Itinerant Air-Cooled

Sanctions?? Iran has been isolated by the world more or less since 1979.

Yes sanctions!, recently Iran has had its sanctiones ratcheted up to never before seen levels and this is making the average person on the street very unhappy with the gov't as the cost and availability of many basics has gone outta sight.

Lanval wrote:

BellePlaine wrote:

72Hardtop wrote:

RSorak 71Westy wrote:Israel won't do this, they will wait for the US to do it as the repurcussions would be too great if Israel acted alone or 1st. The US wont act soon as Iran is still aways from having enough uranium to make a bomb, and we are waiting for the sanctions to have full effect.

Sanctions?? Iran has been isolated by the world more or less since 1979. As for Israel they won't wait they shown that before. This is a critical year for Iran.

Israel can do what they want but we need to go home.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/world ... -held.html

Can you imagine the surge in appreciation of the US abroad, and the surge of available money to assist here at home, if we would give up on that stupid, stupid Dollar Diplomacy model?

If we would return to doing what we do best (be Americans who value freedom) instead of trying to control the world's development, people of all nations would look at us again with hope, rather than disdain. The many peoples of the world may lack education, but they're not stupid; they see how our foreign policy uses money and access to weapons/power to get what we want. They hate it. And they hate it more when we use force to back those tools up. I'm with you; let us bring our government funded BS home. If private groups want to fund outreach efforts, so be it. But we should not be in the business of regime change, regime manipulation or or anything of the like.

Best,

Michael L

Man, I could not agree more. Well said. I'd like to see what would happen if we backed off for a while.

If we would return to doing what we do best (be Americans who value freedom) instead of trying to control the world's development, people of all nations would look at us again with hope, rather than disdain. The many peoples of the world may lack education, but they're not stupid; they see how our foreign policy uses money and access to weapons/power to get what we want. They hate it. And they hate it more when we use force to back those tools up. I'm with you; let us bring our government funded BS home. If private groups want to fund outreach efforts, so be it. But we should not be in the business of regime change, regime manipulation or or anything of the like.

Best,

Michael L

i dopnt know..this seems somewhat naive...when have we NOT used money,weapons and coercion in our history ?
Also, our presence in areas of the globe is usually somewhat desired and somewhat resented..its always a mixed bag

so should we remove the dollar from its place as world's de facto currency ?

so we become an isolationist nation? ignore what is going on, turn a blind eye toward syria? let iran build it's own devices? wait and see if iran uses one? then theres the african continent. what about those pesky pirates? how many war, drought and famine refugees are there?

i think there'd be a whole boatload more international resentment towards us if we did that.

im not saying isolationist... we can still trade freelyand so forth. It just seems like historically, every single time we strong arm or manipulate our way thru some corner of the globe, sure enough it bites us square in the ass..sometimes right away..sometimes after decades of fermenting resentment (i.e. Iran)

The overall picture is simple, the answer would be much more nuanced.

We should not be in the business of supporting one government or another; we should be in the business of making our government a good model of government. Let the people of other nations choose what they want. Look at what's happening in Egypt; look at what happened in Palestine. Those people need to decide on their own what they will tolerate.

Iran's long-standing hatred of the west starts much earlier than the US intervention in the 20th century, but it's hard to ignore the fact that they (by they I mean the governmental authorities; I understand the Iranian people are much less "death to America" than they appear) hate us because we installed and supported a brutal monarchy to promote anti-Soviet stability in the Middle East; well, the Soviets are long gone, but the hatred we instilled with our stupid foreign policy lives on to bedevil us... way to go, America

One thing that we should do, is open low-cost clinics and education centers in various countries around the world, as part of our embassy/consulate services. It should be part of our foreign policy presence, and should be used to promote the greater well being of others.

In some cases, the local government won't tolerate education; fine. No money either. Not a thing. Let the people see that their own government limits what they can have, and in time, they may choose another way. But we cannot enforce our will on others through military/economic means, and we cannot go on being the world's cop; two simple reasons:

1. We can't afford it
2. It doesn't work

By the way, your use of the word "isolationist" has rhetorical uses, but no intellectual ones. I didn't say America should ignore the world. I said we should change our relationship with the world, to more closely match what tends to be successful in every relationship: help them do things for themselves if we agree that it's a good thing; don't if don't.

Michael L

Lanval wrote: ... to more closely match what tends to be successful in every relationship: help them do things for themselves if we agree that it's a good thing; don't if don't.
Michael L

It is that simple ... and at the same difficult. We have been bad relationship material for many peoples even as we have been generous. I hate the way the argument is so often waged in stark black/white terms. We have been the beacon on the hill for many, yet we have our secret little ways too, like bad relationships do. Let's knock off the pathological manipulations (corporate greed) and do right (freedom and democracy and charity) and make some money (offer outstanding American know-how).