Can we wind history back a bit and ask why Americans in particular are despised so much in that part of the world? vs, say, Swedes or Australians?
(Australians might come in a close second now because the govt is a govt of Anglosphere lapdogs and poodles and colonial mercenaries that does as it is told for fear of losing an 'alliance'.)
I think I asked a long way back why, if 15 Saudi + citizens perpetrated the act, where Saudi Arabia is an oil ally of the US with bases, etc, then why wold you attack Iraq and Afghanistan? Iraq was furnished with WMD sold exclusively by the UK and US hopefully in order to use them against Iran, which were known to have been subsequently destroyed, and Afghanis were trained and armed by the US solely to fight Russians.
Dose anyone really believe they 'hate our freedoms'? Suggestion: look at the affair with in 1952, where Britain was miffed that the discount oil it had been getting from Iran might go up to the price the Saudis were getting -- this was the Anglo-Iranian oil company that became BP, and Winston Churchill himself had a lot of shares and thereby a conflict of interest. He was a racist and viewed middle eastern oil as peculiarly belonging to Britain, after the convenient carve-up of those territories at the end of WWI into 'spheres of influence', breaking their promises of recognising arab nationalism which helped to win the war. MI6 and the CIA deposed the democratically elected leader of Iran and instated the Shah as a western-friendly puppet, which only paved the way for the ayatollahs in a popular backlash.
The US could not get a resolution from the UN Security Council to go into a country or two on a pretext, but they went in anyway, and lo! there were no WMD. Interesting times. While I agree it's not much fun for the virtual conscript US army (a rare 1st world country with time-limited unemployment benefits), that is the militarised country you've created. Annual US expenditure on the military is greater than the next 10 countries combined and comprises nearly 50% of the world spend on arms. It's not just about the Pax Americana, either.
The case characters like Colin Powell made for war, knowing full well there were no WMD there, was just a miserable beat-up to go get access to oil. it was just obvious to the rest of the world, it was a war of empty words, a war of propaganda. The rest of the world doesn't get a bizarre Republican right-wing blizzard of misinformation thrown at them, and simply judges what they see. No other country in the world appears as right-wing and self-interested with a mostly desluisional population who are so brainwashed by the rhetoric they vote against their own interests. You think people in the rest of world can't see the pretexts?
Last edited by
SydneyPSIder on 26 Sep 2012, 23:29, edited 3 times in total.