A rebuttal to Gordon Sinclair

Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, widespread coverage on the Internet was given to a remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television commentator. Here is his original text. What follows is my rebuttal to his trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record.

Rebuttal

(Sinclair's text is quoted literally below, and is indicated by quote marks and the initials 'GS'. The rebuttal follows each paragraph.)

GS:
"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth."

Rebuttal:
First of all we should not confuse the attitudes of American people as individuals with the attitude of America as a nation, or the American culture as a whole. I know many generous Americans. But as a political body, America only spends money whenever it furthers America's own interests. That's not generosity, it's purchase.
They spent billions of dollars bombing the living daylights out of Afghanistan and Iraq, but it wasn't until after the second Gulf War with the Bush Jr. administration gearing up for re-election has the US government decided to spend one whole billion on rebuilding Afghanistan after the US raids. This is 1/4th of what the unlawful occupation of Iraq cost each month, and the decision was made mainly to counter the impression that the US have lost interest in recreating the Afghanistan society in their own image, as they originally claimed to intend.
Lastly, 'least appreciated' may or may not be a justified term. There may be a country somewhere that has outraged more other nations than the USA has. Maybe. But even so, I fail to see why this is relevant here: why would any degree of under-appreciation entitle a people to being spoken up for?

GS:
"Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States."

Rebuttal:
Europe undeniably does owe the allied forces (which consisted in part, but by no means in whole, of American forces) for their efforts against the occupying Nazi regime in World War II. The bravery and the sense of duty of countless allied soldiers who came to Europe to fight the undeniably evil Nazi regime is beyond any doubt, no matter how you look at it. We owe these soldiers an enormous amount of gratitude and our deepest respect.
Notwithstanding this, however, the Allied forces are not the only ones to whom Europe should be grateful. If it hadn't been for the Russians who defeated Germany from the east, the allied forces would not have succeeded in wiping out the Germans from the west as they did. Europe owes both the allied forces (including, but not limited to, the US army) and the Red Army the same amount of gratitude, as far as the defeat of the Nazi empire is concerned.
Of course the USSR were manoeuvring for power and self-interest rather than merely undertaking a liberation mission. We're not supposed to be grateful for what they did to the Nazi empire, because the Russians have been our favourite enemy ever since. However, America's political motives were not purely altruistic either. Politically, the US were not interested in going to war at all until Japan dragged them into it. At that point suddenly sitting and watching while the world burned was no longer an option. Shortly thereafter it developed that the Russians would, and could, oppose Hitler. That meant that eventually all of Europe would come under Russian communist domination, which would make the communist powers the largest nation on earth by far. At that point, and not a minute sooner, the US became involved in the war in Europe. It was either that or loose Europe to the Russians. From a political point of view there was only one option. Hence D-day.
Also, the US have always spent more money (billions of dollars) on war and defense than on anything else. WWII was no exception. The US have always been able to spend more than anyone else, being the largest nation with a system of free enterprise on the planet and a vast amount of natural resources. England also spent more than ever on the war effort, to such an extent that the UK ceased to be a global empire and Great Britain's economy needed the rest of the 20th century to recover.
While many Western European countries are arguably indebted to the US through the American war effort, the US have not failed to capitalize on this leverage when they needed Western Europe as a staging area during the Cold War. None of the countries where the US deployed their nuclear missiles really wanted to become a target for Russian SS-20's, but the US cried 'NATO' and 'Marshall plan' and told everyone to shut up in the interest of democracy and freedom, and the holy cause of defending it.
As far as "remaining debts" are concerned: America has never, ever, paid any international debts. In fact America is the only Western country in the 21st century that is essentially bankrupt, and has been so for many years.

GS:
"When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it."

Rebuttal:
Yes, the US did prop up France, who represented a large military force in Western Europe with much influence in their colonies and former colonies overseas. This was during the Cold War and the US needed as much military force in Western Europe on their side as they could get. As usual they expected to be welcomed as friends and saviors, without bothering to check the cultural background of the people in question, or to gauge any pro- or anti-American sentiments. As usual the locals discovered that American aid tends to come with a price tag and a lot of strings attached. As usual things did not go as the Americans expected.
Ironically the French, being propped up the Americans, in turn propped up the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, with the full knowledge and consent of US intelligence and Washington. About half a century later this is Better Not Mentioned in the White House, as president Bush Jr. is feeling very muscular and uses strong language to describe the villainy of the Iraqi and other regimes.

GS
"When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped."

Rebuttal:
Yes, the US do spend resources on relief efforts, but they do that as often as not. So do most other countries, and the US are not better or worse in that respect. The amount of money the US spend on disaster relief may be huge to you and me, but it is chump change on the scale of the American military or intelligence budget.
In turn the US have always been extremely hostile toward any foreign relief efforts that they have been offered. They have always had the attitude that they need no help and that they can take care of things themselves better than anyone else. A prime example is what happened after hurricane Katrina leveled New Orleans in the summer of 2005. While survivors of the hurricane were dying by the hundreds due to lack of water, food and medical care, Canadian relief organizations were standing ready at the airports with loaded planes but were denied permission to fly into the US and provide aid.

GS:
"The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans."

Rebuttal:
And well they should. Following WWII, George C. Marshall (who had just resigned from a very active military career as a General in the US army) outlined what would later be called the Marshall Plan. As a result the US spent fortunes to get the post-war western world back on its feet, not only for humanitarian reasons, but also because they needed Western Europe as a counterweight against the USSR. In fact Marshall specificially mentioned America's need for poliical stability in Europe as one of the arguments in favor of his plan. On the whole, the political importance of the Marshall plan so far outweighed its humanitarian aspects that the latter may almost be viewed as no more than a beneficial side effect.
Presently Western Europe became a staging area for American displays of military force. American army bases were set up in most Western European countries, and especially in the 1980's nuclear missiles were deployed throughout Western Europe, against the will of said countries. The US basically told the protesting Europeans to shut up and do as they were told, using those protective NATO treaties and Europe's debt from the Marshall Plan as leverage to enforce it.
Oh, and why was there no Marshall Plan for other war-stricken parts of the world? Could it be that the US had no political or military interests there?

GS:
"I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10?
If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes?"

Rebuttal:
First of all this is simply not true. For decades the European Airbus Industries consortium has built and sold airplanes that are well on par with, or even better than, those of the American aviation industry, both technically and commercially.
Secondly, at a time when America was still building propeller planes with piston engines, the British had developed the jet engine and the jet plane, and they (and not the US) were running the first commercial transatlantic passenger line. The British broke new ground and cleared the way for the Americans, especially Boing, who came later. At that point it became a simple case of economics, with American companies being able to throw in much more money and at the same time profit from British pioneer work. So Boing eventually won.
Before Airbus Industries came along the USSR was the only industrialized nation beside America that was sufficiently large to afford investments into an industry of that magnitude. But the Russians and their allies were not available as trade partners during the cold war, so there was never much choice. The western world flew American airplanes, while in the communist countries flew Russian ones.
And as an interesting aside, here in Holland Lockheed Industries are best remembered for what's know as the "Lockheed Affair" in which Lockheed attempted to land large orders by trying to bribe the Dutch Royal House.

GS:
"Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon?"

Rebuttal:
Because no other single country will spend that much money on a venture with little or no direct economic benefits. Other countries have instead concentrated on forms of aerospace research that pay off right away. The French Arianespace, for example, holds over 50% of the global market for commercial launches (over twice as much as the US) and generates more revenue than NASA can ever hope to. At the same time Russia has had a manned space station in orbit for more than a decade. European countries co-operate in ESA and contribute heavily to ISS.
Since the novelty of the Apollo project wore off (read: the American public stopped watching it on television) NASA has launched Skylab, which was not unsuccessful except that it failed to stay up there and after the third mission could no longer be reached because there were no more Saturn rockets. They eventually built the Space Shuttle and have been using that piece of 1970's technology well into the 21st century, and they have launched several automated deep space and planetary probes, some of which were hugely successful while others failed.
In short, all projects since the last Apollo mission have yielded more science, more commercially viable technology and more general progress than the Apollo project did. Which is one of the main reasons why the US themselves never returned to the moon. No wonder that other countries didn't see a reason to bother with it either.

GS:
"You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles."

Rebuttal:
Yes, and both Japanese and German products offer more value for money than American goods. That's what happens when you concentrate on things that perform well rather than just look bigger and flashier than anything the other kids have.
And while we're on the subject anyway, quite a bit of the technology that Americans are so proud of comes from other countries. The Wright Brothers were not the first to fly a powered aeroplane. The jet engine was not an American invention. Radio and television were not invented in the US. Rockets were not invented in the US. Neither were the steam engine, radar or nuclear fission. Get real: even beer, hamburgers and football were not invented in the US, and the Statue of Liberty was actually designed and built in France (and presented to the United States as a symbol for the abolition of slavery a few decades earlier.) So what does that leave us with, except for Coca Cola, the machine gun and the electric chair?

GS:
"You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon - not once, but several times - and safely home again."

Rebuttal:
Of course NASA did a great job, and their achievements are impressive and exciting. But they should be seen in their proper perspective.
The American space program started in 1945. At the end of WWII the US army overtook the German V1 and V2 installations at Dora/Mittelbau (built after the destruction of similar installations at Peenemünde) where concentration camp slaves were forced to build weapons of mass destruction for Hitler and died by the tens of thousands while doing so. The V2's ballistic course took it to a top altitude of 60 miles which made this German rocket the first one in space, albeit suborbital, and it flew and impacted at Mach 3 which made it the first supersonic aircraft as well. A two-stage version was under development, but as Germany's resources dwindled rapidly during the final stages of the war, the prototype was never perfected. Had Von Braun had the time, his work would have resulted in a weapon that could have reached the US and thereby would have become the first ICBM.
The mastermind behind the entire Nazi ballistic missile program was German rocket scientist Werner von Braun. Instead of trying and hanging von Braun for his war crimes along with the other Nazi henchmen, as they should have done, the US government gave him a VIP treatment and a job. They were fully aware of the fact that von Braun was an officer in the dreaded SS, of the fact that the use of slave labour to build V1 and V2 rockets was von Braun's idea, and that von Braun knew all about the conditions under which these slaves laboured and died by the thousands but couldn't care less. They were also fully aware of the mass destruction caused by the weapons created by von Braun. Yet they knowingly and willfully refrained from bringing this Nazi war criminal to justice, but employed him instead and put him to work designing and building intercontinental ballistic missiles for the US army. They also took whatever German rocket material they could find, and destroyed the rest to keep it out of Russian hands.
Thus von Braun was not only allowed but even encouraged to continue the work that had killed countless civilians during WWII, and the first rockets to take off from American soil and leave the atmosphere were German V2's. It took the US many years, plus the combined effort of their tame Nazi scientists, to build an American rocket that could do as well or better than the German weapon. On a similar note, the plane in which Chuck Yaeger became the first man to break the sound barrier was largely a combination of the British M-52 design and German V2 rocket motor technology, both with little more than trivial adaptions. In those days rocket science was entirely dominated by German science; even the jargon was German. NASA's pervasive acronyms only came to replace it much later. For example, MECO --Main Engine Cut Off-- was still called 'Brennschluss'. Americans generally call this "good old American know-how".
While America had all this foreign technology to play with, the Russians had to do it on their own, the US forces having destroyed all German technology they couldn't take with them. They still beat the US and launched the first satellite, the first manned orbital capsule and the first remote probe to drive around on the moon. Meanwhile American-made rockets, if they got off the launch pad at all, continued to explode and crash with a depressing regularity, even at a time when the first American rockets were merely intended as interncontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) for the delivery of nuclear weapons. Of course the Russians had their share of failures too, and not a few fatalities which they invariably covered up. But at least they also had some results at a time when the Americans had nothing. In fact, the US believed that the Russians lacked both the technology and the science, and that they were lying about their accomplishments.
Had it not been for Sputnik, the Americans may have muddled on indefinitely. To the rest of the world, Sputnik was the first satellite launched by Man. To America it was a wake-up call, and undeniable proof that the USSR had technology that could deliver nuclear weapons to any part of the world, including the USA - a realization that made Americans soil their pants.
So within six months after Sputnik, America's space research and development budget mushroomed from an average half billion dollars a year to more than $10.5 billion. Much of the money went to the development of the Minuteman missile project which, incidentally, also accounted for about 20% of all microchips sold in the 1960's, and thereby gave the computer industry a major boost. In 1958, Congress increased the appropriation for Minuteman from $50 to $140 million. The following year, Congress added two billion dollars to the Minuteman budget, to be spread out over the next five years.
As it was, the American public's demand for rockets that could reach Moscow, and the Dept. of Defense's need for high altitude rocket technology to provide espionage (especially through the Agena project) were the driving force behind most of America's basic rocketry R&D. This development also led to most of the research that made space exploration possible, but initially this was a side effect at best. It's entirely possible that American rocket science might not even have gotten into orbit if it hadn't been for the cold war and America's fear of Russian technology. The Russians followed up on their launch of the first satellite with the launch of the first space craft to leave the orbit of earth and pass the moon (Luna 1) and the first man in orbit (Yuri Gagarin).
Eventually the American public became outraged at being outclassed by the USSR time and again. This embarrassment finally caused the US government to splurge an unprecedented $25 billion plus on the space program. That's well over $150 billion in today's currency; the biggest sum ever spent mainly for reasons of PR. Simply nobody else could afford to match that expense, and therefore the US won the race to the moon. Once the primary objective of the Apollo project (i.e. to win the space race and show the world that the US could outsmart the USSR) had been achieved, all funds were cut, and the whole thing was abandoned when NASA ran out of Saturn V rockets. Nasa's Apollo facilities were allowed to fall into disrepair or sold for scrap, and the technological potential of their recent achievements went mostly wasted.
Now that the Cold War is over, the US can no longer justify the kind of cost and efforts that went into the space race. Even the plans for the Space Shuttle were almost rejected, but as it happened the shuttle program made it through congress by just one vote.
So going back to the moon is simply too expensive. President Bush Sr. proposed to back to the moon and then on to Mars, but these plans quietly died as soon as the first cost estimate came along. Nobody could (and can) justify the astronomically large investments required. In fact it is a legitimate question whether or not the US could even afford trips to the moon at this time. At present there are still plans for manned moon and mars bases, but given the astronomical cost of these projects it's highly unlikely they will ever materialize.
As an interesting side note, about 35 years after the Apollo project, Russian rocket technology turned out to have been superior to that of the US in several major respects. Russian reaction motors were much more powerful, and operated on high-pressure principles that American rocket scientists believed were impossible. The Russian rocket motors were so good that NASA actually requested a few models in order to find out how the Russians had done it. After they did a few test launches they bought about a hundred Russian motors.
The fact that the Russian moonshot project never panned out in the 1960's clearly had more to do with financial and political constraints than with lack of technology and know-how. Other Russian achievements were much more succesful. Take the Lunokhod series of lunar rovers, for example. They were launched in 1970-1973 and functioned brilliantly, being designed remarkably like the marsrovers that NASA launched some three decades later. In fact one cannot look at an image of Lunokhod without being strangely reminded of NASA's marsrover design.
In short, the Russians did have serious attempts going to reach the moon ahead of the US, but when they lost the race (more bacause of political pressure to rush the project than through a general lack of technology) they had to save face. Therefore they destroyed all evidence, and they denied ever having been interested in the moon. They then concentrated successfully on orbital missions and long-term presence in space. The US, on the other hand, will retire the Space Shuttle in 2010 with no alternative, at which time the International Space Station can only be reached by the oldfashioned Vostok rockets that the Russians have continued to use without more than minor glitches. Unless the Japanese and Chinese space programs continue to deliver as planned, of course, in which case the US will become a minority in space.

GS:
"You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at."

Rebuttal:
Yes. So do the British, and to a lesser extend the Germans, Italians and many others, and all for the same reason: a multi-billion media industry that thrives on scandals.

GS:
"Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here."

Rebuttal:
Ehm... Okay.... and your point is what?

GS:
"When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke."

Rebuttal:
As for France and Germany, see above: following WWII the US needed Western Europe in good shape so they could use it as a buffer against the USSR. As for railroads in India; those were built by the British and have been maintained by the British and Indians ever since. (Although not very well; the Indian railroads are underfunded and in bad repair, and personnel is badly trained.) Today most of India's extensive railroad structure still dates from the 19th century, although the old British steam locomotives have mostly been replaced by diesel engines. Exactly how did you say the US rebuilt Indian railroads?

GS:
"I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble."

Rebuttal:
And I can name you 5000 times when other countries did the same, and 5000 times when America refrained from doing so. So your point is what, exactly?
And as we're on the subject anyway: have you compared the amount of American money spent yearly on defense with what the entire Third World can afford to spend yearly on food, water and medical care?

GS:
"Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake."

Rebuttal:
As a matter of fact, many European countries did offer relief aid to the US on several occasions and in various forms, including the San Francisco earthquake. These offers were received with a remarkable lack of enthusiasm. The few foreign relief workers who did make it into the US were tolerated rather than welcomed, the general sentiment in the US being that American rescue workers could, and rather would, handle the situation themselves. The US did neither want nor appreciate any relief aid goods. Their attitude was as it has always been: "We can handle it ourselves much better than non-Americans can ever hope to."

GS:
"Our neighbors have faced it alone,"

Rebuttal:
True. Could that have something to do with their isolationist attitude? The US consider all other countries their potential enemies and treat them with distrust and hostility. Among the American people similar sentiments are cultivated, and the man in the street often believes that this 'either us or them' situation is a real one rather than a perceived one.
With US foreign politics and their xenophobic sentiments in mind, the following quote should be more than somewhat unsettling:

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

These words were spoken by Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshall an Hitler's chief of the German Luftwaffe, to Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist, during the Neuremberg trials. Could it be that the American attitudes toward their neigbours strike a chilling note of recognition in many of us?

GS:
"and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those."

Rebuttal:
While gloating over anyone's trouble is always to be frowned upon, it is generally felt that America has caused most of its own problems through isolationism, arrogance, aggression, distrust, and placing self-interest before moral values. Unfortunately the US never seem to learn from experience, so many countries feel that the US get exactly what they've been asking for all along.

GS:
"Stand proud, America!"

Rebuttal:
Proud? There are many things the US can be proud of... but there are just as many, perhaps more, things that any civilized country should be ashamed of. Generally, their attitude has been: "If you want it, take it. If that's illegal, cover it up. Drown any moral problems in hypocrisy. Ignore the rest, do whatever you want, and tell the world how proud you are to be American."

Is that something to be proud of? Consider:

• During the past century, America (a country where the theme of the the national anthem is warfare!) has been involved in a major war on foreign soil at least once every twenty years, either declared or undeclared, for the most spurious of reasons. Ostenstibly the idea is to spread freedom, democracy, a high standard of living and other Good Things throughout the world, but in practice these good intentions rarely seem to get pas the stage of bombing someone else's country. If it gets beyond that point at all, it usually ends in the US trying to ram freedom down the "liberated" peoples' throats at gunpoint, such as in Iraq, with predictable results.
  No, usually wars have been started out of fear that something might become a threat to the American nation or the American way of life someday, such as Communism or Islam fundamentalism. Anger and a bruised ego, e.g. after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, have also been sufficient cause for multiple wars. And of course wars have always been good for American industry, and a chance for the US army to develop and test technology under actual combat conditions. The huge commercial and entertainment value of live warfare on television or the merchandising opportunities created by a population rallying tot the Good Cause shouldn't be ignored either. And then there's the usefulness of a war for politicians who want to appear strong and capable. For generations the American presidents have been playing a game of tag, pinning financial mismanagement on the offices of their successors. As a result, the US are up to their ears in hock. In such a situation the easiest way to prop up a failing economy is to provoke a war. Look at the history of the US since 1945: it works.
  
  
• In the aftermath of World War II the US gave refuge to many Nazi scientists (the infamous "Paperclip Project"). This kept many war criminals out of the hands of justice (and the hangman, in several cases) in return for their cooperation in letting the US catch up with German scientific and technological know-how. This included aircraft jet propulsion designer Alexander Lippisch who gave the US their first experimental and later military jet planes. It included Werner von Braun, responsible for the countless deaths caused by the construction and use of the V1 and V2 weapons of mass destructions, and later hailed as NASA's Wunderkind during the 1950's and 1960's. It also included several so-called "concentration camp doctors" who had performed horrible experiments on human beings. While the US would not conduct such gruesome experiments themselves, they were very eager to obtain the results of this "research".
  Thus many ardent and committed Nazi's, including those guilty of mass murder, genocide, mass destruction and wholesale slaughter, escaped justice and even had their files rewritten to make it "legal" for them to immigrate into the US. Presently law and justice were sold out in an even more shameful way in Japan, where Japanese war criminals who had been experimenting with biological and chemical weapons on civilians and prisoners of war received immunity en masse in return for their research data. Nor did the US limit themselves to unscrupled scientists: many former members of Hitler's secret police, for example, found their way into the Gehlen Organization, which operated under CIA supervision and was later absorbed into the CIA itself.
  
  
• Most Americans don't have the faintest idea what goes on outside their own borders. Not only can't they look at the world from any other than their own American perspective, they don't even realize that other perspectives may indeed exist. This is not surprising, since they live on a continent where everyone else is an American too, with the same currency, the same language, the same religion and more or less the same values and prejudices. Mexicans don't count, and America keeps them out with a huge fence. Canadians are enough like Americans in many respects that most Americans tend to miss the most important differences completely. (These being that Canadians are generally more decent, better educated, more level-headed and have more common sense.) Amusingly enough, most Americans consider other countries cesspools of crime, drugs and fraud while statistics prove that often the opposite is true. The majority of Americans has rather vague notions at best about what the world is like outside their own borders, and they often base their ideas on assumptions and misconceptions that are so far off the mark that it would be funny if the matter wasn't so serious.
  This cultural deficiency keeps Americans from understanding even the most elementary basics of other cultures. They are appallingly naïve, and they unthinkingly assume that all the world will think like Americans. They consider their own cultural values, points of view and prejudices to be universal, or at least the only sensible way to go. They instinctively, perhaps subconsciously, expect other countries and people to be "the same, only different".
  They also apply this principle to the countries they do trade with, which is why Disneyland Europe (near Paris) initially failed: it had not been anticipated that the European public does not behave and spend like the American public does. It's also true for the countries they invade, or exploit in covert operations. Let's face it: the CIA consists of about 20,000 American government bureaucrats who live in suburubs around Washington DC, and about 2,000 agents who's job it is to covertly persuade foreign nationals to serve the interests of the US rather than those of their own countries. These experts on foreign cultures must then advise the US government on how assess foreign threats and how to proceed in dealing with same.
  That is one of the main reasons why America sets out to 'liberate' or 'defend' countries like South Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq, only to be met by the local population with sticks and stones rather than to be welcomed as a liberator. To begin with, American troops have generally been trained to seek safety in intimidating and aggressive behaviour. While this may be to their tactical advantage, it also terrorizes the local civilian population. On top of this comes the US soldiers' basic lack of understanding of the culture they've been dropped into, which only makes them even more jumpy, heavy-handed and trigger-happy. Of course that only further antagonizes people against them, which makes them feel more threatened. As a result, US soldiers have generated nothing but hate and resentment on foreign soil since World War II.
  If all this wasn't bad enough, America also tends to overthrow existing political systems without having a clue as to what to do next. They expect the 'liberated' people to embrace the American way of life, values and attitudes when given half a chance. Upon discovering that this isn't going to happen --again-- they withdraw, leaving a bigger mess behind than they started out with. At best they leave a power vacuum waiting to be filled by a new aggressor, and at worst they leave anarchy. They always leave another outraged and often armed mob at their backs, and as soon they return to American soil they beef up their home defenses and make their foreign policies more aggressive, because so many people out there are hostile to the US. Uh-huh.
  
  
• Most Americans are ignorant about what goes on inside their own borders, too. They even believe they're living in a democracy. They're not; the United States are actually a republic. A true, direct democracy would allow citizens to vote on legislation and do away with senators and congress people. Many Americans also believe they live in the most technologically advanced nation in the world. They don't. Many European and Asian countries easily outclass the US in internet bandwidth and computer usage; Canada leads the field in fuel technology; Japan is way ahead in robotics and automation; Finland is doing brilliantly in digital communication technologies; India graduates ten times as many top-notch engineers as America. Many Americans feel that America is a vital factor in preserving peace, stability, safety and freedom in the world. This belief is also false; American interference has caused a lot of misery, suffering and death in other countries that could have been avoided if the US had just minded their own business.
  
  
• The American ignorance about other people and countries combined with the knowledge that America has caused a lot of antipathy in the world, has created an atmosphere of distrustfulness and hyper-vigilance. Americans are constantly afraid of the enemies they've made, and lately this fear has an uncomfortable ring of paranoia and xenophobia to it. Foreigners are automatically treated as potential enemies, armed forces tend to overreact, and the most trivial of things can be declared to be vital to US security and subsequently be blown out of proportion, while other threats tend to be ignored. Airline security is a good example. The US demand that other countries hand over their passenger lists and they peremptorily order planes to be grounded, only to discover that their suspected terrorist is a five year old child. Nail clippers are confiscated, in spite of the fact that you need to poke them into someone's eye in order to hurt them with it, but a sharp H6 pencil is no problem. In spite of all this buttock-clenching "vigilance" some moron managed to get into the air with explosives in his shoes, and suddenly all airline passengers found their shoes being subjected to intense scrutiny. One of these days some wannabee terrorist will try to board an airplane with a stick of dynamite up his backside, and what will the boarding procedure look like then? It won't be pretty. But the point here is, obviously, that the American tendency to overreact and concentrate on details to the point of insanity, while ignoring all other obvious risks, is one of world's biggest jokes these days. They're scared of shadows, but the next big terrorist attack will be just as simple as the 9/11 disaster was. In the meantime US security officials are so panicky that many large cities in Europe now seriously consider requesting the US embassies to relocate.
  
  
• American international politics do not tolerate criticism. Many countries (e.g. France and Germany) were critical of the second Gulf War, and they were treated extremely hostile by the US. The American attitude that anyone who is not with them is against them has not made too many friends. At the same time it's painfully obvious that the second Gulf War was only about money. Most of the backers who supported George W. Bush Jr. during his election are captains of industry, and their circle of friends include oil barons, steel consortiums, and chemical corporations. These industries benefit most from war, and as soon as Bush Jr. had been inaugurated war was only a matter of time. In fact the second Gulf War was planned long before the 9/11 terrorist attacks gave Bush Jr. a convenient excuse to go to war. Seen in this light it hardly comes as a surprise that Bush Jr. started 2004 with a $95 billion budget to finance his re-election, the biggest budget ever. But to point this out is Not Done in the US, since it would be unpatriotic.
  
  
• While most Americans know for a fact that a blue-eyed American farm boy can whip any three foreign enemy soldiers, the truth is that America's combat track record features many capital blunders. Japanese submarines were spotted twice and Japanese airplanes had appeared on radar hours before the attack on Pearl Harbour, after months of intelligence indicating that hostilities were imminent. Nobody took it seriously. American pilots in Viet Nam had strict orders to destroy the wrong targets and ignore the right ones, while ground troops had no idea what they were getting into. Nobody realized this in time. The CIA knew that something major was going to happen months before the first airliner crashed into the World Trade Center. Nobody saw a reason to do anything about it. And there's much more-- the list is long and depressing.
  
  
• Between fighting wars on foreign soil, America has been involved in subversive and illegal secret operations intended to manipulate, destabilize and even overthrow political structures and entire governments whenever that happened to be in America's interest. Some of these illegal operations were done openly, such as the use of Navy SEALs and other US armed forces to overthrow Noriega when he threatened to cut the US off from the strategically important Panama canal. Many other operations were done covertly. For this purpose the CIA armed, trained, set up and otherwise used local underground organisations in foreign sovereign countries to do their dirty work for them. Of course this happened with the usual American clumsiness, which led to situations that would be laughable if they weren't so serious. For example they provided monitary support in Afghanistan during the war against Russia, but their money went straight to Islamic extremists, who boughts Stinger missiles with it. Let me be plainer: the US helped finance and arm the Taliban regime and Usama Bin Laden.
  Whenever the political winds changed, the CIA operatives would promptly withdraw from situations like these, deny any knowledge of the operation, and leave the locals holding the bag. Having armed, trained and then abandoned (sometimes to the point of betrayal) many of the more incendiary part of the world whenever it was to their own advantage, should the US be surprised at the repercussions of their own methods and the retaliations that followed?
  America has been aware of, willfully tolerated, and co-operated with many unlawful operations in other countries, including but not limited to coups, ethnic cleansing, political murders and war. For example, Washington knew about Soharto's plans for wholesale slaughter in Indonesia when he came to power in 1965, but wanted to see him in power because of his anti-communist sentiments, so he was allowed to go ahead and even received covert support. The US likewise supported Pinochet's coup in Chile. The US caused unnumbered civilian casualties during unlawful attacks on Cambodia. The US supported the Shah of Iran, who oppressed, murdered and tortured civilians in ways that was just as bad, albeit on a slightly lesser scale, as those of Saddam Hussain. They did so to allow the CIA to set up listing posts in the north of Iran, right on Russia's doorstep. Then, when the political winds turned and the Shah was replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran had become an embarrassment and the US supported the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein for 20 years. They even tolerated the extermination of Iraqi civilians with chemical weapons. The US secretly backed, trained and armed Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries that Bush Jr. now calls 'the axis of evil'. Barring a few exceptins, the US have backed, propped up and assisted most of the regimes they now agitate against. And in the aftermath of the second Gulf War, US troops are found to torture and kill their political prisoners and prisoners of war with the full consent of the Pentagon and the White House, which makes the US just as bad in that respect as the regimes they have deposed.
  The CIA never exactly received a mandate for political assassination from the US government, but this has not stopped them. Also there is no rule against backing local rebels (such as the North-Afghanistan resistance) to take out troublesome politicians. America openly allows Israel to develop nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction, to occupy Palestine territory and to oppress, torture and kill Palestine civilians, whom the Israeli's shoot with tanks and rockets. The Palestinians, who have neither tanks nor an army and therefore resort to guerrilla tactics, are of course referred to as "terrorists". The fact that Israel possesses both nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction is of course carefully overlooked, as is their use of artillery, rockets and explosives against Palestine civilian targets to assassinate political figures without any regard for collateral damage or civilian casualties. (How exactly does this differ from terrorism?) The El-Al Boing that crashed in Amsterdam in 1992 carried ingredients for Sarin nerve gas, but after using supposed weapons of mass destruction as an excuse for going to war with Iraq, the US now ignores Israel. Nor is this anything new; when Israel executed over a thousand Egyptian POWs during the war against Egypt, America knew but carefully kept quiet. After decades of such practices, the US now feel that too many armed fanatics out there hate America, so that American actions against these groups is an act of self-defense and therefore justified. The fact that most of this antipathy against America is a direct result of American foreign policy is of course never mentioned. America's message to foreign dictators and the so-called 'rogue countries' is clear: as long as they serve American interests, America won't ask embarrassing questions about genocide, weapons of mass destruction, or the violation of human rights.
  
  
• America is the only country that has found it necessary to oppose international legislation against war crimes. America is the only country that has found it necessary to block the efforts of an international court for war crimes, and has even passed legislation that if ever an American will be on trial for war crimes, the US army may invade the country where the court is in session. They also force their minor trade partners to go along with this. This makes the US the only country that has de facto made it legal for their own people to commit war crimes in other countries.
  
  
• America is the only country in the 21st century to hold political prisoners captive without trial in concentration camps at Guantanamo Bay, an out-of-the-way and well-shielded US naval base on the island of Cuba that they have kept inaccessible since the Cuba crisis some 40 years ago. Here they systematically isolate, intimidate, humilitate, mentally and physically torture, and otherwise treat political and military prisoners in clear violation of any human rights treaty including the Geneva Convention. In Iraq the US military have also tortured, humiliated and murdered prisoners, systematically violated their basic human rights, and otherwise committed atrocities that were little better than those of the Iraqi regime they just ousted. Seen in that light it's not surprising that the US keeps pressuring the UN to grant them lasting indemnity from war crimes. This also reveals that America's outcry against the human rights violations committed by their enemies are nothing but blatant hypocrisy.
  
  
• America is the only country in the 21st century to contemplate nuclear first-strike actions against countries that don't have nuclear weapons themselves. This amounts to the preventive nuking of any country that can't become a nuclear threat to the US in the first place, for no other reason than that America feels this is the safest thing for America to do. Preventive destruction of other countries as a means to enhance national security is considered justifiable in very few countries, all of which have been officially dubbed "evil" by the American government, notwithstanding the fact that the US themselves have put them on the same moral level.
  
  
• American foreign policy shows arrogance and contempt for international law and for the UN, as well as a towering hypocrisy. They ignore international law and commence hostilities, either openly or covertly, whenever that happens to be in America's political or economical interest. While they do this they claim to be the guardians of world peace, global safety and the common good. America either honestly believes that American leadership makes the world a better place, or they just pretend while knowing better. Naivety or hypocrisy? America called the UN powerless and indecisive when the UN decided that without any evidence of weapons for mass destruction there was no justification for war. America ignored international law and bombed and invaded Iraq anyway, overthrew the Iraqi regime, and subsequently failed to produce any shred of hard evidence that would have justified the second gulf war. And the US should know what weapons of mass destruction look like, because they own them in abundance; both nuclear, chemical and biological. America has also reviled the Iraqi regime for spreading photos and footage of dead American soldiers and complained that this violated the Geneva Convention. A few months later the US spread footage of the bullet-riddled corpses of Hussein's sons for exactly the same purpose (propaganda) but this time without mentioning the Geneva Convention at all. Only a few months later footage leaked out that proved that Iraqi prisoners of war were being interrogated under torture and humiliation, in clear violation of the Geneva Convention or anything even remotely resembling human rights. In other words, these practices were not far, if at all, above those perpetuated by the regime of Saddam Hussein. These violations of the Geneva Convention and basic human rights occurred, by the way, with full knowledge and approval of the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI and the White House. This practice illustrates the towering hypocrisy of the American government and their so-called moral outrage and the warfare it has generated.
  
  
• While politics are rarely pretty, those of the US are exceptionally full of dual standards. Bill Clinton lied about sex and faced impeachment. George W. Bush Jr. lied about weapons of mass destruction to justify a war with the sole purpose of overthrowing a foreign government in clear violation of international law, and faced re-election.
  
  
• Americans make up 4% of the world's population but go through 25% of the world's non-renewable resources. Their part in global environmental pollution is roughly on par with that, and they continue to sabotage any international effort to reduce pollution rather than to try and reduce their own harmful emissions. Americans often confuse this wastefulness with being the greatest nation on earth having the biggest, most successful economy.
  Incidentally, the American economy and standards of living are mainly based on the enormous amount of natural resources that the American continent had to offer to the settlers who moved in. These American forefathers committed genocicde to acquire those resources, and from that point on the American nation had it made. Even today the American oil, ore and mineral reserves make the US largely independent of the rest of the world. So what do the Americans do? They go through most of the content's natural resources like locusts. They confuse the continent's wealth with the superiority of the people who consume it, and so they now think they're the smartest people on the planet. How's that again?
  
  
• While not as rabidly fanatical as some Islamic countries, the US do not separate politics from religion themselves. Presidents of "God's Own Country" must at least in name be practicing Christians in order to qualify for election, and they are sworn in upon the Holy Bible. Conservative politicians seize every opportunity to base law upon their own Christian beliefs, which is essentially fundamentalism, and the American general lack of tolerance against other belief systems is almost medieval.
  
  
• Last but not least: Americans know nothing about beer. Brands like Budweiser are hugely popular, in spite of the fact that the stuff both looks and tastes exactly the same before and after having passed through the human body.
  
  

Finally here are a few scary movies:

• Keeping America Scared (Quicktime, 5MB)
• What Barry Says (Quicktime, 26MB)

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