Quote:
yet I don't see how winning a popularity contest with the world can trup the security interests that we have as a nation

Can't you understand that these two ideas are inextricably linked? It's not a case of one vs the other - if you have popularity you can have security. If you don't, you cannot.

The USA loves to think of itself as 'Leader of the Free World'. It's time that those in power remembered that you only lead those who choose to follow. Sure, you can buy loyalty. But it comes at a cost, as evidenced by the deficit that Reagon built winning the Cold War throwing money and miltary aid towards any tinpot dictator perceived to be on the 'right' side. Once you can no longer afford to keep paying for that loyalty or choose not to because the need appears to have gone away, do you really expect that loyalty to continue?

It suited the USA to turn a blind eye during the '80s when Afghanistani Mujahdeen sold opium to fund their resistance to Soviet forces, just as it suited the USA to support Saddam in Iraq against the Iranian Ayatollah during the same period. Covert aid to the Mujahdeen is estimated to have been about $2.5 billion, and they somehow ended up with the latest US SAM hardware, just as Dr Germ was allowed access to classified information at Porton Down (yes, us Brits are complicit too).

Is really any shock that after fucking around with that part of the World so much that some people there don't like us very much?

Don't believe for a second the rhetoric that they don't like us for who we are. That is bull. Maybe a very small minority are fanatical, just as I know that trawling the state of Utah would turn up a few 'Christians' with similar but oppositely polarised viewpoints. The rest of them, the vast majority of the terrorists and insurgents hate us for what we have done, and what we continue to do.
_________________________
Mk2a 60GB Blue. Serial 030102962 sig.mp3: File Format not Valid.