Where is the USA on this

[Islander]

THere are additional crisis brewing in the horizong that will come to a boil in the next 18 months or so. This administration will be tasked with making a decision about wha to do. It will be interesting to see the argument they will use.

Like I mentioned before, it is not situational ethics or cost/benefit analysis. But we can not interfere in every conflict and even if we do, most times nothing really will change.

Some of the most embarrassing moments for the country happened right after the Tsunami in South East Asia. The US sent billions in humanitarian aid, being the first to arrive in the region to help with rescue and disasters relief. We were told to drop off the relief and leave. You heard nothing on CNN about it. Almost 500,000 people died and the new coverage evaporated quite quickly. One of the largest relief operations in modern history and we never received a public acknowledgment of the aid rendered. What most people missed was the fact that Indonesia is the largest Islamic country in the world, percentage wise.

American history, values, laws and government are significantly different from the rest of the world. We keep forgetting that nobody else in the planet understands our social experiment. Any attempt we make to share and replicate it is met with resistance and rejection. We should ONLY offer the Gospel for what it is; the absolute truth about God's plan for his children and leave the government (to Caesar) to itself.

[Maxel]

Now that a Republican is not in the White House, we've suddenly remembered that we are not and cannot be the world's policemen.

(No offense, Maxel. I realize that a lot of conservatives were opposing war even during the runup to Operation Iraqi Freedom.)

No offense taken. I think you're right- a lot of conservatives went happily along with Bush's march into Iraq without so much as a peep. That's the problem- not enough thinking (based on true, God-given reason) done by people on either side of the political spectrum.

For the record and for the sake of complete candor, I wasn't wholly against the Iraqi war at first. Then again, my major concerns were surviving a crappy childhood with clinical depression; only in recent years have I begun paying attention to national isues and realize that I didn't like Bush as much as I thought I did.

[MarginOfError]

I would love for the US to get involved in stopping such tragedies as what is being discussed here. Unfortunately, we don't exactly have unlimited resources, and we have to prioritize where we allocate those resources. It sucks, and it doesn't detract from the awful things the people in Africa are facing. But the powers that be have concluded that the national interests are better served by allocating our resources in Afghanistan and Iraq than they are in Africa, mostly because the enemies we would fight in Africa don't have the resources to extend their influence to us. If the oil were found in Africa and not in the Middle East, I am certain the allocations would follow.