Amazing! Thanks to GUEST and the rest for some refreshingly intelligent discussion of the issues with a minimum of meatheaded macho bullshit. Terror begets terror and the US is culpable for much of the deadliest terror in recent--and not-so-recent history. Even if we dismiss the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima and Nagasaki as wartime expedience, we still have School of the Americas trained death squads in Latin America, in Argentina, in Peru, in Nicaragua and El Salvador, in Guatamala. We also have several presidents' acquiescence in and support of genocide in East Timor, the murderous bombing and sanctions on Iraq and the destruction of the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant, and so on and on, with a propensity since the beginning of genocide against the indigenous population of the continent and the genocidal slave trade--I recall figures of less than half the Africans taking onto slave traders' ships surviving the village with another huge pecentage dying in the Caribbean slave breaking grounds. It's true that half a million Americans died in the war to end slavery, but how many died trying to establish rights for the freed slaves? Ya got a couple of free fingers to count on?

That much of the world looks to the US as the land of freedom and prosperity has less to do with history than with our rhetoric of freedom--of the "Land of the free and the home of the brave" and "Give us the... wretched refuse of your teeming shores, yearning to breathe free.." variety. We seem to welcome the "wretched refuse" of those systems whose political/economic systems we abhor: Cuba, El Salvador, Sandinista Nicaragua, but reject those whose governments have good standing with United Fruit or Archer-Daniels-Midland. Also, we are happy to welcome large numbers of computer programmers who will work for less than our home-grown workers.

The United States of America is a wonderful dream, but upon waking we find our dream lover has left us for someone with a lot more money.

--seed