I'm from Argentina, and I'll try to give you an opinion on how things look from the outside like the first guy asked.
I think it was Frank Zappa who said that the difference between your political parties is that Republicans drink CocaCola and Democrats PepsiCola, and that's representative of the differences they have on foreign affairs. I don't know how a Democrate president would have reacted to the 9/11 attacks. Maybe he would have attacked Afghanistan out of the need to "do something" but not Irak, but who can say?
From the outside, your country (along with England and a couple of others) is seeing as imperialistic, as attacking others to steal their resources, as highly hypocrite -saying A and doing B-, and the reasons for attacking Irak were seeing as a bunch of lies. And from a (maybe) purelly Latin American perspective, highly hypocrite in regards to "free trade", since your government's recipies (100% independent of the rulling party) for Latin America's "development" are never actually applied to the US (for example, reducing or eliminating agricultural subsidies). The US never eliminates them, because it knows that doing that would drive farmers to bankrupcy, since they can't compete with us; why? Because your farmers have a certain quality of life that ours never had. However, your governments have done everything in their power to force LATAM countries to eliminate their subsidies (and let's not even talk to prevent agrarial reform, which is the first thing the US did: the land if for the people that works it, not for the ones who can buy it and then just employ peasants). "Free trade" is just for the Third World, First World countries protect their companies and markets (Europe does the exact same thing) because they know neo-liberal "recipies" are country-destroying stuff.
These things are not going to change if a Democrat is elected, or if another Republican is elected, so from the outside (Third World in my case), it's basically the same.
And for being the "most succesful democracy", knowing that only half of your population actually votes, meaning that your president gets elected with the actual approval of only 25% of the people, creates a lot of doubts about your democracy (at least for the people that cares about these matters). It's clear that both parties are just "puppets" of the actual power in capitalist societies: enterprises (it's the same here in Argentina), and that 50% of your population feels that way (you can say that they don't care to vote since they know they'll agree with either candidate... but I don't think so). So once again, if both candidates mean the same to you, they most surely mean the same for everybody outside the US.
I think it was Frank Zappa who said that the difference between your political parties is that Republicans drink CocaCola and Democrats PepsiCola, and that's representative of the differences they have on foreign affairs. I don't know how a Democrate president would have reacted to the 9/11 attacks. Maybe he would have attacked Afghanistan out of the need to "do something" but not Irak, but who can say?
From the outside, your country (along with England and a couple of others) is seeing as imperialistic, as attacking others to steal their resources, as highly hypocrite -saying A and doing B-, and the reasons for attacking Irak were seeing as a bunch of lies. And from a (maybe) purelly Latin American perspective, highly hypocrite in regards to "free trade", since your government's recipies (100% independent of the rulling party) for Latin America's "development" are never actually applied to the US (for example, reducing or eliminating agricultural subsidies). The US never eliminates them, because it knows that doing that would drive farmers to bankrupcy, since they can't compete with us; why? Because your farmers have a certain quality of life that ours never had. However, your governments have done everything in their power to force LATAM countries to eliminate their subsidies (and let's not even talk to prevent agrarial reform, which is the first thing the US did: the land if for the people that works it, not for the ones who can buy it and then just employ peasants). "Free trade" is just for the Third World, First World countries protect their companies and markets (Europe does the exact same thing) because they know neo-liberal "recipies" are country-destroying stuff.
These things are not going to change if a Democrat is elected, or if another Republican is elected, so from the outside (Third World in my case), it's basically the same.
And for being the "most succesful democracy", knowing that only half of your population actually votes, meaning that your president gets elected with the actual approval of only 25% of the people, creates a lot of doubts about your democracy (at least for the people that cares about these matters). It's clear that both parties are just "puppets" of the actual power in capitalist societies: enterprises (it's the same here in Argentina), and that 50% of your population feels that way (you can say that they don't care to vote since they know they'll agree with either candidate... but I don't think so). So once again, if both candidates mean the same to you, they most surely mean the same for everybody outside the US.
