New World View
- Thread starter Squiggy
- Start date
The Other One
Banned
``Something that I never thought I'd see and something that is of great concern to me is that people now fear American power,'' said former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who chaired the survey project.
And that's a bad thing? Personally I think we've shown a considerable amount of restraint. But maybe 'people' will think twice before they hijack planes and kill thousands of American citizens....
Here are some outtakes from Henry Hyde's "Pathology of Sucess" 2-12-03:
"We meet at a time of great peril and great opportunity. The peril is obvious: aggressive regimes -- armed with weapons of mass destruction, uncontrolled by any domestic political constraints, and linked to international terrorist networks in a shadow world of malice where the murder of innocents is considered a noble vocation. In enforcing the will of the U.N. as expressed most recently in Resolution 1441, the United States and its allies are upholding the minimum conditions for world order. Let us hope that Iraqi disarmament can be enforced with the united support of the Security Council. But let us make certain that effective and decisive enforcement takes place -- by what the President has called a "coalition of the willing," if necessary....
America is often said to be a "hyper power," yet our actions are repeatedly frustrated by an endless train of objections and obstacles. America has fought distant wars to defend whole continents from a succession of aggressors, but the beneficiaries of the safety we have ensured often devote their energies to impeding our efforts to help others. We shoulder burdensome responsibilities for the benefit of the entire globe, but too often we must do so alone.
Americans are rightly puzzled by this and by what appears to many to be ingratitude, and even hostility, on the part of friends and allies. We see our own motives as noble and believe this fact to be self-evident. We are not an imperial power coldly focused on the subjugation of others or on securing some narrow advantage for ourselves. Instead, we are frequently moved to action by the plight of others, often losing sight of our own self-interest in our zeal to make the world right. None can doubt that, for over half a century, we have employed our power in the service of making the world safe, peaceful, and prosperous to the extent of our ability to do so....How is it then that we do so much for so many others and yet have to plead for support? Why is it always so difficult to enlist others in causes from which all benefit? Why do we carry global responsibilities, yet others feel no need to assume a share of the collective burden?...Great success often prompts a corresponding envy in others, and our occasional humbling is a rich and guilty pleasure often indulged in by friends and foes alike. Dependence can also evoke a corrosive resentment that can slumber in the deepest layers, even with friends. This is especially true among those whose ambitions are not matched by their capabilities and who are reminded of their less-than-central role in the world by what they believe is our failure to sufficiently consult with them regarding our own decisions....The fundamental problem is simply this: Given our strength, the urgency of our many concerns, and our willingness to proceed alone, if necessary, we have liberated others from the responsibility of defending their own interests, to say nothing of any responsibility for the collective interests of the West. Many would watch the night descend on others in far-away countries of which they know little without any feeling that perhaps they should do something to halt it and that not doing so might be a perilous option. Far from assisting, they might even devote their energies to preventing others from doing something....In the aftermath of World War II, with Europe devastated and still smoldering from ancient hatreds, the United States assumed a dominant role in all aspects, reviving prostrate economies with unprecedented aid, shoring up weak democracies, insisting on ever-closer cooperation between former enemies, establishing the institutions by which a unity of purpose came into being, weaving the whole into a community.
And embracing it all, the United States provided an absolute guarantee of safety. Problems shrank to the scale of daily life; dangers evaporated into abstract metaphors. Sheltered by American power, the hostilities of the untamed world beyond became remote, and then imaginary....This unearned inheritance did not require any of the beneficiaries to assume any risk, take on oppressive burdens, acknowledge their debt, or do anything other than focus on a pursuit of self-interest. They remained safe regardless of what they did or did not do. The natural state of the world was transformed from one ruled by fear and competition to one of safety and peace. And, like Nature, it required no effort on the part of man to bring it into being. Instead of hard choices of war and peace, it was more akin to selecting from an a la carte menu, guided only by one's tastes and momentary preferences. It was a profoundly false view of the world, but can we fault those who were raised in this cocoon of our making?
We may blame others for their short-sightedness, but it is we who have distorted their perceptions of reality. It is we who have created a beneficent, but artificial, environment so secure that its beneficiaries believe it to be self-sustaining. They feel neither need nor obligation to do anything to defend their interests, to secure those of the West, to ensure order rather than disorder in the world beyond their garden....Seen from this perspective, the United States becomes not the protector of the West in Iraq and elsewhere, but its tormentor, its power not the source of security but of disorder, a blundering and myopic Goliath whose misguided efforts are threatening to all. If only the U.S. were to desist, they say, we would once again be serene.....The familiarity of these problems, however, obscures a deeper danger. We have entered a new and more threatening century, one in which the civilized world will be under increasing assault from the forces of terror and dismemberment. These forces cannot be dissuaded by reason or by the paying of tribute. We are certain to discover that our ability to hold back the rising tide of disorder is finite and that we cannot by ourselves alone defend the West from those who even now are plotting our destruction. Others must now take up their long-ignored responsibility and assume their place in the line, not only for their own sake but for us all.
We cannot wait for disaster to awaken them from their dreams of summer. Instead, we must expose them to the dangers of a rough reality, for only with the ensuing abrasions is there hope that their comforting illusions can be worn away. The alarm has already begun to sound, but, as yet, it remains unheard....The fault is ours, not theirs. It is we who have mistakenly allowed others to learn a false and dangerous lesson. To believe that the peace and safety of the West, the product of centuries of effort, will maintain itself, that order need not be wrested from the storms and chaos that surround us, to believe that our world is not a fragile thing, is to risk everything. We have in fact made our world safe in the disastrous belief that others need not share a part of the collective burden, that there is no burden to be borne at all.
We may, in fact, be risking everything. Let me quote the warning by the philosopher, Ortega y Gasset: If you want to make use of the advantages of civilization, but are not prepared to concern yourself with the upholding of civilization -- you are done...Just a slip, and when you look around, everything has vanished into air....It is one of the paradoxes of our time that the American people, who have never dreamed dreams of empire, should find themselves given a unique responsibility for the course of world history. As you said so eloquently during your recent speech at Davos, Mr. Secretary [Colin Powell], Americans did not go into the world in the 20th Century for self-aggrandizement, but rather for the liberation of others -- asking of those others only a small piece of ground in which to bury our dead, who gave their lives for the freedom of men and women they never knew or met. Now, in these first, determinative years of the 21st Century, we are being challenged to such large tasks again. We did not ask to be so challenged, but we dare not let the challenge go unanswered."
Shadowfax
<b>mod cow</b>
Squiggy said:
The manufacturers love places like that where they can exploit the workforce and avoid US labor laws....Like Nike did.....
it stated whether a lot of people were worried about the US attacking those countries...
i wonder what exploiting the workforce and avoiding the US labor laws has to do with attacking those countries...it's not like the US is going to attack those countries so it can avoid its own labor laws.
it merely shows the knowledge most people who were questioned have of the relationship of their country with the US. and that's the part i'm sceptic about; the people who were questioned. in no way they even SEEM like a representive group or even a group that has the slightest idea of what's going on.
Squiggy said:
A new survey finds 9 in ten doctors prefer advil over cyanide.
There was a story the other day about this. In my mind altering state right now I only half cared but it said something to the effect that with all the reporting about "Get out of Iraq" protests, the average Iraqi is glad Hussein is gone & that America will be their neighbors for awhile & that's not a problem.