America's thinking

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

America is like a building that wants to keep on getting bigger and bigger without looking at it's base.

A large portion of America is currently longing for the past, when international policy was black versus white and wars were fought against uniformed aggressors in organized armies that represented countries that issued declarations. You can hear it in the comparisons to World War II body counts ("3,000 lost isn't nearly as many as...!"), questions of why the public "isn't sacrificing more for the war effort" like "generations past", and even down to the phrase uttered many times after 9/11 that they'd "awakened the sleeping giant". It'd be so much easier if we were dealing with a country that was on a conquest for world domination instead of the complicated religious group/political spiderweb that dates back hundreds of years and why you'll continue to hear phrases like "they hate us for our freedom".

Our army isn't equipped to handle this, nor are our current policies. We can't understand why we can defeat the army and hang the dictator but cannot apply the "Mission Accomplished" label successfully, yet. A public that grew up reading the history of the defeat of the Nazis through manpower and the fall of communism thanks to a weapons race thinks the solution is to keep throwing ammunition into an age-old fire. Our actions fuel this.

America isn't a building trying to grow larger, we just don't understand why we can't fix these complex problems with air superiority and installation of a new political system. We want this, badly, to be good versus evil, not shades of gray.