The U.S. embassy in Belgrade burns after masked attackers broke into the building and set an office on fire at the end of a massive protest against Western-backed Kosovo independence. More than 150,000 Serbs gathered at the rally vowing to retake the territory.
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
Strange that almost a hundred years after the beginning of World War I Serbia, Palestine, and Iraq, which were focal points of turmoil then, are epicenters of unrest in the world today.
The more things change…
Not strange at all Vince. When you review in detail how these puzzle boards were assembled it comes as no surprise and….we’re still at it. It’s called ‘Foreign Policy’ and will remain so notwithstanding party affiliation or gender on the rump seated behind the desk in the Oval Office.
In particular, Vince, while T.E. Lawrence was riding the range out there during the early 1900′s, thinking that he was helping the Arab cause, and also because he knew that Hollywood would someday make a movie about it, the British and the French were cutting a secret back room deal to divide the territories between them, not giving a hoot about the Arab peoples, and setting up puppet monarchies to suit their individual colonials interests. We are left with the dregs of that diplomacy to haunt us today, such as those you cited, and I offer you India, Pakistan, Jammu, Kashmir, North and South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and on, and on, and on.
D__, I was being facetious I don’t really think it’s strange at all, and of course I agree with you.
We see the nightmare legacy of European colonialism in Africa.
When Spain, Portugal, England, France, and Belgium carved up the continent without regard to tribal boundaries, and made vassals of or destroyed ancient kingdoms, they sowed the seeds of the chaos and anarchy we see there now.
The U.S. itself has wreaked destruction on native populations in the building of its empire, as in the Philippine-American War (over a million Filipinos dead, they don’t teach that in American history).
And like the other colonial powers, the U.S. has not hesitated to play kingmaker, deploying the CIA to subvert democratically elected governments (Salvador Allende in Chile, 1973, et al.).
Now the U.S uses its economic clout, under cover of “free trade” and the instruments of the IMF and the World Bank, to assert its will over developing nations the world over.
I’ve always been an advocate of shoeing the shoemaker’s children first. There’s always been far too great a need in this country for the billions of dollars which go overseas. Foreign policy ‘unfortunately’ is a ‘carrot and stick’ game and nations who ‘want’ lend their allegiances to the highest bidder. It would be a most courageous administration which finally said, “Too much is enough”, and sat back to watch where the chips fell. That’s a tough row to hoe, and I don’t even think Obama, with all of his ‘new vision’ has the cojones to sleep with THAT dog.
D__, it seems to me that if a preponderance of U.S. citizens truly felt that the federal government spends too much on foreign aid, private foreign aid from this country would not continue to exceed federal foreign aid expenditures.
Also, I don’t believe package deals on high-tech weapons is included in the calculations of U.S. government foreign aid.
What the private sector chooses to do, in it’s own self-interests, does not factor into this. I am simply advocating government charity beginning at home, keeping our tax dollars here. It’s OUR money they are spending.