Glen Greenwald is a liberal blogger who writes for Salon. He's been locked in a debate with some other bloggers about America's Foreign Policy, and whether America is an "Imperialist" power. I don't think there's any doubt is there? Anyway, here's a couple of paragraphs that sum up America's historical military role in the world. I think it's testimony to how we have never really recovered from all that "Greatest Generation" malarky. We all bought into the myth many decades ago. We see ourselves as the "good guys" who saved the world from the Nazi hordes and well, we've pumped ourselves up with so much hot air ever since we're like the fucking Hindenburg of nations. We are bankrupting ourselves both economically and morally. We have become the bloodthirsty hordes we so valiantly fought. And isn't that just the way the story goes?
Greenwald:
"I think this is the heart of the matter. Put simply, there is no reasonable way to compare the use of military force by the U.S. to any other country on the planet. We spend more on our military than every other country combined. We spend six times more on our military than China, the next largest military spender. And it is a bipartisan consensus that, even as the sole remaining superpower, we should increase both military spending and the size of our military further still.
No country can even remotely compare to us in terms of the sheer magnitude of invasions, bombing campaigns, regime changes, occupations and other forms of direct interference via military force in sovereign countries. We have military bases in well over 100 nations. In the last 10 years alone, we bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Sudan, Afghanistan again, Somalia, and Iraq again. Even after the end of the Cold War, we changed the governments of multiple countries from Panama to Iraq, and we've attempted (or are attempting) to do so in Iran and Venezuela. We single-handedly prop up tyrannical governments in scores of nations using financial and military aid. No other country can hold a candle to the breadth and frequency of our involvement in the affairs of other countries. That is just fact.
Obviously, that we intervene, bomb and invade far more than any other country is not, standing alone, proof that our various military campaigns are unjust. But it is rather compelling evidence that we have a far lower hair-trigger for when we use military force than any other country in the world, and we use our military force in far more places and with a far wider range of motives and reasons than any other country."
