Posted by akhilesh [ 208.20.194.215 ] on June 05, 2007 at 09:05:27:

In Reply to: Re: Bill Maher & Ron Paul posted by Wayne Parham on May 29, 2007 at 17:29:52:

I agree, Wayne. Bill MAher is a male Rosie O'Donell and not worth responding to.
But I think ROn Paul raised a good point: the US foreign policy has not been the best in terms of spreading democracy...instead we have propped dictators wherever we have gone. Most countries that have become friends
of ours have totalitarian governments. The nations that are doing well ( China, India, Europe) are those that have kept a healty distance away and tried to build their own economies. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Nicaragua...one can think of many examples where close friendship with US policy makers led to economic and political basket case syndrome.

Now the question is: why is that? After all, the American people are the best meaning people on the planet, and individually, we do more good to each other and to others than anyone else. The reason I think is very simple. Our policy makers have a very naive attitude about other cultures, and the US is very powerful. THink about the average upper middle class kid who goes to an Ivy LEague Univ, and then heads off to DC to work on US policy. SOme of these kids go to other countries, and are told what the US interests are: usally oil or prevention of communist expansion). When they reach these other countries, living conditions are so bad, and the culture is so impenetrable, that often they will latch onto the few friends they see there .....alas often these "friends" are just using the power of the US to get their own ends. THe US is so powerful, that these "friends" then take over opower in these countries, and then continue to help the US whle at the same time bleeding their populace dry.
This is why "our friends" the SAudi Royal Family are so disliked in their own countries, and why Musharraf is a dictator, and so on and so forth.
To summarize, it is a combination of lots of power and the temptation to take the easy way out that has led to our foreign policy being so unpopular amongst the poor & downtrodden in other countries.

Now, in Iraq, initially, when the US went in, they were misled by their "friends" who were anti Saddam and power hungry themselves. These "friends" talked about WMDs, etc and Saddam;s irrationality didn;t help either. Now that we are in there, everyone is screaming we needto get out. Actually, for the first time, I see us engaging at a local level in anothe rcountry. WE have a good understanding of who the good guys & the bad guys are, and are engaging in politicas at a local level, and trying to help. Will we be successful? Only if we understand that every culture is different. Naively hoping that Iraq weill becoem a democracy is silly, but I think our current executive branch is past that now (Mr. Bush has had a few very painful foreign culture lessons over the last few years, which is ironic given he was one of the most insular presidents we have had in a long time). While it is messy, I hope this low level involvement with multiple players in IRaq will lead to a more stable Iraq.
Just my ramblings....back to work.

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