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America is responsible for more humanitarian aid than anyone else on the planet. But, our strategic interests are such that we have to have allies against our enemies. So if your position is we either condemn everyone or no one, then the survival of our nation will require us to go with the no one option.
So which would you rather, that we do what we realistically can for human rights given the geopolitical situation, or that we do nothing at all?
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Originally Posted by GregW
Nations have interests not friends. Our foreign policy has always been based on protecting investment from nationalization by the locals that think businesses should pay local taxes and/or our shipping should not be molested by locals (aka pirates). We even extend this protection to foreign investors as we did in Vietnam for the French Michelin company. So long as a country is not stealing investment we could care less about what they do to their own citizens.
^The above are good posts. In reality you can say what you want but what you want to do but what you can do can be severely limited. Also in dealing with despot nation states the US does it for it's own interests even if it doesn't particularly like having to deal with them.
Yeah, like how Islam Karimov can BOIL PEOPLE ALIVE at the behest of the United States, and become a "key partner" in the "global war on terror." And how U.S. soldiers can sodomize 15 year old boys in Abu Ghraib and that's not torture. And the Saudis can flog journalists, and the Israelis can put Gazan children "on a diet" with a food blockade. All of this is a big, cooperative anti-terror collaboration in the name of "benevolent global hegemony."
And it only gets worse over time. The only people worse than American politicians are those that are planning to become them.
I would like to point out a certain trend that really bothers me. How can the US criticize countries like Iran and Cuba for their human rights, when it refuses to do so for countries like Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and so forth, whom it views as its 'partners'?
If being an economic and/or military ally of the US, frees you from having to respect human rights, what place does the US have to criticize others of their human rights? If Cuba was a staunch American ally, yet had the same exact human rights record, would the US criticize it in the same way?
Either you stand up for human rights or you don't. Either you criticize all human rights violations or you don't criticize at all. Because then the precedence is, "if I become a close American ally and partner, I can do whatever I want with my human rights, the Americans won't care, given I serve their interests".
Well, we could just say to hell with global stability, and isolate ourselves from the world, by drawing up a "must comply with" list of things our allies must adhere to or be shunned by the USA entirely.
^The above are good posts. In reality you can say what you want but what you want to do but what you can do can be severely limited. Also in dealing with despot nation states the US does it for it's own interests even if it doesn't particularly like having to deal with them.
Or we could be like 0bama and act like spoiled petulant children, refusing to even meet with or talk to our allies if they do anything to displease us, as he is doing with Netanyahu.
The old pre-WWII stance on none of our business. That certainly wan'ts too swell an idea.
The human rights violations that occurred in the world were likely to happen with or without US intervention. Germany was effectively set up for a totalitarian leader, given Germany was heavily punished for what happened in WWI that left lasting economic hardship. They also had a strong desire to show national pride and were pretty anti-Semitic; the two principles Hitler ran on.
Hitler was not our fault. There were forces greater than us at play there. The US, contrary to popular belief, is not nearly as important as we'd like to think it is.
The U.S. has always had a double standard over the countries it criticizes and praises.
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