I can see this thread has completely left the subject matter of its title, but meh the debate here is more interesting.
So, does the US have the right to run around the world with its big stick? It depends on your point of view, heh. Some say yes, some say no. How can you determine which is the right side of the argument? Personally, I don't think we should have messed around in Iraq... but mainly because I think it's too much of a tremendous waste of tax dollars.
BUT, did we have the
right to do it? It doesn't matter if we did or not because, frankly, we did it because we can do it. Other countries can rant as much as they want about U.S. imperialistic attitudes or whatever, but, really, what the fuck are they going to do about it? They're not going to do anything because, frankly, they can't.
Moving on, you may think "agressive self-defense" may make no sense, but consider that a best defense is a good offense. If you strip someone of power before that power grows large enough to threaten you, it's self-defense. Did Iraq seriously pose any threat to the United States even in the near future? Hell no. The backwards Arabs are still killing people they deem religious infidels, and they weren't even close to developing any sort of weapon capable of reaching the United States. Yet, previous military actions against countries in the name of American self-defense can be justified. Vietnam and Korea. We had every right to go to those places to try and stop the USSR from gaining more influence across the world. It would have been horribly stupid for the U.S. to ignore the spread of communism and allow the entire eastern hemisphere to turn red overnight. So, don't rule out offensive self-defense as a foolish notion.
Alright, so Deep touched on some cloak-and-dagger stuff concerning the battle between "national security" and basic civil rights. I have never heard anyone ever anywhere give a reasonable solution to that debate. You can't can't can't can't completely ignore your domestic security in order to grant your people infinite liberty and privacy. At the same time, if you dump the privacy and take the Big Brother stance, you're running through totalitarian territory. Honestly, so many people complain about how the U.S. Govt. is destroying what it means to be a free citizen, but, if they turned their backs and stopped covering their asses, what would those people really think if a major incident occured that could have been prevented with stricter security policy? (and yeah, Deep, I realized you may not have been remotely talking about what I am, but meh
)
If you just struggled through all the crap I just wrote in terribly large paragraphs, I salute you.