Freedoms? More sophisticated readers abroad know of our intensifying censorship, the words that can get you fired, the controlled press, the surveillance. Americans know what you canât say and who you canât say it about. We know the police are militarized and out of control. We see the cell-cam videos of beatings. So does the world.
Americaâs foreign policy makes it hated in most of the world. It seems murderous, thuggish, brutal, a menace to everyone. For example, the U.S. killed over a million people in Iraq. This does not bother Americans. Since 2000 it has destroyed Iraq, Syria, Libya, enters its eighteenth year of butchering Afghans, bombs Somalia, sends troops to Africa. It militarily threatens North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, seeks to destroy the economies of Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, China. It sanctions Europe. No other country does this.
This is not the griping of Fred. It is what the whole world sees, daily, in detail.
Number of wars started since 2000 by Iran: 0r. Russia: 0. China: 0. North Korea: 0. America� Number of countries openly running torture sites while talking of human rights? 1. The country with the largest prison population? The answer is left to the reader as an exercise.
Even today, many Americans speak of American Values, of the countryâs devotion to democracy and human rights and freedom. Maybe Americans believe it. No one else does. The United States has a horrendous history of installing or supporting hideous dictators, supporting repressive regimes, overthrowing elected governments. Human rights? In Saudi Arabia? Israel? The world is not blind.
Americans, self-absorbed, perhaps the most historically ignorant of First-World peoples, shrugs such things off. âOh, get over it.â Whatever it was. The nations involved do not shrug them off. You can bet the Chinese know about Legation days, Americaâs role in forcing the opium trade on China, extraterritoriality.
