Re: a dumb query? pls humor me

On Mon, Mar 05, 2007 at 08:54:37AM -0500, Curt Howland wrote:

The US doesn't protect anyone. If the US were actually interested in
defense, rather than empire, the military bases overseas would be
closed, rather than manned in 170 countries, of which, what, 2
are "at war" with the US?

Ummm, many of the overseas military bases are in place at the
*invitation* of the host governments. I'd hardly call that empire.
Now, those bases were built under the shadow of the Cold War Soviet
threat. However, many of the bases have closed or will be closing soon.
If anything, because the military services are too small to maintain
lots of overseas bases.

The "rendering massive aid" is also misconstrued. It has nothing to do
with the government of the US, it has to do with the last dregs of
what was a vigorous economy.

While the US government redirects some of its blood-money taxes
to "aid" in quantities of "$millions", the individual citizens of the
US donate "$Billions" to various charitable efforts around the world.

I challenge you to provide a statistic. Now, don't get me wrong, I
think it would be great if the US governmnet would get out of the
charity business and leave it to private citizens' generosity. However,
I am also a realist.

By simple scale, the US government is ineffectual in its
supposedly "positive" efforts. The destruction and death is many,
many times greater by government action than its paltry "aid", and
that "aid" always is paid not to individuals or voluntary
organizations, that "aid" is given to whatever government proports to
be the lawful one in that geographic area. So the "aid" actually
lines the pockets of petty dictators, rather than
feeding/housing/nursing anyone.

I guess it is a matter of perspective. There is really only so much
that can be done before people (both in the US and abroad) start
complaining that what should be a humanitarian mission is becoming too
belligerent. Just look at the fiasco in Mogadishu. Good intentions
gone wrong.

If you want to have a positive effect, the first thing to do is get
government out of the way. Might does not make right.

On this we agree.

Regards,

-Roberto

--
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://people.connexer.com/~roberto
http://www.connexer.com

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