ZabZu said:
Id much prefer to support the US or the Europeans than the Russians and Chinese. Both Russia and China are dictatorships, they dont have a free press, their human rights records are poor and they support horrible regimes. They support Zimbabwe, Sudan, Iran, Burma, etc.
Israel has also made mistakes in the past but its not the regime your making it out to be. Israelis want peace, yet you support Hezbollah which wont stop fighting until Israel is destroyed.
Okay, let's just get past this cultural bias. DEMOCRACY ISN'T THE INHERENTLY RIGHT SYSTEM OF GOVERNANCE. It works just fine for us in the western world, even though that's debatable, and though the current system of checkbook democracy isn't the most wonderful, it works. China and Russia are different cultural areas, they have different things that work for them. Both nations have a long history of cultural autocracy and paternalism. Russia even got a proper democracy, but seems to have largely gravitated back to a dictatorship, as it's just what they prefer. And America and the West supports abhorrent regimes too when it suites them. America invested heavily in the Iraqi war against Iran, as Iran was seen as the bigger threat. I see it as no different to the Chinese supporting the Sudanese for their oil interests in the area.
Is it nice? No. Is it right? Probably not. But this isn't a perfect world, and it's the way it works.
most atrocities are usually linked to western elites greed. going back to iraq, where they used biological weapons on its own people ...but hey, its ok, because those weapons were given to iraq by the USA.
Well that's just daft.
Australia is the US's lapdog? I guess that's why, when the US asked Australia to commit a bunch of its fighter jets to the Middle East, we declined on the grounds that Australia's defence is more important than some far off war.
Then we put it into perspective and realise our 20 fighters probably won't make a difference with the hundreds of US ones there. Also, we can't get F-22's, and I guarantee you it's because we decide we need to prove we're not America's complete bitch occasionally. I don't see why we do it. We all know that America saved us in the Second World War, and we also know that, God forbid, the massibe Muslim nation with more fit men of miltary age than we've people and a distinct shortage of land to the north of us decides to try anything, it'll be American munitions in our American fighters manned by Australians who were trained by American pilots maintained by Australians trained by American maintenance crews who stop the landing craft and clear the skies.
And don't get me wrong, I'm as nationalistic as you can get, but I don't see why we shouldn't be towing the US's line a tad more closely in the short-term for the long term gain. I don't like Howard all that much but I definitely agree with him in this department.
Though, there's ofcourse a line. But I don't think it should be drawn when we're asked to keep 1,000 personel and a squadron in Iraq.
go suck Ariel Sharon's dick.
I would but he can't get hard since his stroke