I didn't state it well. When you're the elephant, you can disregard many of the other animals. For a while. And, there's ALWAYS a price. The immediate price is that the other animals certainly don't regard you as a leader. Don't regard you as moral, peace-loving, or visionary. Regard you as selfish, shortsighted, and interested only in what you want when you want it. Stay out of your way, smile, but you wouldn't want them to dinner. And, the other animals might start looking around for something which might be able to protect them from the elephant.

Which is fine, if that's the way the elephant wants to live. However, even with it's long memory, it's going to forget why some of the other animals it's stepped on don't like it. Will probably puzzle over that, and, if it's an especially stupid elephant, decide it's because those other animals are jealous they aren't elephants.

My point regarding the IMF was that the fellow commenting on it was alleged to be stirring up Muslims against the Western world. Why the author or editor of the article wanted to somehow make valid comments about IMF a matter of "Muslim rhetoric" is what I was questioning.

On the world issues, imagine you're a Ghanan newspaper reporter, or store-owner in Singapore, college freshman in Ukraine, or a Chilean customs inspector.

You see the US project itself all over the worlds stage as a human rights advocate, and you see the US leave a human rights conference in South Africa when they take up the second-class citizenship Israeli Christians and Muslims are relegated to. You see the US refused to go along with the rest of the world on land mines, biochemical and toxin precautions, voided the ABM treaty, among others.

You read the US will not ratify a treaty on womens rights, along with Afghanistan. The only two countries. And, you hear the US politicians talking about how women are abused in Afghanistan. You might wonder.

On most of these matters you are aware the votes were something like 160 or 170 to 2, or 3 or 4. Libya and Syria are among the US staunch allies.

You might begin to wonder about the direction of the country, where the leadership wants to take it, and without doing anything, yet, you might not want much to do with the agenda. There's nowhere else to go, yet.

If China came along, she may not be the greatest country in the world, but then what about the country which won't sign a comprehensive nuclear test ban, or ratify a treaty on women's rights, or is the only country to reject limits and controls on selling small arms around the world. Is that the greatest country, either?

You might not be too impressed with the US "high road" as broadcast by VOA. China may not seem wonderful, but the US ain't either, from what you've read.

And in the US we'll have forgotten those things, and wonder why they don't love and trust us. After all, we invented human rights, damned near!

Oh, well.

Arf