After reading all the posts and thinking twice before deciding to comment I finally had the courage to post. Before I begin, though, I have to say: Paul and Ann I agree with everything you said so far
I won’t be so eloquent as you guys but I’ll try
As for democracy... It works for us, but that doesn't mean it's the one true path, right for all people and all cultures. People don't like it when you take over their countries and tell them how to run them. (In fact, wasn't that the reason for the first Gulf War?) And democracy doesn't automatically mean freedom and rainbows and the end of terrorism. And the idea that you can impose freedom is just inherently contradictory.
Paul, I couldn't agree with you more!
As for WWII... Take another look at your history books. We stayed out of it. The Nazis were invading one country after another, bombing our longstanding allies, and killing people by the millions. (Big difference between making threats to attack/invade or building weapons/military within your own borders and actually attacking.) But after WWI, most Americans didn't want to get involved in another war across the ocean. Especially not with the Depression.There was a movement to pretty much close our borders and ignore the rest of the world. It wasn't until we were directly attacked at Pearl Harbor that we really got involved.
Yep, you're totally right on this, Paul. US didn't go to war until they were attacked but some people tend to forget that part since US is doing so many great things to erase the evil from the world
Roger, are you seriously telling the world that we should like and support your country if it relies on faulty intelligence, refuses to listen to experts who disagree with you, and claims the right to attack and raze another country just because you have decided that it is in your best interest to do so? What if someone tells the Bush administration that the Swedish government is about to build a bomb? Would you have the moral right to attack and bomb us if you want to, whether or not we have any weapons at all?
Ann, you're right! Even a big and powerful country like US can’t live without the rest of the world, especially because it depends and relies on product importation but that’s another matter that I don’t want to go into. US needs the world as much as the world needs US.
US is the country that gave me my dear husband and the country where I'm living in and where I intend to raise my children (US is in my heart and I will become a citizen next year
) but just like I don't close my eyes to the wrong things about Brazil, I don't close my eyes to the wrong things I see here. I support the troops, but I don't support the war although there are a lot of people out there who think these two things can't co-exist. Right now I think the Bush administration used people's fear to stay in power. If it wasn't for 9/11 Bush wouldn't have been reelected. He lied to his own people to justify the war. It’s incredible how his lies didn’t take the same proportions as Clinton’s lie did. Maybe I can’t see it because where I’m from we could care less if our president lied about whom he has been sleeping with as long as he was a good president
We just think it’s his wife’s problem not ours
But honestly, I'm a bit scared of a military superpower which is so paranoid about being attacked by others. Yes, 9/11 was horrible. And it lasted for exactly one day. And there have been no attacks on American soil since then. Your country is not about to be taken out. How can you honestly think that any of the Arab or Muslim nations can take you out? Destroy you? The only such nation which has any chance at all to do serious damage to the United States is Pakistan, because it does have the bomb. And yet Pakistan is hardly ever mentioned as a threat to the United States, whereas Iraq was described as an immediate threat to the entire world. How weird.
Ann, once and again I agree with you. It wasn’t until I moved to US that I realized how the government here tries to inflict more fear in the population and how it has been working so far. Yes, 9/11 was a horrible event. I won’t ever forget that day and how I cried and tried to call everyone that I knew to see if they were okay (my mom has a cousin who lived in NY City for 30 years but moved after 9/11) but you can’t become paranoid and think all Muslim nations must be attacked or they will take down your country. You can’t just go to war without thinking about the consequences. You just generate more hate towards you and that’s never good. Maybe I’m just a pacifist and believe in Utopia but I always try to think rationally and talk rather than going straight to fight.
As for the media Carol said: “They reduce everything to high school drama, celebrity-style coverage, and sound bytes that inevitably take quotes out of context. The term 'investigative journalism' is now an oxymoron unless you want the searing truth about who propositioned whom in a public washroom.” I will just agree with Carol on this and say that I much rather get my news through foreign press than through our US one. I end up knowing more about what’s happening here this way than if I only watched US news
.
In conclusion, I try not to be bias when I talk because I have seen things from the outside when I was still in Brazil and I have seen them from the inside since I’ve been here for the past 2 years and 4 months. Even when I was in Brazil I would voice everything that I found wrong there. Loving one country doesn’t mean you need to agree with what your president does all the time. It doesn’t matter from which party he is. It doesn’t mean you have to be blind. I certainly don’t agree with Brazil’s current president and his socialist/communist thinking and his friendship with Fidel and Hugo Chavez. I actually fear him. I know I might not have the rights to voice my opinion about US, at least not yet since I can’t vote but I will someday (right now I would vote for Obama, there I said it
) But there’s one thing I love about free countries, though: freedom of speech
There’s a song from the musical Wicked that always makes me say: “That’s sooo true!” So I’m leaving this topic with a part of the lyrics for you to think about:
WIZARD:
(spoken) See - I never had a family of my own. So, I
guess I just - wanted to give the citizens of Oz everything.
ELPHABA(spoken): So you lied to them.
WIZARD:
(spoken) Elphaba, where I'm from, we believe all sorts of
things that aren't true. We call it - "history."
(sung) A man's called a traitor - or liberator?
A rich man's a thief - or philanthropist?
Is one a crusader - or ruthless invader?
It's all in which label
Is able to persist.
Raquel (who probably said more than she should have and apologizes in advance
)
