Do you consider the USA a threat to the World?

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Lol, I'm definately an American, luckily I'm not the guy making decisions (for obvious reasons). I have to say that after reading your statement (without just glossing over), that there's nothing to disagree with. I'm actually getting my head checked really soon (not because of the post though).

I feel like I understand why Americans aren't liked abroad. It has a lot to do with mixing the military with our business and playing hardball with other people's lives. We definately use our military in places where we don't trust the people, and the trust issue isn't helped by the way we do business. I know that in Iraq, before making a business deal, they want to understand WHY you want their business, if you just want to help, then they'll suspect something (who wouldn't?) and nobody can believe in the reason we came there in the first place. At the time I didn't care, I was 19 and Saddam was just a guy who ran his mouth a little too much (we were still mad about 911), it didn't take much convincing to get us rallied around the issue of invading Iraq. What wasn't in the picture was the no-bid contracts, Cheyney's KBR/Halliburton connections, and their piss poor planning of what to actually do for the government in Iraq.

From personal experience, I can tell you that in spite of the windfall profits enjoyed by halliburton, they weren't willing to share their own electricity with a turkish restraunt called Mujadeets, and when the restraunt burned down, they were unwilling to do anything for it afterwards. Soldiers enjoyed that restraunt because of the more relaxed atmosphere and the kebobs were a lot more cultural than eating ice cream at the chow hall every day. I don't think that halliburton is going ot get away with everything they've enjoyed for long however, I have some basic faith that the new administration will find a way to get the money back from them when they need it.

"I have some basic faith that the new administration will find a way to get the money back from them when they need it."

Such as getting back at their personnel whose money are in tax havens? ^^

So chto delat?, as Lenin would say.

You have more nukes, you have way more soldiers, more of everything. Do you go for containment, isolation, occupation, what? How hard do you have to push the Americans to make them more like Scandanavia? (Scandanavia is the paradise of the Democratic party; anything that makes us more like them is seen as progress, anything that moves away is seen as fascism...

Most Americans equate criticism of America with criticism of themselves. You must hate us if you hate America. At least that's how we feel.

When people criticize America, it's more often than not the leadership or lack thereof. <.< I've met enough decent americans to know that the big majority of them are rather decent folks, ofc you'll always find oddballs and idiots, but which society can truely say they don't have any o.O .

Well that would be your assumption but yes, I've had people get personal with me simply because my location was in America...and I've seen other people making personal attacks and rants on individuals simply because of a country they had been born into. Why would anyone individaul want to be defined by character or equated as the way their country is run? Some nationalities have no choice in how their government and political regimes are run at all...

I won't lie, there are aspects I like about America and there are aspects I don't like about America. So I guess people would have to take every American with a grain of salt. We don't really have the freedom to choose who runs are congress or have the ability to change what's been done.

I've even had people say "you christians"...without asking me. So yeah...I guess it's hard not to take assumptions based off of me personally....

Well, it's an 'American' thing, I guess...

We're 'known' the world over as incredibly naive, seeing as we're supposed to be a government of the people, etc., there's not the sophistication of other countries that separates the 'what can you do?' attitude about the government from the people that they govern. It gets us in trouble a lot..

And, as most peoples in other countries know far more about the rest of the world than we do (or so I'm told), the combination of apparent power and apparent ignorance is probably what leads to the attitude.

Obama's probably going to be in power another 7 years, we have a veto-proof majority in the Senate (now if someone could only train Democrats to march in lock-step..., so we're going to be a lot nicer for a while to come.

By century's end, it'll be India and China you have to deal with.

I believe the poll is too simplistic.

I think that the USA's rate of consumption is a threat to the world's environment. This rate is at least 3 times the rest of the world combined, and comes from a portion of the US population living a wastefully extravagant form of first-world lifestyle, combined with general activities and practices that waste resources and energy. In fact, the US has had it's highest proportion of citizens living in poverty in history (excluding the 30's depression), and the rate I gave is an average, therefore a portion of the population in the US is responsible for this high rate of consumption and not the whole population.

Also, the USA's religious and popular culture is a threat to environmental and cultural mindset. There is a growing religious extremism in the US I have heard referred to as the "American Taliban", responsible for fostering ethnic, cultural and religious prejudice and hatred, the use of violence to both express said hatred and exterminate these targets of hatred. Acts of violence against staff at abortion clinics is one example. Now imagine said prejudicial views influencing US Policy. In fact, it already happened during the Bush Presidency, and still does with encouraging Abstinence as the main Safe Sex / Family Planning method (in some places only method) in Africa. Even though proper use of condoms, sexual and STD education, and regular health checks is much more effective. Areas of the USA that promote pro-abstinence practices seem to have higher rates of teen-pregnancy and STD infections than others equally promoting condoms, at least.

Many citizens of developing nations have come to desire the kind of first-world lifestyle portrayed in US Popular Culture, as shown in the global media. That kind of throwaway, highly consumptive lifestyle is not sustainable in the long-run. We are already set to run out of "cheap-and-easy" resources by around 2050 if current global levels of consumption remain the same. Imagine if US citizens living in poverty began living in extravagant luxury, how soon would we run out? What if people in China did the same (and many want to)? Africa?



If you think this is hooplah, read Collapse by Jared Diamond. And look up the state of the former Soviet Union, which according to Diamond is "undergoing a partial societal collapse and facing major health problems and a severe reduction in life expectancy".

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Last edited by xenon13 on 20 Jul 2009, 4:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

are you f'ing serious?
WAKE
UP

give me detailed answers on the following nations:
how is guatemala a world threat?
how is greece a world threat?
how is finland a world threat?
how is uruguay a world threat?
how is iceland a world threat?
how is uganda a world threat?
how is bhutan a world threat?
how is denmark a world threat?
how is ireland a world threat?
how is estonia a world threat?
how is suriname a world threat?
how is jamaica a world threat?
how is namibia a world threat?
how is kenya a world threat?
how is botzwana a world threat?
how is turkmenistan a world threat?
how is jordan a world threat?
how is oman a world threat?
how is nepal a world threat?
how is honduras a world threat?
how is belize a world threat?
how is canada a world threat?
how is paraguay a world threat?
how is ecuador a world threat?
how is ghana a world threat?
how is gabon a world threat?
how is niger a world threat?
how is chad a world threat?
how is qatar a world threat?
how is even israel a world threat?
or peru, or brazil, or australia, or even north and south korea, theyre a threat to the peninsula but not to the world.

usa is
The
Only
Countri
On
The
PLANET
with MILITARY BASES
all over the world.

go figure.

btw, i was serious about the list. stand by what you say. "MOST". that list contains about 40 nations, and i want world-threatening dirt on them all.

Not with Obama.

Potentially every powerful country is a threat to the world. When such a country has a bad government, or something goes really wrong, other countries suffer from it, too.

We were asking a threat to the world, not in the region the country is in...

The following countries can deliver nuclear weapons well beyond their borders:

U.S.
Russia
People's Republic of China
France
Britain
North Korea (maybe).

ruveyn

Wow, you're just out to nit-pick aren't you? Maybe what I should've said was there are plenty of world threatening countries and the US isn't the only one. Does that work for you?

I'm not about to start calling counties like Jamaica a world threat. But seriously, you went and compiled a list just because I used the word "most"?

I can view North Korea as a world threat, they have nuclear ambitions and little discretion for human life. And Israel? Don't get me started, unofficially, Israel was considering nuking all the countries attacking it. Ever hear of "Samson Option"? Did I piss you off in some other thread or something?

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Last edited by xenon13 on 21 Jul 2009, 1:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

Uh, we owe more money to all the other nations in the world. There's a big push right now to counteract (actually, take away) any economic power from the US. Still

this is the thread that never ends
it goes on and on my friends
it started, just about a week or more,
the dust it hasn't settled and there is no score...