I said in my previous post that the USA has done good things as well. Snuffing out Hitler was one of them. The reason modern countries  -  democratic and undemocratic  -  attempt to justify and explain their deeds is very simple: the mass media exist and information can be transmitted. Because this is possible, everybody does it.

What I had in mind was the history of the USA, not so much what happened in the 20th century. The westward expansion of the USA gave a bad deal to Indians, for example. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was largely dictated to Indian leaders even though it was supposed to be voluntary. The annexation of Texas in 1845 is another example of heedless US imperialism.

In the past, the great powers of the day expanded in similar fashion. As Western culture is largely a legacy of the Roman Empire, it is taken for granted in Western history books that Rome expanded by waging war against its neighbors. No one suggests that Rome had no moral right to conquer other peoples. Its military achievements are viewed with admiration rather than condemnation. This gives Westerners a clean conscience.

Even though the USA was instrumental in creating the United Nations, it nowadays cares little about international law. The illegal war on Iraq is a good example of that and so are the tortured prisoners of Guantanamo. The USA praised Saddam Hussein just weeks before he attacked Kuwait. Saddam was one of America's best friends in the Middle East. That was because Iraqi oil was sold cheaply to the USA. For the same reason the US is on good terms with the ruthless dictatorial rulers of Saudi Arabia. Most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, by the way. The uninitiated might wonder why the USA didn't attack Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq. After all, even the CIA must have known that Saddam Hussein and Al Queda hated each other.

I am not saying that smaller nations are less guilty. Business interests dictate of lot of what they do as well. For example, Nokia, the biggest manufacturer of cell phones, has a factory in China.

CB

Avangi

“ anyone past the age of puberty knows, or should know, that Rome was not the first "evil empire." 

”

Hi Avangi

I never said Rome was the first evil empire. I didn't use the term at all. I just said it waged unjustified wars. Of course it wasn't the first empire to do that.

CB

Cool Breeze

“the tortured prisoners of Guantanamo”

RayH

“
Perhaps you would care to explain how this constitutes torture:
A former driver for Osama bin Laden was sentenced by a military jury Thursday to 5 1/2 years in prison for supporting terrorism, a far shorter term than demanded by government prosecutors. The judge gave Salim Ahmed Hamdan credit for five years and one month of his pretrial incarceration at Guantanamo Bay, making him eligible for release from custody in five months.

While you're at it maybe you would be good enough to state your precise definition of "torture."

”

I never said Osama bin Laden's driver was tortured! I don't follow your logic at all. If I say there has been torture in Guantanamo, I don't mean everybody has been tortured there. I cannot possibly know if this driver was tortured or not. A Swedish prisoner who was released without being charged with anything wrote a book about his experiences in Guantanamo. Unfortunately I didn't write down his name when that happened. Some others that have been released have also mentioned that they were tortured in Guantanamo.

Webster's dictionary defines 'torture' as follows: 

1.    the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty.
2.    a method of inflicting such pain.

CB

 While being a spectator of this exchange, I couldn’t help suppressing this urge but add a few words. Before doing so, I feel the need to disclose that I am not a native American, so the view I am about to express is solely mine as a personal observation and belief.

Whether the Iraq war a resolution passed by the U.N. or whether it was carried out based on, like some said, “the greed for oil”. The need to eradicate Saddam who was proven to be a danger to it’s oil-rich neighbor was brewing. As the most oil-dependent country in the world, United States could not afford to seat idling by while Iran and Iraq were trying to gobble up each other, and perhaps their neighbors. Was the intervention necessary?  Well, if you are a person with liberal view, I bet my last dollar in my pocket that you say “no”. Is it for oil ? I’ll say “not likely”. Otherwise, why were we paying close to $5 a gallon up till 4 weeks ago? In fact, we might as well make it a war for oil and demand the Iraqis to pay for the military costs which is into the trillion mark which we, our children and grandchildren will be paying for it for decades! There is no perfect country in the world if we want to scrutinize every aspect in the “human spectrum”.  United States has been what some called “the policy of the world” which in some ways true.

If we looked back to recent history of the past 60 years, the world as we know it may look very different without the U.S. intervention. The map of the world would have been very different. If not for the U.S.’s ultimate decision to drop the two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on that faithful August day in 1945 as a retaliation for the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese Imperial Army would have swept through and occupied China. No one would agree that was a good decision from the humanitarian point of view. War is never humanitarian. But without war, demons disguised as leaders would have suppressed a large portion of  the world’s population. We need to wrap up the Iraq war, either to pull our troops like a beaten dog, or finish the war in the way a war should be fought. If we tie one hand of our soldiers behind their back and require them to consult to the rule book whether they should open fire on an approaching enemy, and treat the detainees in Guantanamo bay like our honored guests, the western civilization as we know it will soon become the past, back to the fourteenth century.