Rus: Don’t you think your response is a tad too simplistic? It presupposes that the US has been running rampant on the world stage, subjugating everything in our path.
I think if you back up some 30 – 35 years, you’ll see a very different world, and one dominated by the Soviets, with the US just trying to hold the line.
If you were to take Southeast Asia from 1975 forward, you would see that there was indeed a reason for us to be there, and that, following the fall of Saigon in April of 1975, the North Vietnamese moved in and brutally repressed the entire South. You then have the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia killing some 2.5MM people out of a population of 7MM.
Around the same period, you have the Soviets and Cubans in Angola, and the Soviets supporting “National Liberation Fronts” in countries throughout Africa, and Central and South America.
The point is that the US was the only counterweight to a very real Soviet plan to dominate the world. We did this on our dime and generally asked little in return. Yes, our policies are sometimes suspect and we have definitely made some serious mistakes in foreign policy. But, if you compare the Shah of Iran to Khomeini, Fidel Castro to Batista, and Danny Ortega to Somoza, you’ll find that sometimes the choices aren’t that easy, and that the alternative is far worse. Just look at the way the Russians are bullying their neighbors in Eastern Europe and China’s response to Tibet and Nepal.
We’re certainly not perfect, and these last few years have been difficult to say the least, but we’re also certainly not the atavistic, war mongering empire some on the far Left insist we are.
