All this talk of "terrorism" and the threat of Islamic extremism and yet one fact remains continually ignored... if America took all the money spent on unwinnable wars in countries where they are not even particularly welcome and channeled it into a truly secure border and a comprehensive air and sea coast guard it would be virtually indestructible as a world power. You guys have an almost unique geographical advantage in that you are very hard to reach on both your East and West coasts, have a solid ally to your North and a bunch of Mexicans to your South (which the secure border would sort out). You have nuclear weapons which would deter the threat of any other super power taking you on and you have good relations with Europe and therefore have intelligence and assistance when it comes to any threat coming by way of the MIddle East.
You could easily make the United States the safest place in the world, but why won't you? Because since WW2 America has defined itself by interventionism and the inherent profitability within that. For years ye managed to pass off the idea that your interventionism was on the grounds of altruism but the Iraq war made it clear for all to see that the US views the world as some sort of de facto empire and if you're not "with us", you're "against us"... God help any country that does not have a leader who has the interests of the US economy or globalisation at heart. That's what the cold war was all about and that's what the current Middle Eastern mess is about - if you want proof just look at Saudi Arabia, the most anti-Western country on the planet and home to the 9/11 hijackers, and yet it is best buddies with America because it plays ball on an economic level.
Also, the macho right-wing mentality of much of American society would view this sort of shift in security policy as a "retreat" rather than as a common sense strategic decision. They'd label it a white flag to anyone with ill intentions towards the US. The paranoia that exists in the mindset of many (but thankfully not all) Americans nowadays clouds even reality itself, take Iran for example. People are talking about how much of a threat Iran are to the US and I've even heard people actually talk of the threat of Iran starting a war with the US... a war? How on earth would they logistically attempt such a thing? As Cameronpoe once said "what the fuck are they going to do, get the ferry from Portugal?". Even, in a nightmare scenario, if they developed nuclear weapons, would they even have the technology to hit the US? I seriously doubt it.
The Bush regime cheapened the value of the word "terrorism" by spreading it so thinly over the last 8 years but at the end of the day it's just semantics, people know real terror when they see it and no amount of wordplay can change that.
You could easily make the United States the safest place in the world, but why won't you? Because since WW2 America has defined itself by interventionism and the inherent profitability within that. For years ye managed to pass off the idea that your interventionism was on the grounds of altruism but the Iraq war made it clear for all to see that the US views the world as some sort of de facto empire and if you're not "with us", you're "against us"... God help any country that does not have a leader who has the interests of the US economy or globalisation at heart. That's what the cold war was all about and that's what the current Middle Eastern mess is about - if you want proof just look at Saudi Arabia, the most anti-Western country on the planet and home to the 9/11 hijackers, and yet it is best buddies with America because it plays ball on an economic level.
Also, the macho right-wing mentality of much of American society would view this sort of shift in security policy as a "retreat" rather than as a common sense strategic decision. They'd label it a white flag to anyone with ill intentions towards the US. The paranoia that exists in the mindset of many (but thankfully not all) Americans nowadays clouds even reality itself, take Iran for example. People are talking about how much of a threat Iran are to the US and I've even heard people actually talk of the threat of Iran starting a war with the US... a war? How on earth would they logistically attempt such a thing? As Cameronpoe once said "what the fuck are they going to do, get the ferry from Portugal?". Even, in a nightmare scenario, if they developed nuclear weapons, would they even have the technology to hit the US? I seriously doubt it.
The Bush regime cheapened the value of the word "terrorism" by spreading it so thinly over the last 8 years but at the end of the day it's just semantics, people know real terror when they see it and no amount of wordplay can change that.
Last edited by Braddock (2009-03-19 08:46:13)