Slimm,
Unfortunately not much factual data on which you base your post is correct. Otherwise it's very inspired.
No other nation has a GNP or GDP to match ours. Our total GDP is the greatest but it would mean much more if the country was not so split and divided. Have you checked the latest elections? 50-50 is not much unity.
GDP per person would be a better indicator of quality of life and productivity if the GDP number had much meaning and was not so easily manipulated. Unfortunately it does not as most economists would tell you.
For example, in 1950 a household of a guy working at a, say, dildo factory for $30,000 with his wife home raising four kids was contributing $30,000 to the GNP - the wife's labor was not counted.
Now his wife may be working for another $30,000 at the same factory while they have only two children. Also, a law was enacted that declared a lot of people criminals and another guy is working for $30,000 to guard the new "criminals". The tax law was complicated and government regulations more complicated, so a lawyer and an accountant are working for $100,000 each to deal with those just to enable the same production. Throw in a welfare caseworker for $30,000 and a new government bureaucrat to watch over all the new regulations for $100,000 and you've got total "GNP" $420,000 while the amount of dildoes produced only doubled and half as many chldren were produced!No other country can project military might in multiple locations around the world. There were plenty of countries that could project military might in multiple locations around the world - macedonian empire, romans, mongols, russians, spanish, british. None of those ended up particularly well.
After WWI and WWII when we After WWI and WWII when we could’ve punished Germany and Japan for generations to come First, punishing innocent people for something their ancestors had done makes as much sense as punishing us for our ancestors enforcing slavery a while ago.
Second, if you do not think that Germany was punished after WWI - with pillage, starvation and death in the midst of the world of plenty, then your historical education is severely lacking. Germany was punished - that is why we've got WWII with Germany in the first place.
Anyway, how can you be sure that we "could’ve punished Germany and Japan for generations to come"? We could not "punish" Vietnam - a third world country nobody cared much about. If we treated Germany and Japan as enemies, wouldn't they have supported soviets against US rather than US against Soviets.
We played a major role in rebuilding those, and other, war-torn countries. They worked, we sold them things and kept them as a buffer against Soviets. Once their economies recovered, US was able to extract yearly tribute from them the same way as other countries in the US-dominated western world.
Of course we do not do it as openly as romans did, but we do not have to - we came up with a better way - fiat money.
First, dollar was declared the official currency of the world. Second, Johnson unilaterally stopped backing dollar with gold, effectively turning it into paper.
USA has 500 billion a year trade deficit with the world - buying cheap things and not selling equal amount. We pay for that stuff with dollars that we print and they must accept. Since they cannot buy anything good for those dollars - otherwise there would not have been a trade deficit - they loan them back to us in exchange for US treasury bonds (6 trillion debt) or store in their banks as "currency reserves" - trillions more. All those trillions of paper dollars would become worthless if they decided to cash them in, so we, americans effectively got trillions worth of free stuff that we did not produce and that we have no chance to repay. The world is subcidising us $500 billion a year. No wonder our level of life seems so good, despite all the waste.
Of course the emergence of Euro as a possible world currency seriously threatens that nice racket.
Never in recent history have we as a nation shown any inclination to dominate, politically or militarily, any nation less fortunate than us You must be joking. What do you count as "recent history"? Does 1898 annexation of Phillipines count? Destroying the only republic in the eastern hemisphere and the only christian state there and killing about a million civilians was quite a feat - after all US army did not have bombs, aeroplanes and toxic chemicals to use on the natives and could not cause massive famine and death by destroying power stations, infrastructire and pharmaceutical factories - the phillipinos did not have much iin that respect. So all the killing was done in the old-fasioned way, with bullets and bayonets.
After the Fhillipines, there was quite a list of invasions whenever an american company saw something it liked - mostly in south america.
Our country has lead the world in the struggles for human rights in nations where those rights have been abused most. Didn't we support the world's most atrocious dictators? Hussein was our ally, so was Ossama Bin Laden, Idi Amin, Duvalier, Batista, etc.
Didn't US topple domocratic government of Mossadeh in Iran in 53 and installed a monarchy there?
I find it difficult to understand how people can believe those who say the current administration is going to war in Iraq for oil, only. Not only oil. Glory is another thing. Control is another. It looks we may not be able to control the world money much longer because of Euro (see above) - so a control over the world oil supply would help us to keep everyone in line.
If US is occupying Iraq, what currency would Iraq and the neighbouring countries accept for their oil - dollar or euro?
History simply does not support selfish motives on our part. Only if studied selectively.
And to hell with the United Nations. At least here we can agree...
There may be plenty of good reasons for us to invade Iraq. That does not matter all our reasons are good.
miko
