Eko said:
They think that being the most powerful amongst the states of the Earth gives them the right to play as the cop (vigilante?) who takes care of everything.
But they don't. They love to
pretend that they do. But defending human rights and spreading democracy (which, strangely enough, they don't even have themselves...) has absolutely nothing to do with it. They don't get involved unless there's something in it for them. They would have invaded North Korea years ago if there was something there that they wanted.
They've got no problem
supporting murderous tyrants if they think they have something to gain (eg Mobutu, Pol Pot), or tearing down a democratic government and replacing it with a brutal dictatorship (Mossadeq, prime minister of the democratic Iranian government, was deposed in a US-backed coup in 1953, for his view that Iranian oil should benefit Iranian citizens, and replaced by the Shah).
To quote the Australian comedy trio Tripod:
"There's millions dying in the Congo
But we don't send our soldiers there
'Cause there ain't no oil in the Congo
Only bloodshed and despair"
Here's an example of just how much the US government cares about human rights - a small sample of
the list of UN resolutions vetoed by the USA in the past 30 years:
- International action to eliminate apartheid.
- Demands that Israel desist from human rights violations.
- Calls for developed countries to increase the quantity and quality of development assistance to underdeveloped countries.
Honestly, it sickens me to see how upset Americans get over terrorism. You cried when terrorists killed 3,000 people in the World Trade Center, but I bet you didn't shed a tear for the 2,000,000 civilians your army killed in Vietnam. You condemn terrorists for killing innocent people, but you didn't condemn your own government for killing a quarter of a million innocent Iraqis in the Gulf war, and all so you could continue to burn a quarter of the world's oil.
The people who died on September 11th, and their friends and families, certainly didn't deserve what happened to them.
But the rest of you deserved it. America had it coming.
The cause of terrorism is not their hate for their freedom or democracy. Sweden or Canada or Holland probably all have more of those than they do. But how often do you see a Dutch embassy get bombed? It's their relentless pursuit of material gain at the expense of the already oppressed and impoverished which earns the US the hate of the rest of the world. If they actually tried to do some good in the world, rather than ****ing other people over for their own advantage, then terrorism would disappear.
But, of course, this is exactly what the terrorists want - they want the west to stop killing their people for oil - and for exactly that reason, it'll never happen. It would require, to some extent, an admission of guilt from the US, an acknowledgement that what they're doing is wrong. They'll flat out reject this course of action, even though it's the right thing to do, because it sounds too much like "negotiating with terrorists".
hewybo said:
He has no idea whether to negotiate or not.
Got to agree with you there...
No one would let that ***** run a country.
No one would ever let him actually make an important decision. I doubt he could if he wanted to. The guy can barely string together a coherent sentence when he's not staring at a teleprompter. And even then he has a lot of trouble...
So no, George Bush doesn't negotiate with terrorists. George bush doesn't really
do anything. He's just a puppet.