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Comment by boffinAudio | Hacker News Reader

> If Germany or Austria or the Netherlands were constantly being insulted on the world-stage

This would be a fair argument if you, as an American, weren't ignoring the fact that the USA is the worlds #1 cause of terror, war and torment - in countless other sovereign nations, whose infrastructure was torn apart so that Americans could feel good about themselves and their country.

Austrians, and Germans aren't dropping bombs on innocent people every twenty minutes. Your perception that America is unjustly criticized belies the fact that just maybe, you need to travel a bit more to see that a lot of the world is seriously fed up with America's bullshit. The point of travelling is to try to understand that a bit better, and I hope you do that. In the same way that I generalize about America being a shit-hole - Americans generalize, and then drop bombs.

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A lot of the world is also thrilled with the defense support provided to them by the US. We don't remain in countries like Germany, Italy, Greece, Spain, etc by force. We do so because they couldn't defend themselves without us and they know it - so they request our presence. A lot of these allied nations are participating in those very wars you complain about, but naturally their involvement is usually much smaller since they lack the infrastructure to compete with the US.

When you say "a lot of the world" you really talking about a very specific subset of the world, while there is also much of the world grateful for our presence as we are the only real deterrent from NK, Russia, or China taking their country by force. Feel free to deny or say that I'm "othering" or am perpetuating a boogey-man, but there is very real data and intelligence to support these claims, I'm not just pulling it out of my ass.

Around the time of our invasion of Iraq the South Korean President of Korea criticized the Bush administration’s fixation with Iraq. A day or so later Rumsfeld announced that the U.S. would withdraw from South Korea in the coming years. Their stock market went into a downward spiral and they quickly recanted their criticisms. The U.S. has done a lot of good and a lot of bad. An Australian once said to me, “If someone is going to rule the world you could do a lot worse than having it be the U.S.”

One of the few things I liked about Trump was his statements that our allies need to spend more on defense. We should not shoulder the burden alone.

https://thediplomat.com/2015/06/evolution-of-the-u-s-rok-all...

Last I saw, France, whose army is still inflicting serious violence in West Africa with its army (albeit with the permission of the governments there), is in Europe.

>the fact that the USA is the worlds #1 cause of terror, war and torment - in countless other sovereign nations,

Pax Americana has been the most productive time in modern history. Europe's track record is objectively worse

I love that you are getting downvoted for pointing out something so objectively true no one has responded to it by other than downvoting :)

Austria and Germany started the first and the second world war. Austria has a bad record of implementing and respecting laws about its minorities to this day.

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