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SpanishMatMaster -> RE: Iran invades the UK (11/30/2011 2:28:51 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BoxwineForBrunch
yeah. like it or not, all americans are culpable for the sins of the american empire, even those of us who stamped our feet really hard and maybe even threw a brick or two. all americans' lifestyles are being supported by the us military. all our tax dollars are funding the military. all americans are helping kill innocents around the world and all americans are benefiting from american international terrorism. nobody wants to hear that, least of all people with such good intentions, but it's true.
Well, I disagree.
But maybe it is better if I put this into context.
I was born in Chile, 1970. Allende won the elections, and wanted to create a democratic socialist state from the democratic existing capitalistic one. He wanted to do it with peaceful means and within the law. He was not anti-American, but wanted indeed to nationalise important sectors of the economy, some of them owned by American companies. They would have got a compensation, but yes, they would have lost money.
The US organised a putsch and the Chilean military performed it. Friends of my parents were killed in the infamous National Stadion. My parents have educated me pretty aware of the crimes of the US foreign policy, in Vietnam and Nicaragua, Iran and El Salvador.
At the same time, my mother was educated in the Santiago College, an US institution, with an excellent educative level and a left-oriented POV. She is proud of that American education, was a fan of JFK and has thought me to love and respect many aspects of the American culture and "dream".
I love morality as a subject, and geopolitics.
I disagree with you, BoxwineForBrunch, not because I love or hate America, but because I think that there are limits to what we can demand from a person. I am not Christian, and I deeply reject the Christian idea that we have to offer everything for the rest, and every single piece of egoism is a "sin". I consider this idea dehumanizing, absurd and utterly evil. As secular humanist, I defend a live in equilibrium between a healthy egoism, and the service to the community. Both are equally important. Caring about yourself first is not a sin.
Can I demand from an American citizen, that she goes to prison for not paying taxes, that she gets expelled from its country or has to leave, so that I can consider her "innocent" of the US foreign policy? I don't think so. I respect the healthy egoism of those Americans who consider that they "did enough" to prevent the evils of that policy, and carry on with their lives.
Who are those people? IMHO, the citizens who voted something else as the party in the Government (not the ones who did not care to vote, they are to blame) and the Congress. This is the red line of the democracy. The majority can decide. But it cannot force the minority to share the responsibility about what is done.
During the term of the Congress and Government, a person who voted the majority is responsible about the good and the evil deeds of that Congress and Government. US foreign policy during the Cold War was mostly catastrophic, but not always (in Berlin they still love your pilots), and the Cold War is over. A voter of the majority can be proud about the good, and must shame about the bad. Even if he later demonstrated against certain decision... he put in charge the man who carried it on. He should have known better. And in the case of Bush, it was predictable... Afghanistan would never had been attacked without the 11S, but Iraq? Iraq was decided before the elections.
Best regards.
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