Re: a dumb query? pls humor me

Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:

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.

OK, then the host country should be providing revenue equal to expenses
incurred on behalf of American taxpayers at the base. They want us to
fight their fights for them, they can pay us.

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.

Given I'm paying for it, that's too little, too late. How many billions
(trillions?) could have been put to productive use instead of flushes away
on installations rendered unnecessary in 1945 or during Glasnost?

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.

I'd rather they just get out of the foreign charity business. American
government should serve American citizens first and only.

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.

I'm rather annoyed at the Clinton Administration for not learning from the
mistakes of the neoconservative administrations immediately prior to his
term. What the hell do you think is going to happen when you provide aid
of any sort to a country run by a warlord?

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.

The problem is, you can't get the government out of the way. It's either
work with the government we have, or go with some kind of anarchy. The
latter is totally and completely unworkable and usually results in
totalitarianism (the exact opposite of getting the government out of the
way) and collapse (the only natural progression of totalitarianism), as
witnessed by pretty much the entire Soviet bloc firsthand.

If you're a citizen, odds are it's in your greater self interest to take
time off work every once in a while to actively participate in your
government. That's workable. Complaining how any government at all is
unworkable is laughable.



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