As to the rest of your comments, I fully agree with ravi that US is not exceptionally evil. Other countries have more than a fair share of brutal thugs. The problem that you the US lefties face (I liked that phrase, ravi, thank you), it that you tend to see the world in manichaen terms - as a struggle between good and evil. Most yanks do, to be sure, but you tend to reverse the signs of those polarities, and what most yanks see as a "shining city on a hill" you perceive as a snake pit of barbarism and sheer aggression, and vice versa. As a result, you have an idealized image of the so-called Third World countries
just like most mainstream US-ers have an idealized image of "America the Beautiful" that can do no wrong - and you also have a demonized image of the US as hell on earth, just like most mainstrem US-ers perceive the Third World.
The reality, as ravi aptly observed is that the Third World can be just as thuggish and imperialist as the Us, it just does not have the same capacity as the US. But they can accomplish more than the US, even with simple means, like machetes.
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Sure, the US isn't "exceptionally evil".
I wonder, did anyone write this? I don't believe I did. In fact, what I wrote was the following: "...the US isn't the "root of all evil. It's just very well placed to do very bad things at the moment."
Even so, for the purposes of argument, I surrender.
Perhaps future historians will look back on this moment as the birth of the age of properly applied, high performance American killingry. Yes, it just might happen.
Cry havoc and let loose the precisely targeted air to surface missiles of war. This would most likely stop the brutal mass slaughter you describe - at least, for a while - and that's an unarguably good and urgently vital thing.
But I wonder, what else will it do?
.d.
--------- "For ten years Caesar ruled with an iron fist. Then with a wooden leg; and finally with a piece of string."