Why hate the USA?

[TJ Griffin]

well, you both are obviously better at debating than me, so im not gonna get involved. but, Reality Check, you seem to know a lot about US history (i never paid attention in history class, our education system sure is a piece of ****, no?), but you dont seem to be from america. where are you from? (just curious, not interested in an argument)

[Reality Check]

Originally Posted by Arseface

Then I guess the question is why are you paying $4.55 a gallon?

And yeah, America arrived late in WW2 and claimed victory (at least in Europe anyway. You saved our Aussie arses in the Pacific). The USSR won that war. (I comment on this alone because of my lack of knowledge on the other wars, and the fact that my history teacher of two years is obsessed with the subject)

Its true that the US greatly helped in WW2, eventually, after having sat back enjoying big profits.

Whats rarely mentioned is post-ww2 where they reinstated both Nazis and Nazi collaborators to positions of power.

Originally Posted by TJ Griffin

well, you both are obviously better at debating than me, so im not gonna get involved. but, Reality Check, you seem to know a lot about US history (i never paid attention in history class, our education system sure is a piece of ****, no?),

If Fablefreak's understanding of Vietnam is anything to go by, yeah it's definitely not the best around.

but you dont seem to be from america. where are you from? (just curious, not interested in an argument)

Australia/UK

[Angel]

Personally I'm finding all this history nothing short of fascinating - at school we got told little more than "Henry VIII and his bunch of wives, the boring-as-hell industrial revolution and there were two world wars - very sad, don't get bogged down in details."

[Johnnycky94]

I learned about eh greeks and the romans! That was some good ****! Egyption's were interesting to

[Angel]

Ancient Greece is awesome - I much prefer ancient history to modern...

[Johnnycky94]

Ancient history is the best! Ancient Greece and rome was a fascinating time to study.

[Father of Skorm]

i agree...

also, a small point as to how, comparatively, america isn't neccessarily so bad... the government here in the uk goes on about how theres not enuf money and in order to pay for anything they would have to raise taxes but noone wants that so we'll just go down the drain into hell and beyond... have you seen how much they get paid? and not just officially, the stuff they get away with off the books! every high-ranking official gets a housing allowance for their second and third houses!

also, some of the early posts reminded me of a program i watched on modern chinese culture yesterday. for the most part, the ppl there have no idea that their country is doing things the rest of the world considers 'bad' they are only just findingout that some ppl don't like them and aren't just happy for their economic improvements etc.

also, i agree with the whole issue with corporate corruption of the government (in the west in general not just USA or UK). the best way to have a leader is someone who doesn't really want the job, is sufficiently righteous etc not to take too many bribes, andactually has a vague (or preferably good) idea what they are doing.

in reference to TJs viewpoint, 1stly if you don't care then why go on abput it? you clearly care on some level, but possibly are conflicted within yourself? 2ndly, if we just left the world to itself to get better or worse as it may or may not happen, then that will just lead to a greater level of inter-racial/country distrust and ultimately a level of conflict not seen in hundereds of years. what everyone seem to forget is that we are, on the whole, more peaceful than we have ever really been. going back just a few hundered years nearly every country in europe (or at least the western bit that we actually learn about in school) has some sort of beef with the majority of others, with just a few allies, and the only thing holding back an all out war was the fact that there were neither the resources, nor coud it be feasably acheived, due to the simple fact that alliances were as conflictory as the enmities. going back a couple of thousand years there was inter village conflict to almostthat scale, nevermind intercountry!

[Bolgard]

Oh damn, heady topic. Alright.

Most of the cost of oil has to do with market speculation, which creates bubbles which then implode. It's simple. If people with a lot of money think something is worth a lot, they invest, as do other people, and the price of that commodity becomes artificially inflated, which results in your close to five dollar a gallon gas prices.

The war in Iraq was about many things, mostly based on geopolitical strategy. We've been wanting to get into Iraq for a regime change since the first Gulf War, and this seemed like a perfect excuse to do it, but as usual in American foreign policy, we made a colossal mistake regarding what would happen when we actually occupied the state. We went in under the assumption that we'd replace Saddam with an ally that would pretty much do what we told him to do, and we expected "democracy" to just flourish overnight and just work, like replacing an exhaust on a car.

There are a lot of problems with this, mainly that the Middle East really has no concept of democracy, given their tribal, ethnic, and religious sectarian history. What we have now is a toy democracy with all the other stuff brewing underneath -- hence the reason we're still there five years later. The Middle East is also very suspicious of Western intentions with good reason, because the US has a habit of supporting leaders and dictators with pro-Western interests regardless of whatever else they do. Saddam is a perfect example.

The irony of this whole situation is that we went into Iraq and replaced the only secular leader of a non-Islamic state in the Middle East with a religious fundamentalist Muslim government, which is one of the reasons Iran is thrilled that we invaded.

Basically the reason behind a lot of mistrust of the United States, particularly in that region, is based on its history of foreign policy over the past fifty years or so, especially since the beginning of the Cold War, the Truman Doctrine, etc.