My point is that armed big-brother type interventions never work. Well, that explains the military dictatorships in Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Panama. Clearly a world without US intervention would be more humane. Look at the two Koreas – one we pressured for years to improve its human rights record, in the other we’ve never had influence. If not for American intervention, the whole peninsula could be in the Kim family’s wise stewardship (with backing from your pals in Communist China – yet another anti-American dictatorship you’ve spoken of fondly.) Speaking of the Chinese, they’re pretty engaged with us commercially. Have they been swayed to our point of view? Ask the good people of Darfur, if there are any left.
You think Hollywood is going to get the world to embrace us? That’s funny coming from someone who considers himself cosmopolitan. Let’s sponsor showings of ‘The Birdcage’ in Cairo and ‘Thelma and Louise’ in Riyadh, and wait for the wave of pro-American sentiment. As for the rest of your consumer products, five years ago an al Qaeda operative came up with the bon mot, “The Americans love Pepsi Cola. We love death.” Maybe that guy would have felt differently if he’d studied in America, like Khaled Sheikh Mohammed (North Carolina Ag&Tech State University 1986, plot to destroy the World Trade Center 2001).
For all your so-called worldliness, you can’t seem to grasp the idea that people hate the US for reasons other than your own, and in fact for reasons in conflict with your own. You think Muslims will appreciate your desire to remove God from public life? You think the most fertile nations on earth will agree with you that having children is selfish and bad for the world? You think spreading the word about your contempt for religion is going to boost our standing in dar-al-Islam?
For a European, you have a shoddy grasp of realpolitik. There was nothing hypocritical in funding both Iran and Iraq. We wanted them both to lose.
