nuclear weapons.
- No – you can't have them – but yes, we'll not only retain ours but also rebuild all of them.
- No. We can't allow a rogue state to possess nuclear weapons because they might use them. Well, yes, you are right, the only state on earth to ever use nuclear weapons is the US. (All right – twice).
- If you try and build any we might drop one on you.
democracy
- We have a right to invade a country to remove a dictator and provide the benefits of democracy even though we have less than half of our own population voting in any given election.
- Of course we'll criticize your electoral practices while our own are impossibly complex and open to abuse and outright fraud.
- just because we had to borrow more than a trillion dollars is beside the point - unless you balance your budget then we'll have to send the World Bank in.
- It doesn't matter that they were democratically elected – we had to help overthrow that government . No, if they interfere in our internal affairs they are terrorists.
governance
- We had to help remove that ruling clique because they were only in it for what they could get out of it!
- Unlike your country, any one of us could become the President!
- Of course we can't countenance mixing religion with politics!
- Every citizen has a right to a say in the electoral process (unless you are an ex prisoner)
- How dare they use trade tariffs to protect their industry?
- Of course we invaded them to bring them the benefits of democracy. China? But that's a different thing entirely.
health
- We have every right to pressure you to remove all of your controls on pharmaceutical prices, after all – we have to pay an arm and a leg for medicine, so of course you should.
- Of course we have a right to insist that poor Africans with AIDS should abstain from using condoms or accessing the contraceptive pill, after all - you would never find an American doing that sort of thing!
- American health care is the best that money can buy! (What? Oh that doesn't matter because the poor don't get sick.}
law and order
- I wouldn't want to live there! It's dangerous. (American handgun ownership is 14 times that of the next comparable first world country. Child deaths due to firearm discharge are 25 times that of all the other first world countries combined.)
- You can't trust the judiciary in other countries because they are politicised.
- Everyone in America is equal before the law! (It's just that if you have money you are more equal.)
- Just because it isn't illegal in your country we have every right to extradite him and throw him in jail.
- It is an execrable regime, barbarians - they torture and maim their prisoners!
- Kidnapping and imprisoning an American citizen cannot be tolerated.
etc etc
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Comments: 42
James--Ya really don't get it do you? It's easy--we are always right and everyone else is always wrong. See how simple that is? Chris
in todays Washington Post
in English the word Intercourse means 'contact, conversation, association or transaction'. Obviously the word carries certain overtones (undertones?) when used in America.
I took the comment down because I instantly realized that it said more about my social habits then it did about the topic at hand (Sorry Sandy - didn't mean to leave you hanging up there with no visible means of support)
Heather - i have been watching America waking up to the perilous position that your Gov has placed you all in. America might have missed the opportunity provided by 9/11, but the tide is turning. Look at the poll numbers. Look to the views being expressed in your mainstream newspapers.
Stephen, so true... There are those who won't look at the truth, and those who haven't grown past the childish urge to say, "well.. but... somebody else did it first" (whether true or not) to try and rationalize their own behavior, or take the focus off it. I think that attitude is explained well here: Kohlberg
I would hardly consider the inability of failed Socialism to penetrate the United States as worthy of regret. The simple fact of world opposition to our policy in Iraq is that it was driven by the resurgence of Marxism.
I fail to find hope in the fact that millions who remained silent as Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest, Prague, and Kabul found their morality when American troops overthrew their financier in Baghdad.
Even in the United States, one has to ask why the left never got excited about Soviet expansion.........but that question is easily A.N.S.W.E.R..ed.
You are intimating that America had the best interests of the rest of the world in mind during the cold war?
America had America's interests in mind and was happy to trash or destroy any country, person, or population that got between it and it's objective during these years.
I should be grateful that we now have only one rogue superpower rather than two?
Of course Stalin and Mao were horrible bastards, but don't get on your high horse and try and tell me that America was fighting these foes on my behalf - America was fighting to retain the right to continue to consume one-third of everything (except food) that is consumed on this earth (5% of the world population).
America was fighting to retain her own hegemony. Her own control of resources, people, and financial markets.
As for Britain, I agree with many of your statements Candida - but all of your criticisms of the Old Dart relate to side-issues arising from America's battles. You are being critical that Britain dared to go their own way and then get sideswiped by events not of their own making.
Philby? And so all of Britain is now to be damned by the actions of one individual, asting as an agent of another country in a fight against America taking place in a third country?
No American ever spied for the Soviets?
(And I don't care which American President happened to cozying up to which dictator - it happens in every Presidency )_ it is nothing unusual.)
So I got my superhero suit out for nothing?
(You know the one - it has a huge beeding heart on each sleeve)
Super Mouse awwaaaaayyyy.................................
Hegemony?
An interesting term to apply to a nation that runs a trade deficit and host Coffee Shops owned by Arabs in Dubai (Caribou Coffee.....for you Midwesterners).
Yes, vanquishing Hitler, Stalin, Mao and ilk were done for your benefit....and we are still paying for it and you are not.
Nuclear weapons- ask your parents or some other relative if they would have rather hit the beaches of Japan during WWII.
Democracy- impossibly complex. I get it. Saddam received %100 of the vote in Iraq during the last election he was in power. They voted, it must have been democratic. You believe that.......
Governance- cool. I might just come on down under and run.
Health- we have some issues there. Yours is perfect?
Law and order- yeah you're probably right, I might be the guy pulling the trigger...;-)
Just what country is it that puts other nations interests first before it's own anyway? Your not implying it's yours are you?
This article was written to decry the hypocrisy of the American Government - it would be a bit silly to post an article decrying the hypocrisy of the Aussie Government here but it would be an easily written article and would be almost as long =- these is not as much hypocrisy just because they haven't been given the opportunities that the American Gov has been.
This is not a simple exercise in America bashing - it is an expression of the depth of my disappointment in the failure of America to live up to the high ideals that it has expressed and demonstrated at various times.
GREG – During WWII America founded a military industrial complex which has eaten up the equivalent of the total third world deficit on a yearly basis. If America is still paying for the war it is because America is still fighting it whereas most6 other nations have been putting these same resources into infrastructure etc..
(I could get a bit antsy about the assertion that 'we' are paying for it and 'you' are not – my dad died young – when I was four - from a sickness caused by spending several thousand hours in depressurized aircraft over Europe during WWII. I was denied his company and assistance because of this selfless sacrifice - as were a far higher proportion of Aussies than Americans. How close is Aus to Europe? Why were we fighting there? But this is way off topic.)
MANDI – No. America is not there to help in any disaster. While you are engaged in this fruitless jaunt in the middle-east thousands of people a day are starving to death in the horn of Africa right now as I type. One one-hundredth of the cost of this war would probably be enough to save these people – why doesn't the American Gov care? Because these starving people are not geopolitically important – they don't live atop oil, they are not at the crossroads of any trade routes, they have no significant reserve of a resource that America covets. And I am happy to bash Australia in an article devoted to bashing Australia Mandi. Just because I am expressing my disappointment in the actions and opinions of the American Gov hardly means that I don't harbor many similar reservations regarding Australia and many other countries – it just means that I am not talking about those particular disappointments in this article. (My God – it seems that the Howard Gov in Aus was complicit in paying Saddam hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes!!! I just don't have the words to express the depth of my disgust and the breadth of my disappointment and anger.)
JOHN – I was not engaged in a comparison – as I point out above – that would be an entirely different article. (As I have pointed out I cannot ask my dad because…..) All of your spluttering fails to address the hypocrisy that was the central theme of the article. In your points you dio no more than say "OK – you may be right, but other countries also…. " I'm not talking about other countries. I'm talking about America..
Has it ever occured to you that the reason other nations have been free to invest in their infrastructure is because the American government and people have been covering their costs of defense?
Aside from the emotion....the numbers tell quite another story.
"Hypocrisy" is a false interpretation of the world that ignores the unpleasantness of politics and economics by comparing history to an idealized vision. What is most hypocritical is the selective manner in which this is usually done.
I and I think others fell that you are from australia, yet you write article after article bashing america... worry about your country a little.
Anyone would have to write a book to try and address each point one by one. Your "spluttering" points fail to have any support of said hypocrisy within them. Were we to take your points as all truths on face value, and then try to defend or agree with them as Americans? Why did you write them, and how did you expect us to respond?
I was being a bit cynical and sarcastic, like I felt the article was.
Thanks for writing it anyway, as some good discussion came from it.
MANDI - Does my being an Aussie somehow effect the validity of my arguments?
Does your being an American mean that you cannot hold an opinion relating to world events?
I will stop "bashing America" (although I would dispute this typification) when America's actions stop affecting me and mine.
JOHN - you are reading things into the article that are not there. I was simply listing some of the many hypocritical utterances and stances that are associated with the American Gov, nothing more and nothing less. this does not exclude the same behaviour being engaged by other jurisdictions nor does it assert that these hypocrisies are the sole prerogative of the American Gov.
As for hypocrisy, I would think the United States has been far less hypocritical than its Australian critics.
Case in point:
- The Iraqi people for the first time in many decades recently went twice to the polls in large numbers to select a government of their choosing.
-The critics of our policy, though they pretend to endorse self-determination, supported the continuance of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.
The thing about the accusation of hypocrisy is that it is something critics rarely dare applying to their own choices.
nuclear weapons.
- Australia did not pay for, but enjoyed, the nuclear umbrella provided by the United States allowing Australia to divert money into its socialist domestic policies during the Cold War.
- Australia backs the non-proliferation treaty --- especially after its neighbors India and Pakistan went nuclear.
- Australia rejoiced when the United State ended WWII by dropping atomic bombs on Japan thus saving hundreds of thousands of Australian lives in prison camps, and in potential losses during the invasion of Japan and China.
Need I go on?
Greg – I agree with a lot of what you say - I fear we are talking at cross purposes to a degree.
later today (our time) I will post an article relating to Australian hypocrisies
I was listing (logical and ethical) hypocrisies committed by your Gov from the standpoint of deep sorrow for a much valued friend
Yes - you are entirely correct, the world, and Aus in particular, has had its gonads saved from the fire by the wise and judicious actions of your forebears The quality of your high office bearers has been excellent as a rule. their threading of the maze that has been modern history has been typified by bold and courageous decisions taken by cautious men who were willing to take wise counsel
The whole world should bow at Kennedy's feet!
Old Ronnie stood up the evil empire and empowered millions! Even Clinton left a legacy of sorts, he helped consolidate the domestic gains that resulted from the end of the cold war by balancing the books for the first time in ages. good for us, good for you.
the previous six administrations in you country borrowed something like 1.1 trillion dollars. In two terms this president has borrowed 1.4 trillion dollars.
I have an intense interest in America not because I hate America, Greg,
I admire America for a whole bunch of reasons. But this current administration is imperilling the actual and financial health of the whole world
we all depend so much on a healthy American foreign/financial policy stance
These same hypocrisies are being pointed out all over the world by people who have far less sympathy and regard for the US than I do. (using opositional logic structures like this I can prove that Jesus himself didn't give a damn, or that black is white, or day is night - these articles are talking points not diatribes - and like everyone my mood and intensity vacilates and I encompass many inconsistancies within my world view)
I am seeking to understand, not pontificate, (or at least not just pontificate) and your input is much valued Greg.
look to a later posting relating to Australia
(ooo - where are the Aspirins? ooo – oooooooo)
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with our system of government. In the United States, the Congress, not the president has the power of the purse.
As to the thread that follows, I would like to address a few points that are in error, but not entirely in error.
The U.S. did not "vanquish" Stalin and Mao, who by all reports died in their beds. As for Hitler, we did take part in that, and I believe Stalin would take some credit for that as well. Was the point that we vanquished the Soviet Union? We certainly didn't mind its dissolution, but if the U.S. took such an active part in this, why we were so surprised when it happened. And clearly we didn't vanquish the People's Republic of China. They are still there, lending money to our profligate government which is busy invading Iraq.
Anyone else besides me think it would have been smarter "vanquishing" Iraq the same way we "vanquished" the USSR?