"When you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind." No phrase better sums up the result of US foreign policy over the last 50 years.
People all over the world resent US military intervention in their countries that has left countless people dead. At least 88,000 civilians were murdered by American-backed death squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the 1980's, and the BBC reports 3,800 civilians were killed in the five months long US aerial bombing campaign in Afghanistan in 2001.
Under President George W. Bush, current US foreign policy is nicely summed up in the policy paper written in the 1990's by The Project For a New American Century (PNAC), whose authors include senior Bush Administration officials including Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney. The strategy outlined by PNAC was a plan to make the US the sole world super power by controlling Middle East oil through invasion of Iraq and Iran, for a start. PNAC also planned to kick North Korea's ass into oblivion (Axis of Evil anyone?) PNAC recognized that implementation would be a difficult sell to the American people, and that a "Pearl Harbor-like event" would be necessary to implement their scheme; then came 9/11. Under the guise of combating terror, and promoting freedom and democracy, their reactionary political agenda is being executed.
Countries like North Korea, and organizations such as al-Qaeda, use this outrageous US policy as justification for nuclear proliferation and terror acts such as 9/11. The illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq has only added fuel to the fire of their arguments. As long as the US government embraces such reckless foreign policy, countries like North Korea and organizations such as al-Qaeda, rightly or wrongly, will use it as justification to threaten and kill American citizens as well as citizens of nations whose governments support and benefit from it. In the end, it us up to us, the citizens of all nations, to pressure our governments to implement and participate in humane foreign policy. If we do not do this, we can only expect terror and suffering abroad and at home.
"When you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind." No phrase better sums up the result of US foreign policy over the last 50 years.
People all over the world resent US military intervention in their countries that has left countless people dead. At least 88,000 civilians were murdered by American-backed death squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the 1980's, and the BBC reports 3,800 civilians were killed in the five months long US aerial bombing campaign in Afghanistan in 2001.
Under President George W. Bush, current US foreign policy is nicely summed up in the policy paper written in the 1990's by The Project For a New American Century (PNAC), whose authors include senior Bush Administration officials including Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney. The strategy outlined by PNAC was a plan to make the US the sole world super power by controlling Middle East oil through invasion of Iraq and Iran, for a start. PNAC also planned to kick North Korea's ass into oblivion (Axis of Evil anyone?) PNAC recognized that implementation would be a difficult sell to the American people, and that a "Pearl Harbor-like event" would be necessary to implement their scheme; then came 9/11. Under the guise of combating terror, and promoting freedom and democracy, their reactionary political agenda is being executed.
Countries like North Korea, and organizations such as al-Qaeda, use this outrageous US policy as justification for nuclear proliferation and terror acts such as 9/11. The illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq has only added fuel to the fire of their arguments. As long as the US government embraces such reckless foreign policy, countries like North Korea and organizations such as al-Qaeda, rightly or wrongly, will use it as justification to threaten and kill American citizens as well as citizens of nations whose governments support and benefit from it. In the end, it us up to us, the citizens of all nations, to pressure our governments to implement and participate in humane foreign policy. If we do not do this, we can only expect terror and suffering abroad and at home.