Why us furrrners get upset at some US foreign policy etc

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Slippery slope? Fuggit, somebody has slipped a good way down it already.
There are things you don't do to your friends, and limits have been stretched far beyond breaking points.

"Friends"?

Yeah, the French intelligence services would never, ever station any agents in Washington DC. Nosiree.

Oh, there's much worse going on off the reservation.

[Warren Dew]

The liberty vs security argument will always be there, but I prefer to see a reasonable balance rather than ALWAYS leaning towards the liberty side. I think the balance today is still reasonable. And as someone who has personally calculated the blast radius between his office desk and the White House, I'm not open to too much compromise on this.

When I worked for the military, I worried about that blast radius too. However, I also figured that risk was part of what I was being paid for.

When you sacrifice the liberty of the entire population to improve the safety of a relatively small number of government functionaries, the government is no longer serving the people - it is only serving itself. At that point, the concept of liberty becomes meaningless and you have a police state.

Government employees who feel they aren't being paid enough to take their risks always have the option of leaving and working in the private sector in a safer location instead.

[Cormac]

Something to keep in mind: all threat analysis can be boiled down to two factors: Capabilities and Intentions. Germany's intelligence services today have technical capabilities that the Gestapo could scarcely have dreamt of. Does that make them worse than the Gestapo? No, which is why trying to make a point about what some organization COULD do is meaningless.

That is nonsense, and flies in the face of historical experience.

At what point do we get worried about erosions of freedom and liberty? Do we have to wait for the totalitarian state to actually be in place, or do we worry when we see the apparatus being assembled?

It is too late when the totalitarian state is fully installed. We long ago set limits on what the state should and should not do, precisely because we know what happens when we ignore these checks in the name of expediency and "security".

And "slippery slope" is not at all fallacious, as the democratic rise to power of the Nazi party demonstrates.

[Cormac]

Lol. Did you miss the head of the NSA lying last year?

No, but ask me how much I really care. If Congress has a problem, they'll take it up with him.

Jeez, nobody understands intelligence at all.

And yet, back in the Reagan years, intelligence folks were perfectly willing to give an honest, "I can't talk about that". And maybe doing that, instead of being willing to lie to Congress and the American people, is part of why there weren't the massive leaks back then that there are now.

Except the hero traitor Oliver North.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I wonder if Ollie will ever come clean?

[Cormac]

This is why some of us get upset at the US, even though we aren't citizens of it. The US has a disproportionate affect on foreign countries sovereignty. When the US sneezes, the rest of us cower in fear (or something like that...)

Er, they all know on which side of the bread their butter is. We just asked nicely, and our friends decided to do what in their sovereign judgment was the prudent thing to do that's in the best interests of their nation.

Dunno why you would think that the US is obliged to continue to be nice to any nation that would harbor a traitor like him.

I'd go as far as to say that any country that gives Snowden asylum is committing an act of war against the United States, given what he knows about our national security infrastructure, and that if we can locate him we should stuff a Hellfire missile up his ass, no matter where he is.

Gotta love the Obama drone program...it's MADE for this sort of thing.

I appreciate this post, Seth. From all I can see, this is a raw and honest answer to rEv's OP, with no spin...

This, however, is little by little the increasing picture of the US that many in the world (including former allies) have today. And I suspect that many US citizens simply do not understand the increasing fear and distrust of their country by people far removed from Russia, China or islamic jihadists...

Well, get with the program and be our friends and you won't have to worry about it. I have no trouble with the US defending it's interests at home or abroad. Every country on earth does so, some more effectively, some less.

But the fact is that the US, for all its warts, is still the bastion of freedom and liberty and if exporting our system is what it takes to achieve global peace, then I'm all for it. After all, nobody's come up with a better system of government, and many have come up with much worse forms of government under which the people suffer indignity and death en masse.

I'd be interested to hear just exactly (besides perhaps the gun issue) is so inherently evil or frightening about the American way of life and political beliefs that would make a right-minded person interested in individual liberty, national stability and international peace afraid of the US?

I KNOW everyone has a lot to fear from Marxism and it's intermediate stage of Socialism, and I know exactly why we should fear and fight Marxism in all its guises. It has never worked, ever, in the history of mankind, and it's produced more evil and genocidal death than any other political system that has ever existed, bar none.

But what exactly has the US form of government done that leads to such fear?

Is the rest of the planet really that afraid of liberty?

If so, unlike the Soviet Union and other Marxist states, why does the US have to build a fence to keep people OUT?

[Cormac]

This is why some of us get upset at the US, even though we aren't citizens of it. The US has a disproportionate affect on foreign countries sovereignty. When the US sneezes, the rest of us cower in fear (or something like that...)

Er, they all know on which side of the bread their butter is. We just asked nicely, and our friends decided to do what in their sovereign judgment was the prudent thing to do that's in the best interests of their nation.

Dunno why you would think that the US is obliged to continue to be nice to any nation that would harbor a traitor like him.

I'd go as far as to say that any country that gives Snowden asylum is committing an act of war against the United States, given what he knows about our national security infrastructure, and that if we can locate him we should stuff a Hellfire missile up his ass, no matter where he is.

Gotta love the Obama drone program...it's MADE for this sort of thing.

I appreciate this post, Seth. From all I can see, this is a raw and honest answer to rEv's OP, with no spin...

This, however, is little by little the increasing picture of the US that many in the world (including former allies) have today. And I suspect that many US citizens simply do not understand the increasing fear and distrust of their country by people far removed from Russia, China or islamic jihadists...

Well, get with the program and be our friends and you won't have to worry about it. I have no trouble with the US defending it's interests at home or abroad. Every country on earth does so, some more effectively, some less.

But the fact is that the US, for all its warts, is still the bastion of freedom and liberty and if exporting our system is what it takes to achieve global peace, then I'm all for it. After all, nobody's come up with a better system of government, and many have come up with much worse forms of government under which the people suffer indignity and death en masse.

I'd be interested to hear just exactly (besides perhaps the gun issue) is so inherently evil or frightening about the American way of life and political beliefs that would make a right-minded person interested in individual liberty, national stability and international peace afraid of the US?

I KNOW everyone has a lot to fear from Marxism and it's intermediate stage of Socialism, and I know exactly why we should fear and fight Marxism in all its guises. It has never worked, ever, in the history of mankind, and it's produced more evil and genocidal death than any other political system that has ever existed, bar none.

But what exactly has the US form of government done that leads to such fear?

Is the rest of the planet really that afraid of liberty?

If so, unlike the Soviet Union and other Marxist states, why does the US have to build a fence to keep people OUT?

America is not the only democracy Seth.

And the US head yet to actually export democracy to anywhere.

World War II in Europe was the only moral war that the USA has ever fought. All the others are in some way connected to the extension of US power through the oppression of people through totalitarian states installed by the US.

It is this incongruity between what the US likes to say about itself and the reality that causes so much disapproval. I love the concept of the US, and its constitution. I've rarely met an American that I didn't like. I would like to look to the USA as a bastion of democracy. Unfortunately, it is not.

[JimC]

I know that a sense of proportion needs to be kept here. Compared to many other places in the world, and regimes from history, the current US is indeed relatively free, and certainly not the danger posed by the USSR at its most expansionist.

However, it seems to me, and many others across the world, that some early warning signs of unthinking and arrogant use of power are here already, and should not be ignored as minor quibbles. Cormac put it well before; the slippery slope argument is not invalid.

Cormac wrote:

World War II in Europe was the only moral war that the USA has ever fought. All the others are in some way connected to the extension of US power through the oppression of people through totalitarian states installed by the US.

Korea?
And I think there have been many "grey" wars, that may have had a degree of moral justification mixed in with the cold-war realpolitik...

[Cormac]

I know that a sense of proportion needs to be kept here. Compared to many other places in the world, and regimes from history, the current US is indeed relatively free, and certainly not the danger posed by the USSR at its most expansionist.

However, it seems to me, and many others across the world, that some early warning signs of unthinking and arrogant use of power are here already, and should not be ignored as minor quibbles. Cormac put it well before; the slippery slope argument is not invalid.

Cormac wrote:

World War II in Europe was the only moral war that the USA has ever fought. All the others are in some way connected to the extension of US power through the oppression of people through totalitarian states installed by the US.

Korea?
And I think there have been many "grey" wars, that may have had a degree of moral justification mixed in with the cold-war realpolitik...

I don't disagree with the "grey war" point at all.

[Svartalf]

Our IS is well known for utter incompetence, so please.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

How was Korea a grey war?

[Svartalf]

colour the MIGs were painted?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

colour the MIGs were painted?

Noted.

[pErvinalia]

For you education, Collector, the "center" of politics in the US is considered the Right in most of the rest of the developed world. The Democrats are a centre-right party. The Republicans wouldn't exist in most of our countries, outside of perhaps a tiny number of members, due to them being batshit fruitcake insane racist homophobic sexists.

Russia is part of the developed world, and they are much farther right of the U.S. than the E.U. is left of the U.S. By any reasonable measure, the U.S. is left of center.

You need to visit the rest of the world, Warren. And Russia is a fucking authoritarian state again. Of course it's right wing. I'm talking about countries comparable as "liberal democracies" to the US.

[pErvinalia]

The Stasi never even dreamt of having the technological means you (and others) are now using on a routine basis. And that is kind of the core of it. What you could doo is far too formidable. Public trust has to be maintained, inside your country, and among your friends. Lying and cheating is a very very bad way to do that.

It's a good academic argument and I sympathize with it. But I also think it's an overreaction based on slippery slope logic, not to mention out of context considering how much more oversight US agencies have compared to our foreign counterparts, including other democracies.

It doesn't sound very accountable when the head of the NSA can lie to congress and nothing is done about it.