Anti American sentiment

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I voted for Kerry and I can't stand Bush, but I do know that a lot of people who voted for Bush regret it now. What people overseas don't understand is that the matter of voting Kerry or Bush was figuring out what we thought was the lesser of two evils. A lot of people hated both Kerry and Bush. Some of these people decided between the two, and some didn't vote at all. I honestly felt Kerry would have done a better job (heck, I think ANYONE would), but he didn't win.
Also, you should keep in mind that our culture is different here. We have a lot of fundamentalist christians who are against abortion and gay marriage for religious reasons. These people tended to vote Bush as well. Rich people also voted for him because he gave them tax cuts. What the president does here in the US matters as much as what he does overseas (and to some people, it means MORE).
Finally, just because someone votes for someone doesn't mean they're responsible for that person's actions. Yes, it is their fault the person got elected, but it is Bush's fault if he does something stupid. Believe me, I cringe from embarassment every time I see him on tv because of how ignorant he sounds. I know how bad he's making us look, but Americans shouldn't be generalized because of him. What you all need to realize that generalization is wrong. Sure there are some Americans who fit the description of what you're saying, but not ALL of us, and probably not even MOST of us.

It isn't fair to say ALL Americans are selfish and want to dominate the world. That's making a generalization, and the majority of our country isn't like that. What really gets to me is people have that have never even BEEN to the USA make these generalizations about us that aren't true. Hate our politics, NOT US.

Last edited by QuirkyCarla on 21 Dec 2005, 11:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

deleted to grant the wishes of the mods (I posted it before I saw that RobertN's account was suspended and we weren't supposed to post to him)

Last edited by QuirkyCarla on 21 Dec 2005, 11:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Actually the number of people who didn't vote for Bush is a lot higher. I, for one, didn't vote for either douchebag.

By the way, Karl Rove just LOOOVES anti-bushism abroad and in leftist circles. Nothing brings Republicans to the polls more than foreigners telling them who to vote for, except elitists in NYC doing the same.

Keep it up guys, Bush will setup a crony for BushIII, the resurrection.

One other thing...

Saying a populace is responsible for the actions of their head politician is the exact same excuse Madeleine Albright (under Clinton) used to bomb Serbia and starve Iraqi citizens with UN sanctions. Not a nice precedent to follow. I'm tempted to call you a hypocrite.

I'm supposed to be on my break from wrongplanet but, you are right DrinkingT. Anti-americanism is the socialism of fools. The United States is a great country inspite of it's faults.

The War in Iraq and its occupation changed my viewpoint dramatically. Before, I took the World War II approach where two sides fought each other until one was bombed into oblivion. The loser would throw up the white flag, leaving the winner to occupy and rebuild it. This worked wonderfully with the Marshall Plan in Europe. Europe is now a strong, dominant coalition that rivals America in GPU and is pretty stable socially.

Unfortunately, Europe is not the Middle East, and we learned that the hard way. Nevermind that we went in for all the wrong reasons, nevermind that Mr. Bush took intelligence and looked at it selectively in order to further his agenda. Lets take a look at a the basic point in the Middle East: Religion is life, life is religion. It is hard to have a secular, stable government when religion demands that it involves itself in politics as much as prayer. The middle east has never gone through the period of renaissance and enlightenment of Europe. It has not gone through the industrial revolution.

The Middle East's heyday was during the dark ages, and has since then been controlled by a weak, corrupt empire known as the Ottoman, and then subsequently divided amongst the European empires into territories that dont make any sense ethnically and regionally. How does the western powers (US especially) expect to enact change when they have been viewed as the aggressors for the past 1000 years? How does the West expect for the the ethnic groups in Iraq, who have only lived with each other because saddam held a gun to their heads, to suddenly drop their anymosity and live in peace? Its illogical and shortsighted. But thats what the Republicans have sold us, and we bought it.

No longer is it about finding the WMDs. The Bush Administration has admitted WMDs probably never existed. It is now about "liberating" a group of people and forging a democracy in one of the most turbulant regions on Earth. Unfortunately, the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds hate themselves a good measure, and are only unified by hating the invaders even more. You cant bring freedom to a group by forcing upon them. They have to want it for themselves, and be prepared to make the sacrifices. Anything else will be viewed as an outside intrusion on their private affairs, and will only unite them in order to fight off the "infidels".

I do not have a solution to the middle east. I think we have dug ourselves so far in, there is no more clean way out. The elections have showed us recently that Iraq will become a very fractured government. Both the Shiities and Sunnis want to impose dominance on the majority, while he Kurds want nothing to do with it and would rather become an indepent nation. Civil War is a very real possibility.

Thank you, Newchum.

WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING


Do not make the same mistake i did.
Do not read the following if you have just taken a gulp of some tasty beverage.





anarkhos made my nostrils burn with the following statement,

and the part that didn't come out my nose went all over the wall.

Just DITTO,

To everything that Comkeen wrote.

Matter of fact, DITTO² to anything i have read by Comkeen.

See, personally I'm one of those people who actually has to admit that he's for the U.S. AND for our current government. People have a whole bunch of ways they want to read Bush wanting to take over the middle east for oil, us thinking we own the world, some people saying that the zionists and christians are pushing arround muslims - everyone who doesn't like us will always think of a million different ways they can take the facts, intentions, and reinterpret them so they'll never have to like us. At the end of the day all information passed to anyone from anywhere only has integrity as good as that of the person saying it - being that integrity is an extremely subjective thing anymore I think its beyond hope to try and prove anything to anyone. All you can do is examine the nuts and bolts of the situations, the nuts and bolts of human nature, see how it adds up, and for me I've come to my conclusion - sorry if it's unpopular.

Well I'm sorry you feel that way, but we have to try and keep the peace as best as possible. I'm sure you wouldn't want a forum where members run about unchecked. It would be a very ugly place indeed.

And Robert is not the only member here who has violated the rules that we've dealt with. We deal with things one incident at time and make the best decision we can. After previous complaints of moderator bias, were trying to make things more uniform, Robert is just first example of this. As much as you feel wronged for seeing robert getting suspended, others here have felt the same for some of the comments he's made.

It's a rather logical conclusion to make, considering this week's passing of a military funding bill that had a last-minute edit to add a clause authorizing oil exploration in the Arctic Wildlife Reserve. I wonder which of Bush's friends will get the drilling rights? Too bad about all the caribou that will be killed....

I don't think WMDs were ever anything more than a convenient excuse.

with regard to what scoots said, i've posted about it here

A few random thoughts on this subject:

-I am not a robot who will say that everything is fine and that I agree with everything that the leadership does. EVERYONES' opinions vary from everyone else's to varying degrees. For example, I very vehemently disagree with the current Drug War, for reasons that are well covered in other forvms.

-I agree with going in to the Middle East to (at least try to) clean up the current mess there. Perhaps a big reason why there is so much 'anti-Americanism' these days is that the USA is the only nation in the World right now with the resources, ability and willingness to do that work and others are envious of that. The Middle East is a VERY DANGEROUS part of the World these days, with unstable governments on the cusp of having very dangerous weaponry to drive home their 'our way or die' religious philosophies. To do nothing in the face of this threat is to invite disaster. (Don't expect Israel to sit back and watch this for much longer, either.)

-A lot of the mess in current Iraq is due to where the lines were drawn by the British after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, nearly a century ago.

-You hear of the blood and mayhem of the nearly daily random terrorist attacks in Iraq, but the popular press in most of the world conveniently ignores everything positive that is going on there (if you recall, there was a HUGE election there just this past week) and in Afghanistan. Returning soldiers are telling stories that are a 180 degree difference from the screaming worldwide headlines. BTW, the occupation and reconstruction in iraq is going far faster than it did in post WWII Germany and Japan, two countries that the people of that time felt were utterly and completely hopeless cases, with both countrys' governments not being turned loose until at least 1950, fully FIVE YEARS after the end of major combat operations of World War II. BTW, 60 years after the end of WWII, USA troops are still stationed in both countries.

-Right now, we have about 160,000 troops in Iraq. Things are going sufficiently well there that I am expecting that by the end of 2006, we will be able to go down to the recently discussed level of 90,000. This is going about as expected when we first went in there in early 2003. NOBODY likes seeing their country being occupied by another, but as recent polls within Iraq have attested, the Iraqis appreciate that we did dispose of Saddam, want us to finish the job of getting things back up to speed and then pull back. That has been the plan all along.

-I find it very interesting that so many people throughout the World are on the anti-American bandwagon these days, but that those same people still very much want to come here as immigrants in droves and loooove getting USA Dollars for payments when they sell stuff.

-There was a very good 'spoken word' recording done by a Canadian in the early-mid 1970s (late Vietnam era) whom was fed up with the over-the-top anti-Americanism of some of his countrymen. I forget the title/artist on it, but it is still very much worth seeking oot and listening to.

-Where else in the World but here in the USA do people of all religious faiths, ie, the various arms of Christianity (Catholics, Protestants of all breeds, Orthodox, etc), Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc, live side by side in peace, many not caring or even knowing what faiths their neighbors practice?

Mike