Comment Re:You're talking to the wrong crowd (Score 1) 322
I hope the amount of incorrect, ranting assumptions you've made about me and what you think I stand for made you feel better.
Perhaps you shouldn't be blamed, but your role in the institution is clear: you help rationalize death and violence for those in pursuit of power. There are lower callings, but not many.
Do you believe that the world and humanity would be better off if the US hadn't existed after, say, WWII? Not just from a geopolitical perspective, but from perspectives of technology, medicine, and similar? Do you believe that someone like, say, China, or an amalgamation of warring mideast states, or perhaps even an old Soviet superstate would be a better global steward than the United States and the West?
The mid-east states started warring after we and our allies divided them up after WWI and purposefully separated tribal groups by state lines, and then started stealing all of their resources. China has not stepped outside of its borders in quite some time, but I understand if you're afraid of the Asiatics. 19th Century ignorance is about where I'd place your philosophical aspirations.
As for Russia, I find that simply ironic. Who was it who was invading Afghanistan to impose secular values on a fundamentalist culture, but couldn't get things done because weapons and arms were being smuggled in through Pakistan? Do I prefer the massacres in the eastern bloc to the death squads in Central America? Do I prefer the assassinations of civil rights leaders with the FBI or the KGB? How is Estonia doing vs Haiti? Latvia vs Ecuador? Poland vs Nicaragua? Was Saddam a great ally in the 1980s when we sponsored a million deaths after Iran threw out our puppet government, or was Mubarak a better investment (until recently, at least)?
Did our investment in China go up or down after they rolled over students in Tiananmen Square? What made us turn on Gaddafi after showering him with diplomatic gifts in 2008?
Do women have more rights in Saudi Arabia or Iran, and if the answer is Iran, why are we allies with Saudi Arabia?
Only a fool can see the American empire as anything than what it is: a run-of-the-mill, self-interested machine of conquest and violence. Not better or worse than any other empire, but like all empires, interested in a single question: do you obey?
If you want to defend that mentality, there's no difference between yourself an any other parasite of any other empire. You wave the stars and stripes because of your coincidental birthplace, not because it represents a value system. You're a self-righteous parasite. There's nothing special about you or about America. Not anymore.
PS: I didn't even touch the slaughter in Southeast Asia. That would have made the argument too easy.