food aid that is sent goes into the hands of the few who run the country
You're confusing cleptocratic local thugs with the charity that they're preventing from getting to their own people. How would get aid directly to the mouth of a poor person in that country, when someone working for a corrupt local official points a gun at the NGO's truck driver and tells him where to park the shipment? You have a few very stark choices:
1) Keep doing what we're doing. You say that's "imperialism."
2) Send in troops to escort the shipments right to each household. Which troops? Under whose command? You would no doubt be screaming "imperialism" unless we continued to pay for the food, and some other country got to direct its distribution. What other country would you say would be non-corrupt in that process? Would they then become the imperialists who get the extra bonus of not having to pay for the food?
3) Stop. Let the locals get hungry enough to overthrow the thugs that are stealing the food that other people are nice enough to ship in. But that shouldn't matter, right, because they're not getting the food anyway?
I would imagine the whole "partnering" with Microsoft thing to be a factor, too.
Why do you imagine that? Because Microsoft can't make, supply, or be shrewdly involved in entertainment-related material like Halo? Or because you don't like MS, and it feels good to say that? What's your actual thinking, and why is this +1 "informative" anyway?
If America shut down grain exports, most of Africa would starve -- quickly
And that would be... some form of imperialism? Take your average US-fed village in Africa. What imperialistic impulse is satisfied by having those people squeek by on our food donations? Are they being put to work in some way that we like? You know, weaving nice rugs that are cheaper than broadloom factor rugs from China? Or hand-pumping oil so we don't have to deploy a piece of equipment that could pump more in 5 minutes than the whole village could in a year? Or... what, we're using the food shipments to purchase domestic servants like Britain used to do?
How is the U.S. served by keeping a largely non-productive section of the African population propped up with food shipments? Those parts of Africa that are productive (in the way that an "empire" could actually use) aren't the spots needing grain shipments. You can't equate charity with imperialism unless you can connect all of the dots. Where's the force? The U.S. isn't making an African village need more food, year-in, year-out. And those spots in Africa where the local culture has attained some rule-of-law stability and grown an actual economy are starting to thrive. Ask someone from, say, Cameroon, what they think about REAL imperialism (their history with German, and then French colonialism), and see what they think about their dealings with the US. Get a grip... if you dillute the word "imperialism" with nonsense like what you're describing, then the word means nothing.
This type of attention to detail is par for the course from MS.
Right, because no one at, say, Apple, would ever miss something like a typo in a URL that has NOTHING to do with the actual performance of their products. No, they just ship out iPods with viruses pre-installed and blame someone else. Are you so pumped up about bashing MS that a bad URL in a conference invitation is really enough to make you rule out similar (and much worse) employee mistakes at every other software publisher in the business? Give it a rest.
So now we have completely different lifeforms available does that mean we have to go and kill them?
That depends on further testing. Does it go well on a pizza? Can you stuff it with crab meat (or crabpeople:P )? What wine goes with it? Can an entire industry, such as the bass boat industry, be built around it? Will killing one in some way enrage members of PETA? Does it want to kill us? Do spotted owls eat them? Are their implications for cosmetic products that reduce wrinkles? So many factors.
Or enhancing advertisers' ability to get your eyeballs.
Either way, it's not for us.
Who's "us?"
I'm not so unhappy that some small-time creators of very interesting web sites can at leats afford to pay for their hosting by generating some targeted clicks along the way. If you can't even stand those simple text Google ads tucked below an article or off on the edge of the page offsetting the overhead of running a niche web site, you're pretty cranky. I've get to see a g-powered ad that even came close to annoying me, really.
It matter not what fighting and killing has happened in other countries unless you're washing US's actions via relativism.
It matters because you are using the words "history" and "past." The thread, even this sidebar piece of it, is talking about current events, especially SPACE POLICY and how a statement of determination to defend space assets is, or is not, some measure of "imperialism" or, to use your notion, bloodiness. It's none of those things. And to trot out, say, Kennedy's bumbling use of force against Castro, or the North and South spilling blood over - among other things - slavery, or Lyndon Johnson's approach to dealing with communist proxies in Viet Nam... none of that really bears on a such a clear, innoccuous statement as the one being reported. No more than Japan's current discussions about the reality of North Korea are really driven, in practial terms, by Japan's previous generations and their imperial conquests around the Pacific.
Easy, it's called the "Free Trade Agreement" and "Cultural Imperialism." The FTA means that Australia can't pass laws that conflict with US ideas of law, and Australia has to pass laws that the majority of the population are opposed to. Ironically, the FTA is the opposite of Free Trade. It basically says "we'll trade with you, only if you do what we say."
So, if it's so onerous (which is debateable), why did Australia sign up? And, do you suppose that any of Australia's trading partners consider any aspects of relations with Australia to be slightly distasteful? Even a little bit?
OK then. So, we're talking about a stated policy of being willing to defend our space-related assets. You've got that boiled down to the US having a bloody past, including killing natives. Were you thinking, perhaps, of comparing that to the millions and millions of Europeans that have killed each other in the last couple hundred years? Or the untold slaughter throughout Asia that accompanied both (actual!) imperial expansion and communist steamrolling (and "cultural revolution")? Or perhaps the self-extinguishing cultures in Central and South America? Or the inter-tribal warring, going back untold centuries, in Africa?
Yeah, it's all the US's fault, no question. So you're right - we should retract any notion of protecting our GPS constellation, or of reserving the right to use radio-thermal energy source when we orbit a bird or interplanetary probe. What was I thinking? My hands are so bloody that I couldn't Google correctly on the phrases "pot calling kettle black" or "context." Say, how are those Hubble images treating you? I mean, how can you stand looking at them, what with all the murders, and all?
Show the quote in policy where anything even like that is being stated, or even implied. You're projecting onto the policy that wish you hope to find there, the better to prop up your Kabuki presentation of anything defense-related as villanous. Saying "our policy is that we'll defend our research, commerce, and security assets against overt hostility" isn't any different than saying "our city's policy is that we'll not allow guns to be discharged inside city limits"
No, I am not suggesting that the US is morally equivalent to Iran or North Korea, but you are the one who argued in favour of absolute morality...
Being periodically less than perfect in your pursuit of an objectively good body of ideals is not the same as being shrill, tantrum-having dictator in pursuit of an objectively evil agenda.
How can it be OK for the US claim one set of rights, and subsequently deny everyone else those rights?
Please point out where in the stated policy that's actually said, or even implied? Stating that you'll defend your own programs and assets has ZERO to do with whether someone else is also conducting research, commerce, and surveilance, just like we are.
You're just making up something to be outraged about, and it's really kind of silly.
World domination! Really! Assuming you actually mean striving, perhaps you can cite an example of how we're striving to dominate, say, Australia? Or France? Or Japan? Or Indonesia? Or Croatia? Or Latvia? Or Canada? Or Mexico? Or Brazil? Or Ireland? Or Norway? Or Sri Lanka? Or Cameroon?
Oh... by "dominate" you mean eiter "do lots of business with" or "give money and resources to."
open fascism
I think you're confusing a country with regularly rotated democratically elected officials with displays like we've just seen in North Korea (thousands of torch-carrying citizens forced to march in a militarized politcal party anniversary).
So, when you ask the people in those places to vote on no longer being a US protectorate, what do you think happens? Come on, out with it! Explain the colonizing pressure that this administration is applying to Puerto Rico. Or the Virgin Islands.
Well, since you don't seem to be interested in actually using a workable definition of the word "colony," that didn't seem to be worth the typing time.
It's pretty easy to make absolutism sound indefensible as well.
Sure it is! If you're absolutely committed to the wrong principles, it gets pretty ugly. More often, though, you have people with mixed premises, and get conflicting ethical results.
USA sure does seem to have a military presence in a lot of countries.
Yup! Now, ask the Germans if they'd really like to see the US actually pull up stakes and vacate those military bases. Or ask the people in Kuwait. Hell, there are plenty of noisy protests in South Korea about the US presence, but when you actually poll the citizens (especially now that their crazy northern neighbor is in the middle of a new and more exciting tantrum) on whether they'd like to see the US presence (and the large boost to the local security and economy that it provides) go away, and you get a very quick negative response.
Do you think that the Jordanians, or the Egyptians, would really like to see the US leave the area? Not a chance, not while the crazies are still trying to set the calendar back a thousand years.
Moral relativism, I've always thought, was the idea that an action could be right or could be wrong depending on a variety of factors. The action's moral value is dependent upon a variety of factors, not the action in a vacuum.
I think that the most workable meaning of "moral relativism" is some sense that there is no objectively right or wrong behavior, and that it all depends on your perspective. That paralyzing world view means that you can't act to defend against or prevent anything that would harm you, because maybe it's really not evil, from someone else's point of view, to harm you. Which is, of course, nonsense.
Slavery in the old US south: objectively wrong. North Korea's treatment of its own people and (now nuclear!) posturing against its neighbors and long laundry list of Really Bad Actions (counterfeiting foreign currency, trafficking in heroin, selling weapons to places like Iran for trans-shipping to folks like Hezbollah, etc): objectively wrong. Saddam's gassing of entire Kurdish villages: objectively wrong.
A proper moral relativist can find no wrongness in any of those areas, because they don't think it's fair, somehow. It's not a variety of "factors" that make the lack of moral judgement missing from a moral relativist's world view, it's the notion that moral judgement, itself, is wrong. You don't need to place a North Korean slave labor camp in, or out of, a 'vacuum' to ponder its appropriateness. Likewise with rape squads in Darfur, and so on.
Really! I'm sure they'd be shocked to know that we're running their country as a colony. Their routinely elected officials would probably also be surprised.
The thread is speaking in terms of the current administration's stated policy of being willing to defend our country's use of space-based assets from hostile threats. Someone else said that it's an imperialist posture (though they haven't said if they think that, say, Japan or France being willing to do the same would also be "imperialistic"). They said that this is in keeping with our imperialist activities. And to prove that person right you're (out of context!) focusing on past events. Aiding governments that were rejecting Soviet imperialism isn't freakin' imperialism! It's the opposite! *sigh*
Aid? Since when does the US supply 'enormous' forgien aid? Since 2001, the amount of US aid that actually reached, for example, the poor in Africa, totaled 6 cents USD. Who gets rich off US aid? US consultants.
What a joke. The US provides more aid to Africa than any other country on earth. And more of it comes directly from generous US citizens through countless charities and other private entities than from any other country.
In 2004, for example, we provided more than triple the aid to sub-Saharan Africa that was provided in 2000 under the previous administration. $3.2 billion. In 2005, an additional $1.4 billion just in event-related relief, most funneled through NGOs and the UN. At least do a little homework and math before you trot out a "total of $0.06" per person. Do you really think that the best way to aid a poor country is to hand cash to its citizens? Infrastructure is way, way more important. That's what allows commercial investment to flow in, and the local population to create their own prosperity.
Want some more? Who's the president-elect of Mexico?
Let's see: that would be guy that the most people voted for, despite the best efforts of a left-wing loon to claim that the very system that got his party more seats in the legislature was corrupt when it didn't happen to also put him in the executive office. The guy best repudiating the type of nonsense being spewed by Hugo Chavez actually got through to the electorate in Mexico.
Hamid Karzai
Let's see: so you probably think that the election monitoring that's done by the UN is really a good thing, and would probably like it to supervise the use of Diebold machines in the upcoming US elections, but when they say that the closely watched popular elections in Afghanistan that put Karzai in office were legit, then suddently the US was telling people how to vote?
Pervez Musharraf
Ah, well. I can see that you'd much rather we offer our diplomatic support to someone who doesn't think the Taliban's methods are such a bad way to run a country or your daughter's marriage.
Sorry, no elaborate arguments, witty remarks, or logic this time. Damn you all who voted for these idiots and made them a trouble for the entire world.
Read the damn material. It's all about the fact that we want to, for example, use things like nuke-powered spacecraft, and we're not going to allow someone else (China? doesn't matter) to dictate or act in a way contrary to that. How is "trouble for the entire world" to say that?
And yet, who actually does go around wiping out other countries?
Let's see: did you consider the Taliban regime (composed primarily of foreigners, running an at-the-muzzle-of-a-gun theocracy) a "country" that we "wiped out?"
Would you consider a government voted for by a higher percentage of the population than vote in most western democracies, despite being vicously destablized by mostly foreign insurgents, to be "wiped out" in Iraq? Ask the Kurds who they thought was trying so hard to actually wipe them out.
Would you consider the people that NATO, mostly as empowered/funded by the US military, to have "wiped out" or to have saved the people who were being slaughtered in the Balkans when most of local Europe decided to sit on its hands? Was Croatia wiped out by the US? Serbia? Kuwait? Do tell.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft isn't exactly known for turning a profit with it's gaming division
I think you're confusing hardware with software. This movie is not hardware.
food aid that is sent goes into the hands of the few who run the country
You're confusing cleptocratic local thugs with the charity that they're preventing from getting to their own people. How would get aid directly to the mouth of a poor person in that country, when someone working for a corrupt local official points a gun at the NGO's truck driver and tells him where to park the shipment? You have a few very stark choices:
1) Keep doing what we're doing. You say that's "imperialism."
2) Send in troops to escort the shipments right to each household. Which troops? Under whose command? You would no doubt be screaming "imperialism" unless we continued to pay for the food, and some other country got to direct its distribution. What other country would you say would be non-corrupt in that process? Would they then become the imperialists who get the extra bonus of not having to pay for the food?
3) Stop. Let the locals get hungry enough to overthrow the thugs that are stealing the food that other people are nice enough to ship in. But that shouldn't matter, right, because they're not getting the food anyway?
Well, which is it?
I would imagine the whole "partnering" with Microsoft thing to be a factor, too.
Why do you imagine that? Because Microsoft can't make, supply, or be shrewdly involved in entertainment-related material like Halo? Or because you don't like MS, and it feels good to say that? What's your actual thinking, and why is this +1 "informative" anyway?
If America shut down grain exports, most of Africa would starve -- quickly
... some form of imperialism? Take your average US-fed village in Africa. What imperialistic impulse is satisfied by having those people squeek by on our food donations? Are they being put to work in some way that we like? You know, weaving nice rugs that are cheaper than broadloom factor rugs from China? Or hand-pumping oil so we don't have to deploy a piece of equipment that could pump more in 5 minutes than the whole village could in a year? Or... what, we're using the food shipments to purchase domestic servants like Britain used to do?
And that would be
How is the U.S. served by keeping a largely non-productive section of the African population propped up with food shipments? Those parts of Africa that are productive (in the way that an "empire" could actually use) aren't the spots needing grain shipments. You can't equate charity with imperialism unless you can connect all of the dots. Where's the force? The U.S. isn't making an African village need more food, year-in, year-out. And those spots in Africa where the local culture has attained some rule-of-law stability and grown an actual economy are starting to thrive. Ask someone from, say, Cameroon, what they think about REAL imperialism (their history with German, and then French colonialism), and see what they think about their dealings with the US. Get a grip... if you dillute the word "imperialism" with nonsense like what you're describing, then the word means nothing.
This type of attention to detail is par for the course from MS.
Right, because no one at, say, Apple, would ever miss something like a typo in a URL that has NOTHING to do with the actual performance of their products. No, they just ship out iPods with viruses pre-installed and blame someone else. Are you so pumped up about bashing MS that a bad URL in a conference invitation is really enough to make you rule out similar (and much worse) employee mistakes at every other software publisher in the business? Give it a rest.
So now we have completely different lifeforms available does that mean we have to go and kill them?
:P )? What wine goes with it? Can an entire industry, such as the bass boat industry, be built around it? Will killing one in some way enrage members of PETA? Does it want to kill us? Do spotted owls eat them? Are their implications for cosmetic products that reduce wrinkles? So many factors.
That depends on further testing. Does it go well on a pizza? Can you stuff it with crab meat (or crabpeople
Or enhancing advertisers' ability to get your eyeballs.
Either way, it's not for us.
Who's "us?"
I'm not so unhappy that some small-time creators of very interesting web sites can at leats afford to pay for their hosting by generating some targeted clicks along the way. If you can't even stand those simple text Google ads tucked below an article or off on the edge of the page offsetting the overhead of running a niche web site, you're pretty cranky. I've get to see a g-powered ad that even came close to annoying me, really.
It matter not what fighting and killing has happened in other countries unless you're washing US's actions via relativism.
It matters because you are using the words "history" and "past." The thread, even this sidebar piece of it, is talking about current events, especially SPACE POLICY and how a statement of determination to defend space assets is, or is not, some measure of "imperialism" or, to use your notion, bloodiness. It's none of those things. And to trot out, say, Kennedy's bumbling use of force against Castro, or the North and South spilling blood over - among other things - slavery, or Lyndon Johnson's approach to dealing with communist proxies in Viet Nam... none of that really bears on a such a clear, innoccuous statement as the one being reported. No more than Japan's current discussions about the reality of North Korea are really driven, in practial terms, by Japan's previous generations and their imperial conquests around the Pacific.
Easy, it's called the "Free Trade Agreement" and "Cultural Imperialism." The FTA means that Australia can't pass laws that conflict with US ideas of law, and Australia has to pass laws that the majority of the population are opposed to. Ironically, the FTA is the opposite of Free Trade. It basically says "we'll trade with you, only if you do what we say."
So, if it's so onerous (which is debateable), why did Australia sign up? And, do you suppose that any of Australia's trading partners consider any aspects of relations with Australia to be slightly distasteful? Even a little bit?
Fact is is the US has a very bloody past.
OK then. So, we're talking about a stated policy of being willing to defend our space-related assets. You've got that boiled down to the US having a bloody past, including killing natives. Were you thinking, perhaps, of comparing that to the millions and millions of Europeans that have killed each other in the last couple hundred years? Or the untold slaughter throughout Asia that accompanied both (actual!) imperial expansion and communist steamrolling (and "cultural revolution")? Or perhaps the self-extinguishing cultures in Central and South America? Or the inter-tribal warring, going back untold centuries, in Africa?
Yeah, it's all the US's fault, no question. So you're right - we should retract any notion of protecting our GPS constellation, or of reserving the right to use radio-thermal energy source when we orbit a bird or interplanetary probe. What was I thinking? My hands are so bloody that I couldn't Google correctly on the phrases "pot calling kettle black" or "context." Say, how are those Hubble images treating you? I mean, how can you stand looking at them, what with all the murders, and all?
North America- not as bad as North Korea.
Now that's advertising...
Western Democracies: a really good idea, run by humans.
Oppressive Stalinist Dictatorships: a really, really bad idea, run by humans.
they are claiming ownership
See, now, you're actually lying.
Show the quote in policy where anything even like that is being stated, or even implied. You're projecting onto the policy that wish you hope to find there, the better to prop up your Kabuki presentation of anything defense-related as villanous. Saying "our policy is that we'll defend our research, commerce, and security assets against overt hostility" isn't any different than saying "our city's policy is that we'll not allow guns to be discharged inside city limits"
No, I am not suggesting that the US is morally equivalent to Iran or North Korea, but you are the one who argued in favour of absolute morality...
Being periodically less than perfect in your pursuit of an objectively good body of ideals is not the same as being shrill, tantrum-having dictator in pursuit of an objectively evil agenda.
How can it be OK for the US claim one set of rights, and subsequently deny everyone else those rights?
Please point out where in the stated policy that's actually said, or even implied? Stating that you'll defend your own programs and assets has ZERO to do with whether someone else is also conducting research, commerce, and surveilance, just like we are.
You're just making up something to be outraged about, and it's really kind of silly.
thriving for world domination
World domination! Really! Assuming you actually mean striving, perhaps you can cite an example of how we're striving to dominate, say, Australia? Or France? Or Japan? Or Indonesia? Or Croatia? Or Latvia? Or Canada? Or Mexico? Or Brazil? Or Ireland? Or Norway? Or Sri Lanka? Or Cameroon?
Oh... by "dominate" you mean eiter "do lots of business with" or "give money and resources to."
open fascism
I think you're confusing a country with regularly rotated democratically elected officials with displays like we've just seen in North Korea (thousands of torch-carrying citizens forced to march in a militarized politcal party anniversary).
Puerto Rico ... Guam ... etc
So, when you ask the people in those places to vote on no longer being a US protectorate, what do you think happens? Come on, out with it! Explain the colonizing pressure that this administration is applying to Puerto Rico. Or the Virgin Islands.
Totally ignored the Colonial Governments
Well, since you don't seem to be interested in actually using a workable definition of the word "colony," that didn't seem to be worth the typing time.
It's pretty easy to make absolutism sound indefensible as well.
Sure it is! If you're absolutely committed to the wrong principles, it gets pretty ugly. More often, though, you have people with mixed premises, and get conflicting ethical results.
USA sure does seem to have a military presence in a lot of countries.
Yup! Now, ask the Germans if they'd really like to see the US actually pull up stakes and vacate those military bases. Or ask the people in Kuwait. Hell, there are plenty of noisy protests in South Korea about the US presence, but when you actually poll the citizens (especially now that their crazy northern neighbor is in the middle of a new and more exciting tantrum) on whether they'd like to see the US presence (and the large boost to the local security and economy that it provides) go away, and you get a very quick negative response.
Do you think that the Jordanians, or the Egyptians, would really like to see the US leave the area? Not a chance, not while the crazies are still trying to set the calendar back a thousand years.
Moral relativism, I've always thought, was the idea that an action could be right or could be wrong depending on a variety of factors. The action's moral value is dependent upon a variety of factors, not the action in a vacuum.
I think that the most workable meaning of "moral relativism" is some sense that there is no objectively right or wrong behavior, and that it all depends on your perspective. That paralyzing world view means that you can't act to defend against or prevent anything that would harm you, because maybe it's really not evil, from someone else's point of view, to harm you. Which is, of course, nonsense.
Slavery in the old US south: objectively wrong. North Korea's treatment of its own people and (now nuclear!) posturing against its neighbors and long laundry list of Really Bad Actions (counterfeiting foreign currency, trafficking in heroin, selling weapons to places like Iran for trans-shipping to folks like Hezbollah, etc): objectively wrong. Saddam's gassing of entire Kurdish villages: objectively wrong.
A proper moral relativist can find no wrongness in any of those areas, because they don't think it's fair, somehow. It's not a variety of "factors" that make the lack of moral judgement missing from a moral relativist's world view, it's the notion that moral judgement, itself, is wrong. You don't need to place a North Korean slave labor camp in, or out of, a 'vacuum' to ponder its appropriateness. Likewise with rape squads in Darfur, and so on.
The South Korean government
Really! I'm sure they'd be shocked to know that we're running their country as a colony. Their routinely elected officials would probably also be surprised.
The thread is speaking in terms of the current administration's stated policy of being willing to defend our country's use of space-based assets from hostile threats. Someone else said that it's an imperialist posture (though they haven't said if they think that, say, Japan or France being willing to do the same would also be "imperialistic"). They said that this is in keeping with our imperialist activities. And to prove that person right you're (out of context!) focusing on past events. Aiding governments that were rejecting Soviet imperialism isn't freakin' imperialism! It's the opposite! *sigh*
Aid? Since when does the US supply 'enormous' forgien aid? Since 2001, the amount of US aid that actually reached, for example, the poor in Africa, totaled 6 cents USD. Who gets rich off US aid? US consultants.
What a joke. The US provides more aid to Africa than any other country on earth. And more of it comes directly from generous US citizens through countless charities and other private entities than from any other country.
In 2004, for example, we provided more than triple the aid to sub-Saharan Africa that was provided in 2000 under the previous administration. $3.2 billion. In 2005, an additional $1.4 billion just in event-related relief, most funneled through NGOs and the UN. At least do a little homework and math before you trot out a "total of $0.06" per person. Do you really think that the best way to aid a poor country is to hand cash to its citizens? Infrastructure is way, way more important. That's what allows commercial investment to flow in, and the local population to create their own prosperity.
Want some more? Who's the president-elect of Mexico?
Let's see: that would be guy that the most people voted for, despite the best efforts of a left-wing loon to claim that the very system that got his party more seats in the legislature was corrupt when it didn't happen to also put him in the executive office. The guy best repudiating the type of nonsense being spewed by Hugo Chavez actually got through to the electorate in Mexico.
Hamid Karzai
Let's see: so you probably think that the election monitoring that's done by the UN is really a good thing, and would probably like it to supervise the use of Diebold machines in the upcoming US elections, but when they say that the closely watched popular elections in Afghanistan that put Karzai in office were legit, then suddently the US was telling people how to vote?
Pervez Musharraf
Ah, well. I can see that you'd much rather we offer our diplomatic support to someone who doesn't think the Taliban's methods are such a bad way to run a country or your daughter's marriage.
Sorry, no elaborate arguments, witty remarks, or logic this time. Damn you all who voted for these idiots and made them a trouble for the entire world.
Read the damn material. It's all about the fact that we want to, for example, use things like nuke-powered spacecraft, and we're not going to allow someone else (China? doesn't matter) to dictate or act in a way contrary to that. How is "trouble for the entire world" to say that?
And yet, who actually does go around wiping out other countries?
Let's see: did you consider the Taliban regime (composed primarily of foreigners, running an at-the-muzzle-of-a-gun theocracy) a "country" that we "wiped out?"
Would you consider a government voted for by a higher percentage of the population than vote in most western democracies, despite being vicously destablized by mostly foreign insurgents, to be "wiped out" in Iraq? Ask the Kurds who they thought was trying so hard to actually wipe them out.
Would you consider the people that NATO, mostly as empowered/funded by the US military, to have "wiped out" or to have saved the people who were being slaughtered in the Balkans when most of local Europe decided to sit on its hands? Was Croatia wiped out by the US? Serbia? Kuwait? Do tell.