This seems to be a bit contradictory. I'm also curious how it meshes with your personal experience.
If the Chinese were in the US today, I'm not sure we'd have much choice. I'm also not sure the people of the mideast have much choice either. Does anyone seriously expect them to embrace our "help"? It's asinine and insulting to their (and our) intelligence. It's unfathomable to me that anyone over there wouldn't be taking up arms against 'us'. It should be radicalizing the moderates. What a gift that was for the extremists. The money, lives and hatred created was senseless. Our troops and their population are deeply invested in a conflict that didn't need to happen. Well, except on their side. They had to fight us once we setup shop in their country. These wars are a business venture transferring wealth from the citizenry to those colluding with the gov't, not a noble cause.
It meshes with my personal experiences quite well. Unless someone takes a swing at me, I don't fight. I get by well with this principle. I'm never in jail and never standing in front of a judge, and no one gets hurt unnecessarily. I think the same principle would do our nation-state a lot of good.
You can't say it's a response to 9/11 (a "swing at us"). Because if this were about stopping Islamic-sourced terrorism, we would've invaded Saudi Arabia first, foremost and long ago. It was a response to nothing, it was an excuse.
you try to rally your neighbours and friends to have a raid group. unsurprisingly, your german and french friends are against armed storming of someone else house based just on some overheard rumours (), rest is at least hesitant. you say something along "fk you puies" and storm the house with only friend you are left with - that british fella that you have so much in common with. Long story short, you kill the guy unarmed, don't find any weapon whatsoever and burn his house in the process to ashes. After that you refuse to move from his property, stating you need to keep that neighbourhood protected and invite other armed people to join you.
Sorry if I missed some important stuff, and of course this describes only beginning, with all the current mess being result of these (probably intentional) mistakes. If anyone still thinks US is viewed anywhere as a good guy in this war, then NO - there are only bad guys. Personally, ISIS would still have to work hard to match all US-directly-caused civilian casualities in Iraq. It doesn't matter much if someone is beheaded, blown to pieces or machinegunned while going to work, does it...
() - that Bush speech in UN was really horrible, I recall it quite well, saying to myself - and they want to screw up another nation completely based on THAT???
Oh? And what would you do if you came across someone beating a child to death? Just watch and wait for him/her to take a swing at you before intervening?
Am I to fly around the world, saving everyone? Is that even possible? What about the children not immediately near me, but closer than Shanghai? Haiti or Mexico for example. I think the people in the Shanghai region have more responsibility to save that child than me. When we did try to save that child in Iraq, we ignored the child in Haiti, Mexico and here at home too. And so many unintended consequences (like the region assuming: oh, the US is here, we'll do nothing now). People are good across the globe, it's naive to think we're the only one interested in saving children. Unfortunately it's usually a political ruse than a genuine interest to help. Instead, the children here, Haiti and Mexico either have no oil, or are already under US political control- so the industrialists in bed with the gov't don't care about children beaten there. That's the real answer.
Also, does anyone honestly believe the people of Shanghai -want- our help saving their beaten children? Just about as much as we want the Chinese coming to San Francisco to save our children in need.
Hypotheticals are good for making points easier to get across. But I wouldn't accept an overly simplified hypothetical like yours without qualifications. The way you framed yours lines up with how the war profiteers want the argument to be framed. I mean, Shanghai is a big enough city that you know for a fact that there is literally a child being beaten there, right now. There's many good reasons you're not buying a ticket personally to go find that child and save him or her.
You could say, "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Well then, best order your ticket now. Think about those reasons why you aren't doing that. Those are the same reasons we shouldn't be sending guys with -guns- over there either to "help". If you do this exercise you'll understand how absurd the whole thing is.
Also, drop the condescending tone in your response about 'helping people see another way'. I gave you a simple hypothetical and you dumped a page of text without answering it because you didn't understand a simple question. You're not helping at all.