Wayward Monkey

We are not the world’s policemen. Where in the Constitution does it say that we should go to other countries and solve their problems? That is not our government’s responsibility. Their responsibility is to the people that live here, in our country. I have been asked “How do we distinguish the terrorist in the airport from the non-terrorist?” We start by having highly trained people at the airport to look for them. We spend millions to train our soldiers and then send them to other countries to look for the bad guys while leaving that job to minimum wage high school drop outs here. That doesn’t make sense. We have billion dollar aircraft dropping million dollar bombs on slums with a few starving AK-47 toting religious fanatics while at the same time reducing the amount of money we spend on closing the border that thousands of people walk across illegally every day. That makes about as much sense as locking the doors on a convertible with the top down.

We need to remember, it is not an all or nothing situation. Bringing our troops back here, closing our overseas bases and making countries defend themselves rather than live under the umbrella of perceived safety that the citizens of the United States provide with our money and our lives, is not isolationist. Defending our borders first does not mean stopping trade. This isn’t about trade. This is about taking care of our own first. We are the only country in the world that does not do that. We need to let Israel fight her own battles. Who really cares if India and Pakistan blow themselves up over a little piece of dirt named after a sweater? North and South Korea are big boys now. If they want to slug it out, let their neighbors deal with it. We have enough problems of our own. If we stop going places where we are not wanted, then we will stop pissing people off.

I don’t believe all these people all over the world are born with hatred towards us. I contend their hatred comes from 50 years of us poking them in the eye with a stick. It comes from 50 years of intolerance for their beliefs and the genuine fear that they have of what we believe. Americans, while being some of the most caring and giving people in the entire world are also some of the most arrogant, cocky and intolerant. And though many refuse to admit it, our generosity comes with a price. We think, and our foreign policy throughout the world has reinforced our belief, that the rest of the world would be better off if they were more like us. We don’t see the hypocrisy in trying to tell everyone else how great freedom and democracy is then spend billions of dollars a year locking people up in prison for smoking or shooting up a drug that harms no one but themselves.

We forget how long the memory is in the rest of the world, especially the Islamic world. We don’t understand that it takes a lot longer to build trust back up after it has been broken. At one point or another during the life of a Middle Eastern man turning 60 years old today, we have been both a backer of his country and the enemy of his country. Iran this decade, Iraq last decade, Pakistan now, India before, they have been living with our inconsistent foreign policy that pits neighbor against neighbor in bloody wars and then has us switch sides when it looks like it will benefit us more. We don’t understand that they see us the same way that we see them. We say we can’t deal with Islamic radicals because all they really want is to take over the world, bring down our country, and turn us all into Muslims. They see the same thing in us. We want to tear down their society and change their government and their beliefs into the ones we hold dear. We don’t stay in our country minding our own business. We didn’t go into Rwanda just to give food to starving people. We went there giving them food with the plan of changing their government. We didn’t go into Iraq to protect American citizens, we went in to protect American interests, interests that are not in line with the rest of the region or the average citizen of America.

We need to remember that not everyone in the world is like we are. And it is not our place, responsibility, or right to change them.