Posted by Sherman in Idaho [24.32.202.166] on Tuesday, April 16, 2013 at 13:31:40 :
In Reply to: Re: Boston posted by Marty [24.86.3.25] on Tuesday, April 16, 2013 at 03:02:39 :
But you might be right. I realize you're a Canadian at that means you're used to a non-interventionist foreign policy while being able to rely on the USA for any real defense if anyone should actually try to attack North America.
Still, more and more when the US picks sides in these foreign wars it's not at all clear to me which side is the good guys. It's not like picking Churchill over Hitler these days. Who's better in Afghanistan, the Taliban or Karzai? Who best supports our Democratic values, the government of Iraq, Kuwait, or Saudi Arabia? Iraq has the government we installed, and it's still riddled with corruption and low-level warfare. The House of Saud makes Czar Nicholas look like a democrat, and their country produces many of the world's worst terrorists and yet they're our bosom buddies. Recently I read that the CIA was trying to decide which faction of the Syrian revolutionaries to bomb. I thought we were supporting the revolution, but apparently some of them are too extreme for the US' taste.
If nothing else, we simply can't afford to keep policing the whole world, sticking our noses in everyone else's business all the time. The Chinese are wise. They let their businessmen conduct their foreign policy. If they want resources from some country, they buy them with cash. They gain influence as their trade with other countries increases. It makes foreign policy into a profit center rather than a cost center and it gives their people lots of work.
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