The Free View-- weblog of a presidential candidate

Mad at America

Two articles about the international community getting fed up with America...

...one about Europe...
TIME cover story: Mad at America
(which includes in the sidebar this interesting opinion piece by Brian Eno)

...and one, more disturbing, about South Korea...
MSNBC: Is Uncle Sam still welcome in Seoul?

That article is a little weird in that it goes for a while just talking about how p.o.'d the South Koreans are, without touching upon what precipitated their anger. It does get to it eventually though...

The controversy over U.S. forces reflects the fallout from one of the worst episodes ever in the U.S.-Korean military alliance. Ever since two Korean schoolgirls were crushed to death beneath the tracks of a 45-ton U.S. armored vehicle June 13, Korean activists have been organizing demonstrations outside U.S. bases, shouting anti-American slogans and, on occasion, tossing Molotov cocktails over the walls.
The campaign, which had shown signs of waning, heated up again in November when a U.S. military court at Camp Casey, a sprawling base about 20 miles from Seoul, acquitted two Army sergeants who had been charged with negligent homicide in the case. Panels of Army officers and sergeants concluded there was insufficient evidence to convict the sergeants, including the driver, whose view was obstructed by his vehicle, and the vehicle commander, who saw the girls but couldn’t reach the driver over the vehicle’s radio link.

Full story...

Imagine if we had 37,000 soldiers from another country here doing exercises, and two of them crushed two little American girls. Not that we can easily imagine what it's like to be under the boot (um, I mean assistance) of another country's military. It's just incomprehensible for an American I think...being heavily occupied by another country. Any empathy we might claim for those countries who live under our ever-expanding roof of aid, military assistance, and attached strings would be nothing more than guesswork. I don't know when the last time that foreign military forces crushed young Americans on our land was, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was in the 1800's, if at all.

I'm willing to posit that we would have a lot less cavalier attitude toward intervention and empire-building if we got intervened and empire-built-on ourselves. Not that that's ever going to happen. And not that it wish it would happen...I just wish we would get a better sense of the impact of our foreign policy.

Ignorance may be bliss...but it's ignorant bliss.