nns1400 said:I'm not even disagreeing with you. I'm just saying there's a bit of an assumed stance on this forum (not you specifically, I was just responding to your post) that the US is all bad and everybody else is just swell...or that the reasons other countries were against the idea of war is just because they're so "progressive" or something instead of that their vested interests, including OIL interests, were in not going to war. Not because they want to hold hands with Obama and sing give peace a chance and put a flower in the barrel of a gun.
I don't think that anyone here has suggested that the US is all bad.
Nor has anyone suggested that every country, except the USA, is 100% good/altrusitic.
The problem I believe comes down to what your country's leaders say and what they actually do, in terms of foreign policy and all actions deriving from those foreign policies.
In this and other fora, a lot of Americans get extremely defensive when points are made about how the US uses it'd foreign policy to suit it's own ends.
When challenged about their countries foreign policy, many Americans go on about the WW2 or the fight against communism or the perceived terrorist threat etc.
They trot out "US bailed out Europe 1939-1945", "landlease/marshall plan rebuilt Europe" etc.
These defensive arguments are based upon a (mis) perception that somehow America did what it did out of altrusim.
America has never acted out of altruism.
And that's the point : I think a lot of non-Americans who have have less of an issue with US foreign policy if America was perhaps more frank in it's statements.
Not to dwell on Iraq, but if America said "we're invading Iraq to get it's oil" many foreigners, while still opposing US policy, would at least concede that America was at least frank about it's reasons for being in Iraq.
Or if America had said in 1945 "we're giving the Euros loans to rebuild their countries and we expect to be repaid that money" - Germany repaid it's loan with interest in 1961, Britain paid her loan with interest in 2006 - instead the notion was put about by the US that it was somehow giving europe a loan based on charity/altruism.
I know and have worked with many Americans and it never ceases to amaze me how many of them are completely unaware of the British loan repayments for example (and that's just one example)