Friday, January 29, 2016

American Exceptionalism

Americans do not feel entitled to food, shelter, pensions or health care. Citizens of other countries may be entitled to such things, but, by God, not us! Eat your bootstraps, if you're hungry. Sleep under a bridge, unless the Super Bowl is coming to your town, then get the hell out of there.
Americans DO, however, feel entitled to tell other people how to run their countries, and Americans DO feel entitled to overthrow other people's government, bomb them, and invade them and Americans DO feel entitled to taking over countries resources and seizing their assets.

Most Americans do not even realize that attacking other countries is a war crime. This article, from last year, is well worth reading again.

And this is a relevant quote...."To initiate a war of aggression...," said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, "is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

And another thing. Americans supported the attacks on countless countries after WW2 because....''communism''.
But after the USSR was destroyed in 1991, they no longer had that excuse, so they switched to ''humanitarian intervention''.
They bombed Yugoslavia because ''Milosevich is killing his own people''.
They bombed Iraq because ''Saddam is killing his own people''.
They bombed Libya because "Ghaddafi is killing his own people''.
They are bombing Syria because ''Assad is killing his own people''.
Yet 1204 Americans were shot dead last year, summarily executed, usually on the streets, or in their own homes. Even children were shot or wounded.
Yet, I have not heard one American call for another country to bomb us, to protect us from the government. Not one.
And now we see that the people of Flint are being poisoned, yet I have not heard one American call for the bombing of Michigan, in order to ''save them''.
Why not?
Wouldn't it be ''humanitarian intervention''?