Lej - For the love of God, Montressor!...

It's really hard to sort out feelings about American foreign policy, when there are so many different "Official" foreign policies at any given time, depending on whether you're listening to Madeleine Albright, our "Official" Secretary of State, Bill Clinton, our "Official" Chief Executive, Senator Jesse Helms, our "Official" head of the Senate Foreign Affairs committee, etc. And "The American People" is really a non-existant entity - the views range from the paranoid xenophobic fantasies of folks who believe that the UN runs a secret fleet of "black helicopters" bent on the subversion and conquest of the USA to far-left fanatics who say anything we as a nation do is imperialistic and immoral.

Our country is huge and full of so many people with so many different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, that any comment that generalizes about "Americans" is bound to be off-target for 80-90% of the people who live here. I guess I agree with whoever said above that I would rather be judged as an individual, not on the behavior (or misbehavior) of our elected officials and their so-called "official" views and policies. I as an individual have absolutely no control over Jesse Helms; I cannot vote for or against him (I don't live in N. Carolina), I have no say about the powerful position he's in, and find him an embarassment. A lot of people in this country probably feel the same about Bill Clinton.

So, to our fellow 'Catters not from the USA, don't tar us all with the same brush when you're pissed off by policies our government makes - we as "little folks" have about as much say in our government's antics as you do in yours...All we can do is try to vote for people that we agree with (if we can find them) and try to make our voices heard that way. There are bigots and xenophobes everywhere, not just here, and it should be the goal of any reasonable individual to try to make sure his or her country is one they can be proud of without needing to dominate or put down other nations in order to do so.

That being said, did you hear about the Canadian who moved across the river to Detroit to get away from the horrid Ontario winters?