orannis62 said:
Well I see it as a lot like being a cop. We're pretty much the world's policemen and like cops everywhere we're hated until we're actually needed. People scream and yell about civil liberties and their rights when your after them, but as soon as you go after the people they want you to on their behalf then they want you to be Judge bloody Dredd.
Things like torture are nessicary, but frankly the people wielding such powers have to be responsible. If everyone winds of being able to torture without repercussions you wind up with guys like Pol Pot doing a cannonball off the deep end. As a result there needs to be standards for the civilized world, and increasingly differant standards for second and third world countries that can't handle those abillities. Then you've got the guys who are supposed to keep it all in line, and those guys are the ones who are ultimatly going to be acting like cops and wielding powers that ordinary citizens do not have.
I probably am not explaining this analogy well, but that's how I basically see it.
As far as "who elected America the global police" an actual vote was not taken as anyone can tell you, but we were pretty much pushed into the job. We're the only ones with the manpower, capabilities, and central morality to be able to do the job effectively. We're the guys who are the punkhammer when the UN actually decides to do something. People don't typically call France, they scream "America, come save us, yes we badmouthed you, we're sorry, we need heeeellllp" and like a cop saving someone they might not care for, we typically come galloping in to save the day, then the guys we saved jump back on the "we hate America" bandwagon as soon as we back something they find inconveinent.
My holier than thou attitude simply comes down to stuff like this: With it's general human rights violations on it's own people, information control, etc.. China is not capable of handing torture. What it does is an atrocity. On the other hand in time of war when dealing with terrorists and sympathizers our actions which are directed at the enemy are something else entirely. There is a definate differance between attaching electrodes to the nads of a guy from an Al-Queda training camp to find out where the bomb/cell/hostages/etc.. are and sticking bamboo shoots under the finger nails of a pro-democracy demonstrator to teach him a lesson (or whatever the heck they decide to do this week).
Yes, to say "Do as we say, not as we do" is Holier than thou, but it's just like a police officer. He's an authority figure, and can do things that you, joe citizen do not have the right to do. We just operate on a global level, and all of the "joe citizen" countries don't like it until we're standing between them and a problem they can't deal with, then their happy we've taken that responsibility.
A lot of people out there think that America overstates it's importance and things would work just fine without us being the "global police". However they still don't hesitate to yell for help when they need something. What's more if we ever did pull back and go isolationist again (which in my darker moods I think we should do... sadly we can't do it just long enough to teach the world a lesson and then instantly restore the status quo) who the heck are people going to call when there is a global crisis? France?
