'm not the only one thinking about it.

You are actually on to something.

Acting as global policeman is not sustainable. I strongly suspect that once Iraq is wrapped up, we will then begin to concentrate on the Pacific while maintaining operational tempo against Al Qaeda in that phase of the war.

The fall of Hussein and the subsequent collapse (in the fullness of time) of the Iranian Theocracy will take much of the wind out of the sails of Arab radicalism. Oil will still flow, of course. It must. They can't eat it; the Arabs will have to sell it at market price, or watch their market share go to a newly confident Russian oil industry.

We will be in a position to adopt a policy of armed neutrality. This is not a return to isolationism, but rather a contraction of the defensive line to the CONUS and the Pacific Theater.

Let's face it; Europe isn't under threat from Russia, and it's not important anymore. Were it not for oil, the Persian Gulf region would be a strategic backwater. That is where it is headed.

Bush's instincts are actually leading this way. He is a strict national interest guy. That's why there is a distaste in the White House for foreign actions such as nation building. Notice that we have leapt to action overseas only because of national security concerns! A bomb that can blow up Tel Aviv can just as easily be detonated in southern Manhattan. That is the whole driving idea behind the Iraq operation-we have to get Saddam before he takes his revenge on us by way of Al Qaeda and its rather talented crew of suicide operatives.

The war on terror will be continued, but once Iraq is off the boards, I don't see another problem coming down the road until the Chicoms decide to get nasty in the Taiwan Strait. Kim Jong Il can be handled: the Chicoms want peace in their northwestern frontier and they don't want to see one trading partner, South Korea, destroyed while another, Japan, instantly resurrects the Imperial Japanese Navy (a fleet that is far more powerful than is generally imagined).

Eventually, some farsighted politician will come along and make a grand bargain with the American people: a "new citizenship" based on national service for a period of years, followed by duty in the reserves, in return for very focused and very resolute concentration on "vital national interest" (defense of the Homeland and the Western Hemisphere, Britain and the other ECHELON powers-Aussie, Canuckland, and New Zealand). In other words: we trade the National Greatness Conservatives in for something that Buchanan might be more familiar with.

War drove Rome into penury decade after decade. Very few times in its history was Rome in solid financial shape (the Dictatorship of Sulla and, for a time, that of the great Julius, were two periods of calm and prosperity). So it will be with us unless we adopt more of a neutralist, anti-imperialist, but armed foreign policy.

However, there is one thing. We could be the nicest guys on God's good earth, but someday, some Jihadist sumbitches will try to bring the ultimate in sumbitchery, atomic weapons, to one of our cities. We have to gird ourselves for the kind of response that would not only terrify the entire Muslim world in a single stroke, but also would be entirely understood by the Romans.

There comes a time when survival is in question. If it comes down to a choice between Us and Them, Americans will vote for Us.

And it won't be a very happy day for Them.

I wish I were wrong, but I don't think I am.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[crystalk]

We will never concentrate on the Pacific, or Europe, or anywhere else but the Middle East ever again.

God says, "I will bring all nations down to the Valley of Jehoshafat, and there I will judge them all."

yeho/shafat=YHWH judges.

[kcar]

Hot bulletin to the State Department!

[Billthedrill]

Thank you for an excellent reply - there's a lot there to think about and I shall do so.

I am considering the "armed neutrality" position, and it seems, of the various options that come to mind, perhaps the most feasible. But it isn't going to be straightforward - most of the world's experience in armed neutrality is in a very different overall power configuration, under much more relative economic and military parity than now. The current imbalance in that regard is unprecedented and laughable; in history it has been present regionally, but in no case has it been present worldwide. When it was present regionally we generally see outright empire, until one of two things happens: an external military/economic influence or a demographic change, either from migration or simple imbalanced population growth from different internal groups. I think Europe may be in danger of experiencing the latter no matter what we do, but that's a side issue.

But armed neutrality is only the U.S. part of the overall problem - what happens to the rest of the world, and how does that effect the U.S.'s ability to maintain its armed neutrality? The EU will collapse if it continues its present social service navel-gazing, and the question then will be what power alignment will result - I suggest that it may be regional powers with relatively little tension between regions. Should we allow a new regional power to express itself extraregionally, perhaps to become a rival? Something like that happened in the Punic Wars. Or is China already approaching that state, unstoppably? Could we keep that from devolving into another bipolar world, quivering under the threat of nuclear annihilation? Been there, done, that...it wasn't so nice.

More later - as I said, I haven't any answers, but I sure appreciate your consideration.