Anthonyn Cordesman on Edward Snowden

Our envious foreign policy has led us to most hated nation on the planet status. The only countries that tolerate the U.S. are on the payroll. It's like the Yankees finishing last every year. Do you think it might be time for a change in direction?
100 years of exploiting the planet through sheer tyranny. The billions of dollars we send in aid gets stuffed in some Saudi kings vault or a straw presidents pocket. Very little gets to the streets. Make no mistake people around the world hate us. Just look at Egypt, we have never been more reviled there.

Zenblaster - It is common knowledge that everyone else hates us because they hate our freedom. Or that's the meme conveyed by the corporate press. I'm more inclined to agree with you in your assertion that they hate us for meddling in their politics and stealing their natural resources.
Edward Snowden looks to me like a man of conscience and conviction who risked his life to alert us all of what was coming ---- sort of like Paul Revere. Now the corporate press is focusing on him and glossing over the crimes he revealed..... talk about shooting the messenger.

Mr. Cordesman is a diplomat to his core. Even his audio reviews were remarkably diplomatic. Unlike me, he has gone very far in life knowing what not to say.

To much of the world, the U.S. is the schoolyard bully who steals their lunch money and makes them live in fear.

So I'm not condemning my country but just expressing disappointment about learning that we aren't what schoolroom lessons told us we are.

Check mark Macrojack.

99% of the people on this planet that want us and our next 10 generations to die a long and painful death would not even know we exist if it wasn't for our expansionist, meddling foreign policies.
Because we opened our shore to all oppressed people of the world which IS the greatest humanitarian effort in history, that doesn't give us the right to rape, rob, pillage and then set up a straw government (for future r, r, & p) anywhere we please. The politicians might tolerate you, the masses will .., well it's pretty obvious how the People will view us.
I apologize for bringing my observations that have nothing to do with the advancement of our hobby to this site. I will try not to let it happen again.

The two greatest examples of sticking our nose where it does not belong, are both World Wars.
First we provoke both Japan and Germany, then we help destroy both countries. Killing hundreds of thousands in the process. Mostly civilians!! Neither country ever did anything to 'US', to deserve our agression.

Interestingly, I don't recall reading about any European protest at the time.

And the Middle East in the worst example of all. We now have have an entire religion hating us. Was not always that way. Why is it that way now?

So I agree we should mind our own business, I just have a problem with this picking and choosing. I think Washington told us to stay out of those entanglements.

Cheers

The world just feels that it has veto power over the use of American power. When we are saving their asses, our intervention is great. Otherwise, yankee go home, until we need you to sacrifice your young and treasure again. We'll call you.

Someday it will become apparent that all politics are a sideshow and that oligarchs rule. Go back as far as you want and you have oligarchs at the uppermost level calling the shots with politics used as a veneer, replete with flags and bunting.

Our great democratic experiment is barely surviving thanks to oligarchy. What our founding fathers started was the greatest attempt at a functioning democracy and for awhile, oligarchs were not really present. It didn't take them long to coalesce and solidify their hold (about a 100 years into this experiment).

Their reach is getting worse (stronger). One only has to look at the Tea Party anarchists and the extreme right wing religious anarchists to see just how efficient they are at disabling American democracy dead in its tracks. Germany, Spain, Italy, et al have all gone through this before and we are next on the chopping block. Balkanization has already taken hold and we are adrift in this sea of indecision. It's no wonder the "government" is looking out for itself as it's become a player unto itself, for most part and privatization is a natural outcome as it's just a means to grift off the last and most lucrative entity extant in our democracy.

If you take a step back and look at what's going on, we're kind of modeling this after the Soviet example: one big fire sale of what should remain in the commons.

That's my take on it and I only mention it after what's been penned prior. I'm not looking for an argument. It's only meant to be another way at looking at it. I still have hopes for turning this all around and the pendulum seems to be finally swinging back the way of a democracy or sorts since for all the time it's been on the right, things have really gone to pot. Academics have theorized that it's a generational phenomena of sorts with offspring of conservatives tending towards liberalism and then back again. Who knows?

All the best,
Nonoise