bjturk.commentary: favors make enemies (with a rebuttal)

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this bjturk.commentary:
favors make enemies (with a rebuttal)

It has been said that if you want to make an enemy, do someone a favor. This appears to be the reason that the United States has so many enemies. It seems that, no matter what the U. S. does, someone always complains, often angrily, that the U. S. could have and should have done more. That's crap.

For nearly fifty years, the U. S. spents billions of dollars to protect Western Europe from Soviet aggression. Hundreds of thousands of troops and billions of dollars of equipment were stationed throughout the region to counter any ambitions that the U.S.S.R. might have had in taking territory in Europe. Ultimately, U. S. vigilance paid off with the collapse of Communism. The United States developed, funds and runs a hurricane center in Miami that serves to protect not just the U. S. but every Caribbean nation from being hit with hurricanes without warning. Certainly hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved by taking this action. Again, the U. S. is not the only beneficiary.

Not long ago, the Indian Ocean area was hit by tsunamis that devastated areas from Malaysia to the Somali coast in Africa. This was not the fault of the U. S., which should be obvious. Even so, the U. S. was accused of not doing all it could have done to mitigate the damage!

The U. S. funds and runs the only tsunami warning center in the world, with no outside assistance. It issues warnings where appropriate to whichever countries may be affected by what its sensors in the Pacific basin detect. Most of these nations are Pacific island nations and countries bordering that ocean. The center did not issue any warnings to those nations that were or could have been affected by the tsunami, and there are two very good reasons for that.

First, the quake that caused the tsunami happened on the side of Indonesia opposite that where most of the center's sensors are located. The center simply didn't know about it in time to make a difference to the thousands devastated in Indonesia and nearby countries. This could not be helped. Second, the tsunami occurred in an area where the center does not monitor at all, so it did not have contact information for the various ministries and agencies that would have been notified. By the time it was able to obtain the necessary information, it was far too late.

And yet, the U. S. still ends up taking the blame. Has anyone given serious thought to how different the world might be if the U. S. did nothing for any country other than itself? That is, after all, how most other nations in the world behave. Let's look at what would be different:

The United States would never have fought in Europe during World War II, leaving all of Europe (including the United Kingdom) and North Africa under Nazi and Soviet domination that might persist to this day.
The United States would never have pursued Japan all the way back to its home country in World War II's Pacific Theater, which might have left most of the Pacific basin under Japanese control to this day.
The United Nations would not exist, nor would UNICEF, UNESCO, the World Court, the World Health Organization, or NATO.
South Korea would have fallen to the Chinese, making the entire Korean Peninsula a threat to Japan and neighboring countries.
Southeast Asia would have fallen under Communist influence ten or fifteen years earlier, and would probably be much stronger.
The Soviet Union would control Afghanistan.
Somalis, Sudanese and others in Africa would starve in far greater numbers.
Ferdinand Marcos and associates would still be in power in the Philippines.
Antonio Noriega would still control Panama.
Saddam Hussein would still be in Iraq, and control Kuwait.
Terrorists would have free rein throughout the world.

The world's freedoms depend upon American economic and military might. God help us all if the United States ever decides to keep to itself. God help us all if the world continues to fail to take responsibility for its own inactions.

January 17, 2005

You can't say that I'm unfair. A very good friend of mine wrote a rebuttal to the above, and while I don't necessarily agree with his point of view (he and I disagree on some far bigger issues than this), I am open enough to give him his turn. Below is his reponse to this commentary:

Universal Truth: When you stick your nose into someone else's business, be prepared to get it cut off, even if you have their best interests at heart. I believe there are many more people who are thankful for the amount of philanthropy provided by the U. S. Government and its citizens than are annoyed by it. You are always going to be able to find someone who will complain about something, but that doesn't mean the majority of people from a region feel the same way.

However, how many times does a country or its citizens have to say "Thank you"? And it doesn't help matters when the citizens of the country that provided support constantly remind the country that needed it by rubbing their noses in it, sometimes for decades.

The United States entered into WWII not to rescue the world, but out of its own self-interest. It'd been attacked, was trying to emerge from the Great Depression, and would likely have eventually fallen to the combined Nazi/Nippon forces after they'd shored up their own regions. How long do we have to go on expecting the other Allied powers to thank us? Do we continue to thank the French and Spanish for supporting our Revolution from the British? Do they expect us to?

More recently, financial support, especially from our government, has come with strings attached. In the list of organizations that would not exist [without the U. S.], you forgot to mention the World Bank. When the World Bank, which is primarily financed the U. S., lends money to nations to help them attempt to avert financial crises, it forces them to enact reforms to make them more like the U. S. in economic structure. The trickle-down can affect not just economic institutions, but political and cultural institutions as well. It is viewed, and possibly rightly so, as capitalistic imperialism.

If it wasn't for the U. S., Marcos, Noriega, and Hussein might not have even been in power, or in power long enough to have been scourges. We provided all manner of aid to each of these regimes, and by doing so possibly prevented internal instability from occurring, which in turn possibly prevented internal regime change. Our removing these regimes was just cleaning up the messes we'd made.

You forgot to list the non-existence and/or destruction of Israel as a by-product of U. S. isolationism. Without the existence of Israel, there would likely not have been a blasphemous unifying factor for Muslims, and no terrorism as a result.

We are not only physically isolated from most of the rest of the world, but we are culturally isolated as well. That isolation has turned a frontier spirit to culturo-centrism (Yes, I made that word up. Cool ain't it?) over the decades. We act as if we are better and know what is best for the rest of the world, and the rest of the world rightfully resents us for it. France is not our child to be scolded when it won't let our fighter jets traverse its sovereign territory on route to bomb the family of another country's world leader, even one that supports terrorism.

If someone did me a favor, and then expected me to kiss their ass for eternity, I'd be pretty pissed off about it too.

Scott Hagen
February 13, 2006

The Last Word

I don't disagree that a fair amount of U.S. opposition worldwide was bought and paid for by its own pressuring of other nations, both directly and indirectly, but my point was that the U. S. is not automatically to blame when things go wrong, particularly involving natural disasters. Specifically, it was not the fault of the United States that India, Sri Lanka, the Seychelles, Somalia, and so on, were not warned by the U. S. about the coming tsunami when the U. S. was unable to sense it and act in time. While anti-American sentiment is rampant, and often earned, it should at least be reasonable. BJT

Updated October 2, 2006

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