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Has Given America A Bad Reputation All Over The World

 


helmut

I think by all over the world this list maker means Europe, but this is subjective. The current rift in European and American thinking about acceptable usage of power has been growing since the Cold War. At least during the early years, it was accepted that the Americans would be the force that regulated Soviet domination and that any European military only had to be powerful enough to hold off the Soviet army (in the event of an invasion) long enough for the U.S. to intervene, that is, unless the conflict resulted in a nuclear exchange, in which case a defending army, big or small, would do little good. For Americans on the other hand, the probability of a North American invasion was slim. Because of the Truman doctrine and the policy of containment, the U.S. was forced to create a military not only capable of defeating any communist threat, but also doing so on foreign soil, possibly in Europe and the Far East simultaneously. This idea caused the Europeans to become used to keeping a small army and also made them used to viewing the Americans as a regulating force against not just the soviets, but against any threat. Europeans would like us to believe that they are more civilized than we are and would only resort to the use of military might under the most extreme circumstances, but the fact of the matter is, none of them are really capable of projecting power elsewhere. I have heard said of the U.S. If you have a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail, but the opposite is true of Europe: When you don't have a hammer, you don't wan't anything to look like a nail. As for Bush, I really don't think its as much his fault as the way Europeans and Americans have been looking at things differently for the past several years. The invasion of Panama in 1989, The Persian Gulf War in 1991, and the intervention in Somalia in 1992 all occurred during the first Bush administration, but President Clinton continued this practice in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. Arguably none of these threats are as great as the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush is not completely to blame.
  (1 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree)



• Review posted on 04/18/2005
• This review has been viewed 23 time(s)

Replies to helmut's review:

REVIEWERREPLY
PotatoMcFarline (0)
11/26/2007
I dont see what military might has to do with ideology in terms of proper usage of warefare inside the reach of what is within your capability.I dont see the logic in the arguement that abundance of might to protect agianst lagitiment threats necessarily leads to despotism. What I do see is that our people where lied too at the beginning of the war.I cant see caring about the iragis so much that we are willing to create for our children a precident for submitting to government opression in the form of obvious dis-information and out-right lies.But you are right in my view on one point, bush is not completely to blame.The other par tof the blame falls on people.Now the smart folks are looking at the enlisted forces as the dumb or the souless and rationalize , perhapes, that its all okay because only the those people are dieing, however real compassion for the iraqi people comes in the realization that they are supporting the war machine with there own money.And they need to work within there rational means to stop the war,Instead of giving blood money to there "representatives" so they can in turn slaughter the children-of-god and demenstrate there caracteristic aptitutde for beligerant incompetence( if indeed it is incompetance and not just heathenry)
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