Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to re: With all due respect, I think I've been tracking this closer than you have.

That's entirely possible
McFly — (archived)

If I sat you down with Osama bin Laden, how would you begin negotiations?

Granted, having a chit-chat with ObL is probably not in the realm of the possible, but I'd expect there are probably countless others out there--non-Americans--who feel badly treated by American policy, and perhaps victimized by America's search for opportunity. We keep hearing such things...maybe there's some truth to it. "Love your freedoms, hate your foreign policy." Wish I could remember where I read that or who said it, but it stuck.

I just think we could be doing more--probably a lot more--to win friends in the world. And I mean genuine freinds, not future exploitees.

IMHO, we've got to be WAY more careful about who our government jumps into the sack with. We've befriended too many tyrants, Saddam being a point-in-case. When we get wind that human rights are being abused, we've got to take the high-road. If we can't influence the tyrant for the better, then at the very least we've got to walk away and withdraw all support.

A contemporary example would be Israel. Of course I support Israel's right to exist and to do so securely, but our current government sheds nothing but crocodile tears for the Palestinians. We need to exert real pressure on Israel to find a way to peacerfully co-exist (and not by the peace of the graveyard). I cannot, will not beleive that Palestinians have offered their children up as human bombs simply because they wanted to. While perhaps there are some extremists who cannot be negotiated with, I have to beleive that the vast majority of Palestinians just want to get on with theirs lives, as we do. Many may hate American policy...and those are exactly the ones we have to begin a sincere dialogue with, and we have to be prepared to take their interests to heart, and to change our foreign policy to address their concerns. Decisions made in Washington have a massive effect on the lives of foreign nationals, and those decision-makers have to adopt a more sensitive attitude to the aspirations of non-Americans. After all, if we're going to be the world's primary proponents of globalization, then we'd better indeed Think Globally. Does that not follow?

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