Fred Reed: Why They Hate Us

[MediumTex]

Fred Reed: Why They Hate Us

A frequent theme nowadays is “Why do they hate us?” meaning why does so much of the world detest the United States. The reasons given are usually absurd: They hate our freedom or democracy. They hate us for our cultural superiority. They hate us because we are wonderful.

No. Actually the reason is simple if unpalatable. They hate us because we meddle, and have meddled. They hate us because we are the most murderous nation on the planet. They hate our insufferable smugness.

This seems obvious to me as well.  That so many don't (I'm lookin' at you, 99%+ of the political class and the media) is baffling.

And I think that most of the people around the world who hate "us" actually just hate the U.S. government, which a lot of Americans are equally frustrated with when it comes to its projections of power around the world.

[Mountaineer]

OK, so what comes next?  Revolution?  Defeat?  Reform?  All the "movements" like save the planet, solar forever, and abort the helpless so I can focus on "me", disappear in the harsh truth of there are more important things?

What language will we be speaking 50 years from now?

When the guy holding the fly swatter pisses off all the flies, what happens?  After all, we have killed more Americans via abortion than all most of the world's nasty people in the last hundred years did via ethnic cleansing (other than war).

... M

[MediumTex]

OK, so what comes next?  Revolution?  Defeat?  Reform?  All the "movements" like save the planet, solar forever, and abort the helpless so I can focus on "me", disappear in the harsh truth of there are more important things?

What language will we be speaking 50 years from now?

When the guy holding the fly swatter pisses off all the flies, what happens?  After all, we have killed more Americans via abortion than all most of the world's nasty people in the last hundred years did via ethnic cleansing (other than war).

... M

Despite its rhetoric, the U.S. is a society and nation preoccupied with, and saturated by, violence.  We love violence and always have, and that's why it's probably our number one export to the rest of the world, in the form of military hardware, the liberal use of military force, and movies glorifying violence in a zillion different ways.

And we don't just export violence--we practice it liberally amongst ourselves.  We shoot each other frequently, the government kills a few that it doesn't like, and women who find an undesirable baby growing inside them simply have them surgically removed and discarded.  When we need an escape from the dreariness of real-life violence, we distract ourselves by playing violent video games, going to violent movies and watching violent sporting events.

[dualstow]

and women who find an undesirable baby growing inside them simply have them surgically removed and discarded.

Are you pro-life also, MT? I missed that.
Or is it more complicated than that?

[MediumTex]

and women who find an undesirable baby growing inside them simply have them surgically removed and discarded.

Are you pro-life also, MT? I missed that.
Or is it more complicated than that?

I think that a decision to abort a baby in a society with the means to care for it is a senseless and tragic choice.

The questions is "who decides?" when it comes to deciding whether abortions ought to be permitted.

I would do my best to talk any woman who asked for my advice about whether to get an abortion out of doing it.  I would tell her that it would likely be a decision that she would live to regret, but I think that you have to use reason to change these behaviors, not the coercive power of the government.  What we see when we try to prevent it through coercive means is you simply drive the behavior underground and turn already-desperate women into criminals as well.  That doesn't make sense to me.

Even among the passionate pro-lifers, I rarely hear any of them arguing for making abortion a crime on par with murder (i.e., women who get abortions would be subject to capital punishment in many states), so even among the pro-lifers I sense a bit of skepticism in fully translating their pro-life logic into law.

We don't live in a stone age hunter-gatherer society.  Infanticide isn't necessary for our society's survival.

[dualstow]

I see, thank you.

[Mountaineer]

and women who find an undesirable baby growing inside them simply have them surgically removed and discarded.

Are you pro-life also, MT? I missed that.
Or is it more complicated than that?

I think that a decision to abort a baby in a society with the means to care for it is a senseless and tragic choice.

The questions is "who decides?" when it comes to deciding whether abortions ought to be permitted.

I would do my best to talk any woman who asked for my advice about whether to get an abortion out of doing it.  I would tell her that it would likely be a decision that she would live to regret, but I think that you have to use reason to change these behaviors, not the coercive power of the government.  What we see when we try to prevent it through coercive means is you simply drive the behavior underground and turn already-desperate women into criminals as well.  That doesn't make sense to me.

Even among the passionate pro-lifers, I rarely hear any of them arguing for making abortion a crime on par with murder (i.e., women who get abortions would be subject to capital punishment in many states), so even among the pro-lifers I sense a bit of skepticism in fully translating their pro-life logic into law.

We don't live in a stone age hunter-gatherer society.  Infanticide isn't necessary for our society's survival.

Agreed.  Many spend much time quoting statistics such as 58,000,000 plus humans killed (murdered?) since Roe vs. Wade became law in 1974.  We should also be having the discussion about how the mothers lives were changed, very frequently for the worse due to guilt and remorse after it is too late to change the action.  Kindness and compassion toward them should be on the front burner but if we can't admit the wrongness of killing those who cannot defend themselves, it is equally difficult to console and offer help to the mothers for then we would have to admit the wrongness of what transpired.

... M

[moda0306]

Dualstow,

Haha. Where did that quote in red come from?

[dualstow]

OTOH, I would not be surprised if the person Fred Reed discusses below...

a young Lao woman.

... has a hard time distinguishing between "the U.S. government" and "the U.S." as the object of her ire.

I had a middle-aged Vietnamese roommate while at Boston University. He was from central Vietnam but with mostly northern ties. Of course, he's not the best sample, because he chose to study and work (and later, settle with his family) in the United States, but from my conversations with him, I gathered the times they are a changin', and more and more often the distinction is made between gov't and population.

[dualstow]

Dualstow,

Haha. Where did that quote in red come from?

That's an original.  Still waiting....

[MediumTex]

At the risk of going off-topic, there is plenty to hate about other countries as well.  Make sure you look both ways before crossing a street in China:

It seems like a crazy urban legend: In China, drivers who have injured pedestrians will sometimes then try to kill them. And yet not only is it true, it’s fairly common; security cameras have regularly captured drivers driving back and forth on top of victims to make sure that they are dead. The Chinese language even has an adage for the phenomenon: “It is better to hit to kill than to hit and injure.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... ign=buffer

To the point above and Reub's earlier point, I don't hate the U.S. or my fellow countrymen or the U.S. government.

Being skeptical of a strategy that involves the seemingly endless projection of American military force in weird blowback-inducing cycles is, for me, simply trying to be a good citizen and making my views known for any political leader who is interested in knowing what the people of his country think.

The U.S. is the only place I would want to live, but much of what made this country great is a deep and abiding skepticism of the government's ability to solve society's problems, and I think maintaining that skepticism actually makes the country stronger.

[Mountaineer]

At the risk of going off-topic, there is plenty to hate about other countries as well.  Make sure you look both ways before crossing a street in China:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... ign=buffer

To the point above and Reub's earlier point, I don't hate the U.S. or my fellow countrymen or the U.S. government.

Being skeptical of a strategy that involves the seemingly endless projection of American military force in weird blowback-inducing cycles is, for me, simply trying to be a good citizen and making my views known for any political leader who is interested in knowing what the people of his country think.

The U.S. is the only place I would want to live, but much of what made this country great is a deep and abiding skepticism of the government's ability to solve society's problems, and I think maintaining that skepticism actually makes the country stronger.

+1

+ 1 more.  Jeeez, I find my self identifying with you weirdos.    Guess it takes one to know one. 

... M

[Fred]

Fred's a fellow Vietnam vet. Being involved in that cluster-f**k of a war definitely gives one a different perspective on the difference between fantasy and reality when it comes to America's role in the world.

Just finished the book American Reckoning by Christian Appy, the best book on the war that I have yet read. I highly recommend it for those interested in the subject. It's not so much about the actual history of the war as it is about how the attitude of American exceptionalism was so easily fostered and manipulated to get us into the mess. I learned about some things going on in the 50's during the Eisenhower administration that I was not aware of at all, since I was just a kid then.

As for the actual "American Reckoning" he argues that there has never been one, how the history of the war was re-written and how we got right back to the same place today. I have co-workers who are about 10 years younger than me and I often hear them repeat the myth that we didn't fight to win in Vietnam and that was the whole problem. I think they probably got that idea from watching Rambo when he asked, "Are we going to be allowed to win this time?". Apparently they never heard of My Lai or realized that we dropped more bombs on South Vietnam than were dropped in all of world war II and killed what would be the equivalent number of 18 million American civilians if it had happened here.

[Reub]

Vietnam.  Poor, unnecessary war. Iraq. Ditto. Abandoning Iraq after winning ridiculously dangerous and reckless. Defeating a terrorist caliphate like ISIS...necessary.  Bombing Iran's nuclear facilities...necessary. War in Afghanistan. ..necessary.  Fighting Hitler and the Third Reich...necessary. Some interventions are bad and others are necessary.  Don't lump them all together.

[Fred]

Vietnam.  Poor, unnecessary war. Iraq. Ditto. Abandoning Iraq after winning ridiculously dangerous and reckless. Defeating a terrorist caliphate like ISIS...necessary.  Bombing Iran's nuclear facilities...necessary. War in Afghanistan. ..necessary.  Fighting Hitler and the Third Reich...necessary. Some interventions are bad and others are necessary.  Don't lump them all together.

Vietnam was a necessary war. If we didn't draw a line in the sand and stand up to the communists in South Vietnam then the rest of the Asian countries would fall like dominoes and they would eventually end up on our own shores. And after North Vietnam deliberately and without provocation attacked our ships in open waters in the Gulf of Tonkin, their aggressive intentions could not have been more clear.

Likewise Iraq. There was very clear evidence that Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction and was even trying to buy uranium to make nuclear weapons. One of the 9-11 Al Qaeda hijackers even visited Iraq some time before the attacks and so it was very obvious that Hussein's intention was to make a dirty bomb and give it to Al Qaeda for detonation in one of our major cities. And also there were the anthrax attacks to prove their hostile intentions. As Dick Cheney informed us on the TV talk shows, Hussein was the only one capable of acquiring the kind of weapons grade anthrax that was used. So yes, the Iraq war was, indeed, a necessary one.

And now, as you say, it is obviously necessary that we bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. Even though they claim they are only for peaceful purposes everyone knows they are lying and are intending to make a nuclear bomb to be launched against Israel as soon as it is ready, or worse yet, another dirty bomb in one of our cities. So bombs away.