Sunday, June 26, 2005

Foreign Policy sucks

A good friend of mine, we'll call him...Elvis, immigrated to America from a Latin American country. He was one of the people who got me into soccer, having moves and control like I've never seen.

It took awhile for Elvis to open up to me. Most people do it sooner because although a meathead, I am a genuinely nice, caring person when it comes to one on one conversations. When he did, he unleashed horrors like nothing I ever experienced.

His birth nation was in the middle of a revolution. During a revolution in many Banana Republics, if the revolutionaries think you are helping the government, they'll kill you. If the government thinks you're helping the revolutionaries, they'll kill you. So the best thing to do is bury your head in the sand and pop up every once in awhile for air, food, and water.

The revolutionaries would start with good intentions. They'd say "the government has done this, this, and this to the people, and therefore we must overthrow them." Wonderful, where do I sign up? So you grab your rifle, give it a good cleaning, and join the revolutionaries. They take over and just like Orwell's Animal Farm, they become just as bad as the people you helped overthrow.

His father owned a store. One day, the revolutionaries came in wanting supplies and bought a bunch of crap. He had the choice, turn them away and get shot, or sell them supplies and pray the government doesn't find out. Well, the government found out and they shot him for helping the revolutionaries.

Elvis not only lost his father, he lost his next-door neighbor (whom he was very close to) and several other close friends. Luckily for him though, he was born with a high I.Q. and with his education, he got an opening in a large U.S. corporation and became an American.

Elvis is now married to a beautiful woman, has lovely kids, and makes a lot of money. He smiles all the time and seems happy, but I know it still bothers him.

The U.S. took a side in this war. We took a side because the Soviets took the other side. For the record, both were the bad guys. Needless to say, we picked the side that hated communism. We didn't care if they were fascists, as long as they hated communism. The Soviets didn't care if the side they took rounded up property owners and shot them in the head, as long as they hated capitalism.

So since neither us nor the Soviets wanted to have an all-out nuclear war, we played out our little war games in Banana Republics. We had the policy of Containment. That's what brought us into Korea and Vietnam, and a bunch of other little wars that I doubt most people in the world know about. I didn't even know of all of them until recently. I'm sure there are at least one or two that I still don't know about.

That said, foreign policy sucks. It's d*mned if you do, d*mned if you don't. While people complain endlessly about how Americans are a bunch of bullies, they have no idea how bad it would be if the communists took over everywhere.

Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao. These guys butchered millions. Pol Pot killed everyone with glasses because that showed they may be intelligent. Everyone with an education, dead. By the time the killing fields were over, one quarter of Cambodia's population's bones bleached white in the sun.

Stalin killed between 19 and 27 million. He alone decided who the enemy of the revolution was. One day, you're enjoying a good bottle of vodka with your Communist comrades. The next day, you have wet canvas
wrapped around you. When the canvas dries, it constricts and you slowly die as the canvas crushes your ribs and your organs. It's supposebly quite painful.

And Mao...during the Cultural Revolution, they worked themselves into such a frenzy that they killed and ate over 270 enemies of the revolution. During Mao's reign, between 10 and 55 million Chinese people were killed by their own government. That's communism for you.

So maybe America should just give up. Let the world kill each other. If we go in to try to prevent it, we're the bad guys. I was against the Iraq War Part II for this very reason. Sure Hussein killed tens of thousands of people, committed genocide, and his sons raped random women that they found attractive, but if America goes in, we'll be the bad guys to the rest of world, so as cold as this sounds, screw them. I'm tired of losing American lives, I'm tired of my tax money going to help everyone but me, and I'm tired of being seen as a bully to everyone else in the world. I'm also tired of ungrateful foreigners, but you already know that.

11 Comments:

Blogger Udarnik said...

Yes, Mr. ZS, a real conundrum. I have my opinion and I'm a student of history. That's my problem... I have a pretty good idea of what needs to happen, but my conscience tells me "what works" is morally wrong... I shouldn't be involved in it. I find myself rooting from the sidelines, secretly hoping we have enough pragmatists, mercenaries and some downright intelligent and caring people, who can wade through the filth to achieve a positive outcome -- not so different than the popular music industry :-)

Foreign policy is an embarrassment both ways... we're either "too involved" or "uninvolved." Case in point: Africa. I have friends in Uganda... I wish the US could just go buy the place and fix it. It wouldn't cost much and most of the people there would dig it. But, here's the sad truth... there's not much there we want... no huge stash of natural resources, no gigantic brain trust of trained engineers, no viable trade partner, no money or market for our goods... just a bunch of wonderful people, who I just love hanging out with.

We enjoy a good standard of living here... we have lots of wonderful opportunities... that comes at a price... for "them" and "us."

6/26/2005 5:09 PM  
Blogger Ben said...

so true so true and so damn annoying. I personally don't want my tax money (yes I have a job and pay taxes people) going to people that are retired now or going to help the AIDS epidemic in Africa, I want it to go to getting people off the streets and off welfare in this COUNTRY and building a nest egg. Some may call this heartless, to them I ask is it not heartless that the government doesn't ask ME where I want MY TAX MONEY spent, I mean I earned it. Oh well, at least we don't have the tax rate at 70% like our "allies" in Europe. Because we all know the success of socialism...

6/26/2005 11:51 PM  
Blogger Basey the Barber said...

Yep that's right. I had a latino tell me how arrogant we are. He said La Raza is going to some day take it all back. I said maybe so, but if you guys ever do take it back you won't keep it long. He says who is going to take it? I just asked him how he likes Chinese Food.

6/27/2005 12:37 AM  
Blogger Basey the Barber said...

I was recently told by a Latino that Americans are arrogant, and we are going to get it. He also said that La Raza was going to get all the land back, and we would be left with nothing. I said well maybe so, but if La Raza gets it all back they won't have it for long. He said, " so who is going to take it"? I just asked him how he likes Chinese Food.

6/27/2005 12:42 AM  
Blogger Laura said...

Foreign policy is always full of bad choices. Power corrupts and foreign governments intervene not because it's the "right" thing to do (a word that is also near impossible to define) but they do what is in their best strategic interests.

You also have to blame colonialism for many of the current struggles we're facing in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Foreign powers siezed control and set up puppet governments so even the citizens couldn't trust one another. Then when the West was finished with that project, they wiped their hands and left people to war with each other.

sigh.

6/27/2005 3:36 AM  
Blogger Udarnik said...

Basey the Barber is right on... I found some troubling news on that front.

6/27/2005 6:32 AM  
Blogger The Zombieslayer said...

Bo - did we support Idi Amin in Uganda? I've heard some say we did and some say we were against him.

Bridget - yes, they irk me. They love to bite the hand that feeds. I say maybe we should stop feeding then.

Ben - I'm 100% with you there. It's weird how similar you and I are on some issues.

Basey - A big welcome to the Zombieslayer blog! Always happy to see new folks. To the Raza - we're arrogant? I also hate it when they call every white person "Anglo." Nothing against Anglos, but neither me nor the Mrs. have any Anglo blood. I'm not too worried about La Raza though. They're about the dumbest people I've ever known. The intelligent Latinos I've known all love America, are hard-working, and two of my Latino friends consistently give me financial advice. The smart ones have nothing to do with La Raza.

Laura - sometimes it's not even in our best strategic interests. That's when I don't understand it.

Bo again - yes, another reason I can't stand the outsourcing of our jobs. Our corporations are funding their soon to be empire. That's pretty scary.

6/27/2005 11:34 AM  
Blogger The Zombieslayer said...

Funkysmell - I didn't forget about you. Just got too many things going on at the same time. ;)

Thanks, and welcome as well. I'm on the dialup now, but when I get to the internet cafe tonight, I'll check out your comics. As I've said many times before on this blog, I love a good laugh.

6/27/2005 11:35 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm with you, zs. I say, haven't we done enough? We offer a free country, a land of opportunity to practically EVERYONE on the planet (while we simultaneously give money to the same countries that still can't offer what we do). Is that really isolationism? I say we send the memo out--if you hate us so much, why do you keep coming here???

6/27/2005 11:42 AM  
Blogger tshsmom said...

Plus, just like the Banana Republics, whoever takes over in Iraq, will probably wind up being just as bad as Hussein. It's just a matter of history.

6/27/2005 12:13 PM  
Blogger The Zombieslayer said...

Kitkat - that was funny:
I say we send the memo out--if you hate us so much, why do you keep coming here???


Tshsmom - I fear that too. We put in some guy who seems like a hero. Ten years later, he still doesn't want to give up power and he turns into a dictator just as bad as Hussein.

6/27/2005 1:08 PM  

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