American Foreign Policy

Since I am one of the local yanks around, I am often looked to explain what the US is doing in reaction to the Sept. 11th attacks. I mentioned this before. Anyways, some of the discussions get rather heated, especially after a lot of drinks at the pub. At one Christmas party put on by my agency (held at a pub named "The Lucky Shag" [it was neither], one Australian from the east coast decided to tell me what he thought of the US bombing Afghanistan. Obviously he was against it.

"Where is the evidence!?!", he kept yelling at me. "You guys are just making this all up cause you want revenge!"

When I tried to explain the Taliban were hosting and supporting foreign terrorist, and that these terrorist had more than once made their intentions clear by demanding a war on the US and against US citizens. He is a rather large guy, plus he was piss drunk. He is under the impression that the Taliban and bin Laden were just a bunch of idiots that shoot their mouths off. To demonstrate his point, he started going after me screaming at me that he was going to kill me. Seriously. He started to startle the people around him. I could tell they were wondering if a fight was going to break out. After getting within two inches of my face with these threats he stepped back and asked me if I was going to kill him. "Of course not", I answered.

"See." he said. "I was threatening to kill you, but you didn't go after me. Why are the Taliban any different?"

It is difficult to explain to people like him who are naive enough to believe that everyone is good. I knew that explaining that these same terrorist had a track record of terrorism, murder, and plans to acquire weapons of mass destruction was wasting my breath.

History will show that many people felt that the Nazi's where good people, and good for Germany, even up to the end the WWII when the true extent of their evil became known at the concentration camps. Same for the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. These Taliban seem to be the same to me. They have created a twisted version of their idea of paradise, one aspect of which is to destroy all who don't fit their idea of a perfect citizen. And now they demand that the rest of the world follow their model.

I don't have all the answers. I can't explain why middle east is in such a screwed up state. Why the US condones Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, corruption and nepotism in Saudi, and so on except to explain the the US feels the alternative would be worse. Perhaps the answer is that we feel the place was, is, and will always be a screwed up place far beyond our powers to solve. The best we can hope for is to contain the insanity, get some oil out the place, and hope it doesn't blow.