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Synonymous Bengal (Login CIN-C-STAR)
Approved MikeBrownSucks.com Members
Posted Jun 21, 2009 6:29 PM
Homey,
couldn't agree more. What boggles my mind is that we help create and empower some of these rogue nations under the guise of "free trade," as you mentioned with N. Korea. I think we should trade freely with nations that share our values, such as democracy and individual freedom. I don't think we should feel obligated to trade with countries that refuse to hold legitimate elections, who jail non-violent political dissenters, who refuse to allow the freedom of press and the right to assembly, among other things. Unfortunately this has not been our policy for a long time, regardless of political party in power. Our government has time and again sided with short term economic interests instead of universal human rights.
Granted, we impose sanctions on countries like N. Korea and Iran. But what about Russia? Does anyone actually believe Medvedyev, Putin's hand-picked successor, actually took 80% of the vote? Journalists have been disappearing there, and political protests have been quelled by Putin's government for years. Russia has openly stated they are building equipment that will scramble our missile defense system in Poland, the one that supposedly would defend us from a nuclear attack from Iran (though Russia correctly argues that it's true intent is to shield Poland and eastern Europe from Russian diplomacy that comes at the end of a warhead). What's more, they have said they plan on using it if the US puts missile defense anywhere on their borders. Not to mention the whole Georgia thang. What is going on there is at least as outrageous as what is going on in Iran, right? So why is it that no one is screaming for Obama to do something about Russia? Is it because they have a huge population of potential consumers and vast amounts of the world's resources? It's worth noting that the US hasn't interfered with Iran's participation in OPEC. It's nice to have the oil now, but it strengthens countries that we fundamentally disagree with in the long term.
The US has two major points of leverage: our economy, and our military. But anyone that wants to use our economy to incite change is labeled a "protectionist" by the same people that support using our military to impose democracy. The policy instead is to openly trade with dictatorhips and wait for them to gradually become more American overtime. If they interfere with those trade relationships then we use the military. But this has been going on for a long time and would be very hard to rectify now; if you cut off trade relationships with every country that wasn't really a democracy then we would tank our economy and the world's. Just like we can't invade and nation build all those countries at once either. It could only be done over the course of several administrations and would require a fundamental shift in US foreign policy.
I know most of you guys are probably set that I'm a liberal. I voted for Ron Paul in the primaries and then worked for Obama's campaign in the general. I consider myself a progressive conservative. I am actually registered Republican because in Ohio you automatically register for the party you vote for in the primary, but I have never made an effort to join any parties of the political persuasion. Drinking parties on the other hand are a different story altogether...
"We do do, and we do it at a very, very high level," Lewis said. |
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