US Out of Everywhere

[Justin Schwartz]

My point is just that you can't
> >trust the US to do right in international affairs. Even if you grant, as 
>I
> >do not, Nathan's idea that the US liberated Kosova instead of creating 
>the
> >conditions for a massacre, and grant, as I do not, that the US attack on
> >Afghanistan led to overall positive results, the fact is that the rest of
> >the US records of foreign intervention since 1898 has been, with the
> >exception of WWII, unrelievedly bleak for the rest of the world. The US 
>is
> >an imperialist power that acts in its own narrow interestsa nd against
>those
> >of (mainly) the world's poor. So even if you think we could use a
>benevolent
> >world government, as Singer does, the US can't provide it. Even if it 
>would
> >be just for nonimperialist power to go around setting things rights, the 
>US
> >is not a nonimperialist power. It doesn't take Einstein to figure this 
>out.
>
>Which is a good reason to demand multilateral agreement on US 
>interventions,
>something that was true in Kosovo and largely in Afghanistan.
>

I think the proper response in view of the undisputed facts aboutthe nature 
of US foreign policy--and I set aside Kosova and Afghanistan as disputed--is 
not "Let the US use its power to extract multinational "agreement" to its 
depradations, but "US out of everywhere"! The problem, to put it abstractly, 
is that any nation that could be trustedto use thes ort of force the US has 
wouldn't have that sort of force, and any nation that had that sort of force 
cannot be trusted to use it,w ith or without coerced international 
agreement. To puit it concretely in chronological order (and leavingout a 
lot): Cuba, the Philippines, Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti, Korea, Iran, 
Guatemala, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Nicaragua . . . .

jks

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