i am not an idiot u are an idiot u piece of **** MR. ass kisser
just_sad, you will find that many Americans believe that the rest of the world should want to live as we live. Many Americans believe that it is a duty to spread capitalism and democracy.
Our Presidents tend to over generalize the world as two categories: good and evil. Democratic countries being the good, and everyone else being the evil. Because of this many Americans feel we should spread the red, white, and blue across the globe. Of course, people in other countries do not always feel this way.
To understand America's colonial mentality, you can look to two specific sources: early 20th century and post world war II. Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were proponents of the U.S. exherting its power around the globe. Ultimately, isolationists prevailed. Following WWII, fear of communism led to a decision to keep America's army strong and spread across the globe. This caused a military-industrial complex. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that the U.S. military was growing out of control, but he was unable to stop it. His hands were tied by congress and the defense department.
Zoom ahead to more contemporary times. Private industry profits from wars, and these companies also distribute jobs in as many states as possible. If the president ever tried to shrink the military, congess would protest because their constituencies would be losing jobs. So we have a large army, a government that aims to spread global influence, and worst of all the white house has ties to companies that build the U.S. war machine.
The result is micromanagement of the world, and this causes blowback. So we ruin life for the Iranian people, and ask 50 years later: "why do they hate us?" We arm Bin Laden, and 20 years later we piss him off. He attacks us and we say "how did this happen?" We install Saddam, but when he is percieved as a threat to our oil, we send thousands of U.S. troops to oust him. Blowback is an actual term in the intelligence community, and it bites the U.S. in the ass quite a bit.
Innocent people never deserve to die, but in the future it is the job of all American citizens (including myself) to be diligent in patroling the actions of our government. The U.S. government does not keep citizens safe, they endanger our lives. This problem stretches beyond democrats and republicans, it can not be controlled at the polls. Citizens must take a more active stand and voice discontent; that is a basic concept of this democracy and it was the intent of our nation's creators.
I check in and find over 300 posts, nearly 100 of which are on this thread. :coffee3: 
