Support We Can Do Without Randy Balsom (9-01)

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Support We Can Do Without
Randy Balsom

Reference: A Growing Feeling That Something Changed That Day Puma

From: "USAF Buttcrack"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Response to PUMA
Date: September 20, 2001 7:13 PM

PUMA wrote:

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However I thought that perhaps your readers (mostly Americans) would be interested to know some critical points of view, from the East-Europe perspective. As I said the support from citizens to citizens is great, but this doesn't change the fact that American politicians and U.S. foreign politics do not have a good amount of support in Europe:

  • The U.S. military forces (and only US) are invaders in Saudi Arabia ...
  • The U.S. are supporting and thus preventing the natural collapse of the bloody regimes ...
  • Many U.S. officials said even years ago (and still think) that they have, for example, given Egypt something like "a young, half-democracy"...
  • The possible U.S. counter-attack (rather, the certain counter-attack, with this Texas moron as your president), will increase the danger ...

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PUMA should reconsider whether U.S. policies are doing more harm than good.

US foreign policies were instrumental in breaking up the Eastern-bloc and Soviet Union. Our involvement in Europe and our cold war campaigns came with repeated attacks from Europeans on our motives, methods, and effectiveness.

PUMA might think we're doing more harm than good in the middle-east, but our participation in the efforts to free Poland was met with the same objections by some of the same Europeans PUMA claims to represent.

Our middle east policies were directly related to our cold war policies. We worked to deny the Soviet Union from gaining dominance in the middle east. Those efforts required us to truly have some interesting (and dangerous) bedfellows and do some not-very-nice things.

Some will question whether cheap oil justifies our efforts. Well, there are a lot of civilized countries out there that would act in a definite uncivilized manner over something like the price of oil. Don't believe me PUMA? Just read up on the histories of some of your European neighbors.

I'm not proud of some things America has done, but I am proud of what America does. Its easy to point out America's failures while forgetting all about our successes.

I think Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian, adequately summed up America's impact on our world in his essay "The Americans" which was broadcasted from CFRB in Toronto on 5 June 1973.

To be blunt, PUMA, you display the self-centered, self-important, and self-serving attitude that some Europeans typically drag out in an effort to avoid actually doing anything but still appear to be righteous. The same righteous rhetoric from Europeans didn't help the people of Poland. What makes you think yours helps the people of the middle east?

European support would be nice, but, frankly, we can do just fine without.

Randy

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