In a message dated 3/10/99 9:47:44 AM PST, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> I was wondering exactly the same thing this morning as I was listening
> to a National Public Radio (NPR) report on how we (the US) has a guy
> over in the former Yugoslavia trying to bargain for peace with
> Milosovic (sp?) and Clinton who is going off to Ireland to settle the
> little spat the natives are having (that was my sarcasm - the raised
> eyebrow doesn't come thru the email very well), and we're of course
> busy bombing Iraq. What makes us the police of the world? What made
> us think we get to control the world? How is it that in just 200
> years, the culture of this smallish land mass has developed and oozed
> out to take over the rest of the world? It's kind of like a plague.
> Or an X-file.
well, sometimes we get asked to intervene... in former yugoslavia, for
example, several factions have appealed to the US to be a champion of their
rightious causes... i think this is very shortsighted of them, but thats
beside the point.
in the persian gulf, also, saudi arabia asked for our help in 91, and kuwait
begged us for it... but in kuwait's case, "any old port in a storm", i guess.
they were much better off for us having helped out, IMHO. (but the fact that
our forces are still there is completely outside this, and is a different
problem altogether. we were asked to go there and help out. were we asked to
stay there indefinantly? naaaa).
as for ireland, there are many irish-americans who really dont dig the fact
that some of their close relatives have been in a kind of cold war for some
time, and there has been much uproarious appeal from those irish-americans for
the US to at least have a presence in the peace process there... (what this
is supposed to accomplish, however, i have no idea).
so yea, in some cases, the US is the worlds police force because its asked by
one of its allies (?) to play that role; and we determine who is our ally by
what they can do for us, economicly (case in point: china).
"if technology is produced by intelligence, what happens when intelligence is
improved by technology?" -- eliazer yudowsky
sayke
