[NGTM-1R]

Sounds like we ended up creating our own future enemies (again).

Nature of the beast. You'll always do that no matter what you do.

Nations do not survive setting examples. They survive making examples.

[StarSlayer]

We learned about Japanese Interment as well as the United States' rather um awful 'Containment' foreign policy decisions during the Cold War in public school.  Actually the only major thing we skipped, or at least didn't go into the depth it deserved was our genocide of the American Indians.  It wasn't until my last year of college in a sociology course that I learned to fully appreciate the scope of that.

[Bobboau]

yeah, the fact that our country was founded on genocide and that it actually worked is not something any of the major ideologies wants people to know about.

[Thaeris]

Sad thing is... pretty much every nation is founded by killing the original inhabitants. There's really no exception anywhere.

[Mongoose]

We probably would have covered the Japanese interment and McCarthyism in turn if my AP US History teacher hadn't been incompetent with time-management and only managed to get us to WWI or so before the year ended.

[iamzack]

The extent of learning about Japanese internment and McCarthyism in this district is only in English classes, where we read sugar-coated short stories about baseball in internment camps and The Crucible.

[Akalabeth Angel]

The extent of learning about Japanese internment and McCarthyism in this district is only in English classes, where we read sugar-coated short stories about baseball in internment camps and The Crucible.

Read Obasan by Joy Kogawa.
It's probably pretty close, except the Japanese-Americans got their stuff back.

[Thaeris]

Travesty is human nature. That you are aware of it gives you the potential to avert it... if only in a relative sense.

[mxlm]

If you piss off the dictator he'll send his death squads to rape your family in front of you and slowly torture them to death as an example to keep people in line?  A bit different.

Well, okay. So we've liberated the country and killed some or many or most or all of the Bad Dudes (and a bunch of bystanders, but nevermind). Now what? Well, we can waltz back out, but that would, like, suck. I think I'd rather be in Saddam's Iraq or the PRC or whatever than, say, Somalia. Or we can stay, sure, and nation build. But then we're back to, "The most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'." How much scarier are those words when the speaker is from a foreign government? And is armed? And is telling you how it's going to be?

[NGTM-1R]

"The most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'." How much scarier are those words when the speaker is from a foreign government? And is armed? And is telling you how it's going to be?

To be fair, those words built modern Germany, most of Western Europe, the Phillipines, Japan.

[Mars]

If the government isn't there to help what the **** is it there for?

Really, if all governments were but burdens, there would be no point to having them.

[Kosh]

Sounds like we ended up creating our own future enemies (again).

Nature of the beast. You'll always do that no matter what you do.

Not totally true. Take for example Iran. We were the ones who overthrew their democractic government and installed a horrific dictatorship. Then that dictator got overthrown because he was so bad, and then what do we do? Say we're sorry for supporting a bloodthirsty regime? No, we encouraged their neighbor to attack them and did our best to isolate them, further driving them away from our values. Now imagine how things would be if Operation Ajax didn't happen...... 

Nations do not survive setting examples. They survive making examples.

We survived for a fair long time by setting an example. Germany tried twice to make examples of its neighbors, and both times it lost millions of people (and the second time the entire country was destroyed). Whenever you use force, you run the risk of being defeated by a force greater than yourself.

I'd love to be the good guys again.

You didn't seem to have a problem with being the bad guys just a few years ago.

[NGTM-1R]

Not totally true. Take for example Iran. We were the ones who overthrew their democractic government and installed a horrific dictatorship. Then that dictator got overthrown because he was so bad, and then what do we do? Say we're sorry for supporting a bloodthirsty regime? No, we encouraged their neighbor to attack them and did our best to isolate them, further driving them away from our values. Now imagine how things would be if Operation Ajax didn't happen...... 

And if we hadn't we would have pissed off Iraq instead. Nature of the beast.

We survived for a fair long time by setting an example. Germany tried twice to make examples of its neighbors, and both times it lost millions of people (and the second time the entire country was destroyed). Whenever you use force, you run the risk of being defeated by a force greater than yourself.

Our survival was not at risk. Germany, on the other, got an example made of itself by the rest of the world. It's semantics, and still true.

[Kosh]

Our survival was not at risk.

True, but does it really help our cause? In the last 8 years anti-americanism world-wide exploded, and not surprisingly it happened when we started doing morally questionable things (openly). We won't be at the top forever, and it's important to realize this so that when we aren't we are not alone and friendless.

Germany, on the other, got an example made of itself by the rest of the world.

And that was something they didn't expect to happen. They went into world war one with the premier army, the largest economy in europe, and a growing naval armada. They expected the war to be quick and mostly painless, to give the French and the Russians a good bashing (again), and it didn't turn out that way, instead it turned into a meat grinder for both sides.

And if we hadn't we would have pissed off Iraq instead. Nature of the beast.

I somehow doubt that Iraq would have turned fundie and gone rogue on us. What happened with Iran was blowback from our meddling, plain and simple.

[BengalTiger]

"The most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'."

If that was true, wouldn't Ron Paul be President today?

Hell- Obama's campaign was basically 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help' and lots of people voted for it.

[Kosh]

I'd also like to share a comment written here that I think is rather insightful (no, it wasn't written by me).

Dan, I'm afraid I can't agree with you on this. True, the majority of people who talk about US decline do so more out of hope than expectation, but the US quite clearly will not be the most politically or militarily dominant power on earth 30 years from now. This is not because of a US 'decline' but because of the rise of other states, China, India and a united Europe foremost among them. Even talk about being 'no. 1' begs the question - no.1 at what? The population and land area of the US is such that it may always expect to be a major power, and, barring some catastrophe, the level of economic development found in the US will always be among the top 10 nations on earth, but neither of these guarantees a top placing in anything.

Robert Kagan does not actually give good supporting evidence for what he says - the figures he gives do show an American which is in decline relative to the rest of the world, the US's military spending is now going mainly on covering the costs of two wars which do nothing to increase its long-term strength. He talks a lot about allies, contrasting those gained through recent conflicts (Iraq and Afghanistan) to those lost to Soviet influence during the seventies, but misses the point that these hapless allies do nothing to increase American strength, and in fact are as much a drag on US strength as the USSR's 'fraternal allies' were in the seventies and eighties.

At the end of the 1890s people in Britain were very much worried about their main competitors. Whilst Britain was at this stage still the world's most pre-eminent power they were confronted by two great challenges. On the European mainland they were faced by the Central Powers, and across the Atlantic the growing power of the United States. Their answer to this was to engage in wars which, whilst important at the time, are little remembered anywhere except in the countries in which they were fought ( such as South Africa and the Sudan), to create alliances of dubious virtue (such as the one with Japan), and to get mixed up in a dispute with the US over the Venezuelan borders. Twenty years later Britain found itself in a titanic war against the Central Powers in defence of its French allies with only minimal help from the Japanese and with the oft-snubbed Americans keeping a respectful distance until the Central Powers forced them into the fight. The United States seems to be equally frittering away its 'unipolar moment', whilst the loss of China to communism sparked a witch-hunt for the traitors that "lost China", the loss of Russia to dictatorship (as ephemeral as democracy was in Yeltsin's Russia) has happened without any great introspection as to whether policy-makers in the US could have done anything to prevent it. Saying that the last eight years have been disastrous for US-European relations would hardly be an exaggeration, put simply, a good half of Europe is convinced that there is a significant portion of the US establishment that sees them as quasi-enemies - and all of this damage done in the building of a coalition 'of the willing' which essentially gave the US nothing it did not already have. In short, the US has been offending those allies from which it had the most to gain through building strong relations, and this was done so that the US could gain a paltry handful of third-world dictatorial client-states. This is not a winning formula.

[TrashMan]

Sad thing is... pretty much every nation is founded by killing the original inhabitants. There's really no exception anywhere.

Well techincly, a few countries got formed by simply settling and mixing with the locals. Outbreeding the locals as it is. No war, no bloodshed.

[Liberator]

If the government isn't there to help what the **** is it there for?

Really, if all governments were but burdens, there would be no point to having them.

Well there's the rub of human civilization.  There can be no civilization without some government.  The objective is that said government be as small as it can be and still accomplish what governments need to accomplish.  In my book that includes the following in no particular order:

• maintaining a military to deal with threats from abroad
  
• act as a collective bargainer for it's citizens in situations where it is necessary such as development of treaties and agreements to      make said military come into play as infrequently as possible
• the development, maintenance and upgrade of a basic infrastructure so as to facilitate the development of industrial and commercial economic growth which in turn increases the wealth of the citizens which in turn increases the available funds to government through a non-burdensome tax(non-burdensome means you don't soak the top 5% of income earners for 90% of they're income)
• the provision of a basic education in mathematics, grammar, history(an unbiased view if you please) and science, with secondary courses available in the arts, music and trade(a skilled tradesman is worth 3 scientists IMO) areas.

Of course this is perfect world.  But a governments job is NOT to hand out check to people who won't work.  Almost everyone can do something to make a living, even if it's selling hot dogs out of the back of your rusted out 1967 VW Bus.

[iamzack]

So you really do think only the wealthy deserve policemen and firemen and health care? I thought that was just a strawman. D:

[Liberator]

So you really do think only the wealthy deserve policemen and firemen and health care? I thought that was just a strawman. D:

/sigh