in your opinion, is the united states a force for good in the world or not?

Question

it seems to me that many, many people in this country do not see us as doing good in the world and im just curious as to what you think...call it an informal poll.

Answer 1

More good than bad. Sure, the United States has made a lot of mistakes, as is true of every country, but our past and present contributions internationally have helped the world in numerous and valuable ways.

Answer 2

Yes, we are a force for good. Look back to WW one to present, and you will see that more good has been done by this nation than bad.

The Good, we whipped Germany, then the Axis powers, rebuilt Europe after saving them from the Nazi's. ( how quick France forgets)

We rebuilt Japan and they are now a major economic player in the world, South Korea is still free. South Viet Nam didn't fair as well because Congress tried to run the show from Capitol Hill.

Bosnia, better off since we stepped in. Look at the military who provided humanitarian aid to countries with natural disasters!!

Iraq war first round, we did good controlling Saddam, but then, the UN let us down by not being strong and holding Iraq to the resolutions so we had to go in again, round two. If Congress keeps doing what its doing, then, we will have another Nam, where we take second place and the country falls apart.

Answer 3

We are a force for good, not only that, but we are doing good throughout the world. And this is what pisses of the left more than anything. How can a previously conservative Congress and Executive branch be the hand that helps the oppressed of the world? This must be stopped! So that's when the propaganda wars on the media start in earnest. I wrote to the Heads of the news departments for ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX asking why all they ever reported was the death and destruction in Iraq and not about the successes. FOX was the only one to respond, "because Americans are more interested in their sons and daughters being killed than in a school being built in Baghdad." The height of arrogance to think we wouldn't want to know why they died instead of just how. We are a force of good, you just won't hear about it.

Answer 4

Good , The USA has given more aid money through out the world than most other countries but because of the liberal left tries to make the USA look bad but your country the USA does much to help many around the globe.

Answer 5

Name one country that has ever truly been a force of good in the world. It doesn't exist. Countries are like people - they are neither all good nor all bad but somewhere in the middle. The reality is that it is impossible to govern a country effectively and be everyone's best friend. America needs to stop feeling ashamed when it does what is best for America. It also needs to accept the consequences when it does what is best for America at the detriment of another.

Answer 6

Good.

We have created billions of free people over our history. We have never tried to take over another country as has every other superpower that has ever existed.

I think we should seal our borders and just keep to ourselves from now on. We should just be neutral to everything. We no longer give humanitarian aid to anyone for any reason. We no longer help other countries get rid of their dictators. We keep all of our US dollars here at home. THEN lets see the world community cry and whine.

.

Answer 7

Over all good but very bad lately.
In the beginning our hearts were in the right place.
Then we started trying to orchestrate politics in other countries. This has always and I mean always turned around to bite us in the butt. The Peace Corps. is our best attempt at making the world a better place. It's a we learn, they learn trade off.

Answer 8

What the liberal press does not show, is all of the charity work and food sharing, teahnology sharing, disater releif the USA does around the world. It only foucses on the negative.
Yes, the US does a whole lot of good around the world.

Answer 9

Dont get mad but in my opinion, i dont think so because when the soldiers went to Iraq, they tortured alot of people and made the dogs attack them and they put bags on their heads and did other horrible things i dont want to talk about, and there is lots of poverty in the world but the United States is not helping as much, they are wasting alot of money in the war, so thats what i think. Sorry if you got mad.

Answer 10

If we truly WERE good, and other people were truly benefiting from that good, then the world would AGREE that we were good. (Remember the end of WW1 & 2.)

If most of the world REJECTS America right now, then obviously, from their point of view, we're not being a great force for good. (Look at Iraq now.)

No evil person thinks they're evil - they all think they're good. Even Hitler. Even Bush. Even Clinton. Think about that.

This is why most of the answers you're getting from Americans is that America is still a force for good. Very few people ever want to, or are even capable of imagining, that they're actually a "force for evil".

So let's go to the facts.

The greatest donor of foreign aid? We are highest in dollar amounts, but LOWEST in terms of GDP percentage. And guess who the largest single receipient of US foreign aid is? Israel, at $5 billion+ (not including Iraq the past couple years). And of course, nearly ALL of that aid is used to buy OUR weapons. We literally PAY for 20-30% of their own defense budget. So the reason why the Palestinians & many other Middle Easterners hate us so much is because all they see are US-made F-16 Falcons, Apache helicopters, & smart bombs killing them.

According to the 2004 CRS report (Congressional Research Service), US foreign aid comes in 5 types: developmental, economic aid for political/security objectives, humanitarian, multilateral (UN), and military. Do you know how much spending from the US federal budget all this aid consumes?

Less than 1%.

Do you know how much the US spends on its own military? 50%. Our military-industrial complex now boasts a 65% global market share in the arms industry. That means we out-sell all other countries COMBINED when it comes to weapons of minor & mass destruction. This is why so many of our enemies were actually our ex-customers or allies, such as Hussein & bin Laden.

In dollar terms, the US State Department (which is supposed to engage in diplomacy), receives $10 billion/year. The US military, on the other hand, receives $400 billion+. That's a factor of about 40X.

The US a force for good, you say? I'd say a force for War. This is why the US "mysteriously", "magnetically", gets itself drawn into 1 major war on average at least once every decade. It's really not that much of a coincidence, and has very little to do with "freedom" & "democracy".

We certainly weren't a force for good to the 1-600,000s Iraqis that are dead because of our "good intentions". This is not to mention the million people who died in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Or when we helped right-wing dictators like Suharto of Indonesia get into power, and then continue to finance & back him after he killed 500,000 people. Remember that we also backed Hussein, too, even though we knew he was killing his Kurdish population. Speaking of Kurds, we're also silent & have historically looked the other way when it comes to Turkey's repression of its own Kurdish independence movement, with 30,000 killed & 3 million dispossessed. But you don't see us invading Turkey, because Turkey is our ally.

The US even has an all-Spanish speaking school that actually trains right-wing soldiers & militias from Latin American countries in "counterinsurgency". Originally called the "School of the Americas", it was started in 1946 in Panama to combat communism in Latin America. It is now in Fort Benning, Georgia. Many Latin American right-wing dictators with extensive human-rights abuse records have graduated from this school, the most famous of which are Pinochet of Chile, and Noriega of Panama. (Both of whom were ex-allies, of course. Noriega was on the CIA-Reagan payroll before we decided to topple him as well.) This school is still open, despite a grassroots-Congress move last year to close it.

Of course, none of this stuff is given any attention by the mainstream media. And I'm certainly not making any of it up - feel free to double-check in Google all you want.

A force for good, you still think? The deepest & ugliest truths, unfortunately, aren't found either in standard history books, mainstream media, or the minds of most Americans. And the reason for that is, everybody naturally wants to avoid looking at & examining the evil within their own country. It's just so much easier to see evil in other countries or people, especially our enemies, and to magnify our own goodness out of proportion.

Ignorance is bliss, as they say. Particularly if what you're ignorant about will make you feel like hell if you knew about it. Better just to think that Americans are mostly Angels on Earth.