Here we go again: U.S. sanctions target Syrian president, Iranian commanders - CNN.com Our foreign policy is just pathetic. How can we call for such things when we don't do as we preach.
It's part of being an empire. We tell others what to do. If they want to talk to us, they must do it in our language. We play by our own rules and we force our form of government upon them. If they don't, we will use military force and we will invade and occupy if we have to. Got a leader we don't like? Eh....we'll kill him. No worries.
i kinda dispute that we are an empire, but i am wondering if you meant that paargraph as a criticism of our policy? also, if you lived in one of these nations we invaded, ould you be happy or sad to see us arrive?
I guess it depends if you're in the ruling class or if you're a peasant. Sanctions are a joke. It did nothing to keep Iran from it's continuing development of it's nuclear program. We all see how well sanctions worked with north Korea. Syria will not change because of sanctions. Is this a fight we should be in? I am not sure where I stand on this. We should be supporting democracy , right? Democracies won't want to attack us right? On the other hand, the more they fight amongst themselves the less energy they will have to want to fight us. If they are killing each other the less of them will have time to kill Americans
Nah, I wasn't necessarily criticizing our policy. It is what it is. I do think that we are an empire. I think that a long time from now, history books will refer to us as the American Empire just as they refer to the Roman Empire, Persian Empire, British Empire, etc. By no means am I claiming to be an expert in the matter. But it just seems to me like we are an empire.
where are our colonies? have military places all over, like in germany and japan, but those places are not our colonies. the only possible colonies you could argue are afganistan and iraq, and we are returning those to their people. we are totally unique in this way. it is why east germany and west germany have such different recent history, because we are not an empire. to call us an empire i think is to ignore the way we are totally unique in that we do not conquer and take over our enemies. we liberate. and that sounds ridiculous, but it is true. we liberate people that are too incompetent or stupid to manage their own countries or organize revolutions. we are an empire in the cultural sense, because our language and tv and everything are everywhere, but that is totally different.
Don't be too sure. Sanctions have deeply impacted Iran's discontented population and North Korea's too. They don't cave in instantly, but it hurts them every day for years. And sanctions are cheap.
Ignoring areas that have now become states in the U.S., and those areas that due to warfare were held under temporary U.S. military command: CURRENT COLONIES Puerto Rico 1898-present US Virgin Islands 1917-present Guam 1898-present American Samoa 1899-present Marianas Islands 1944- present FORMER COLONIES Liberia 1821-1847 Cuba 1898-1902 Rio Rico 1906-1977 Panama Canal Zone 1903-1979 Ryukyu Islands 1945-1972 Phillipines 1898-1946 MArshall Islands 1944-1986 Palau 1947-1994 Micronesia 1947-1986
ask a puerto rican if he feels like a colonist. half will tell you they want statehood and the other half will say they like the current state of things. if puerto rico is a colony, then we can almost call south texas a colony. what is the total indigenous population of those, 16 or so? a few tiny islands? please yeah. lets compare this to the british empire and their colonies, like yunno, INDIA is the argument that we are an empire, or that we were at one time?
I make no argument. Just pointing out that we do have colonies on our resume. I've told you before that the parallels between Rome, Imperial Britain and the US are remarkable. The main difference is that we don't have a ruler that we actually call an emperor. A case could be made that a US President is a term emperor.
