We're #1! Why? Because we say so.

Once again, Eric has taken the common neoconservative argument that to expect America not to behave like an obnoxious ass on the international stage is somehow weak, softheaded and wishy-washy. No, I’m not taking the Code Pink “Make Love Not War” position. Rather, the Democrats like Obama are advocating a genuinely more workable foreign policy.

Yes, the UN needs a thorough overhauling for a number of reasons, one of them being the fact that it still behaves like the political situation is still in the 1940s, giving France a permanent seat on the Security Council when many other nations would better qualify (India, anyone?). And yes, allowing Libya to have a say on human rights is a recipe for inaction. But the UN can only become a more effective body when superpowers like the United States reinforce rather than undermine its authority. The United States, especially under the Bush administration, has taken a policy of American exceptionalism. The International War Crimes court in The Hague has authority to investigate and punish war crimes—but not if the offender is an American. Escapades at Guantanamo have made a mockery of US claims that American doesn’t practice torture.

Powers come and powers go, and it would be in the interest of the US to help mould the UN into a body which shares our commitment to freedom, international cooperation, and democracy, something that it can not be said to fully support today, judging by many of its member states.

As for the failure of diplomacy with regards to North Korea and Iran, one of the big reasons for this failure was not just intransigence by the Koreans and Iranians, but American over commitment in Iraq. The blustering stupidity that was the Bush foreign policy managed to simultaneously repel our allies while weakening our capacity for further unilateral action (a potential that is necessary to back up tough diplomacy) by plunging into the resource sinkhole that is Iraq. The problem with the neoconservative, unilateral, triumphalist approach to world affairs is that it is hypocritical, at time inhumane, and downright unsuccessful.

As for Eric taking issue with my referring to the regimes of Mao and Fidel as moderately more humane than their predecessor, what I meant by that is quite straightforward. While with hindsight, those Communist movements brought misery and oppression to their people. But in their early days, those regimes actually promised to better the lot of the common peasant, something that the pro-American dictatorships of Batista in Cuba and Chiang Kai Shek in China were not doing. Many average people joined the Communist revolutions in those countries because it promised something better than they had. The tragedy was when that promise was broken. And yes, Eric is technically correct that Communism killed more of its own people in China and Korea than fascism ever did. But this was only because the Communists had more time in power.

Not to dwell on health care and economics in Europe again, but Eric’s criticism of European healthcare systems reveals his biases yet again. It is very true that for some things, American healthcare is better, shown by the fact that, as he says, “the wealthy people of Europe and Canada come to the US for their health care.” But that’s the catch. Most people aren’t wealthy, for so everyone else except for the rich, the European system works better. If European socialized medicine is so terrible, why are so many nations in Europe enjoying longer life expectancies than Americans?

To simply say America is the greatest place on earth doesn’t make it so. Yeah, we’ve got it good. So do Canada, the UK, Australia, much of Europe, Japan…you get the point. Since Awesomeness is not a quality that can be quantified, this constant assertion sounds to me like we’re compensating for something. Maybe that nagging thought that the greatest place on earth sucks up 40% of the world’s resources with scarcely more than 10% of the population? That there isn’t enough metal, fuel, and other resources to allow the worlds population to live like an American?

To me, the incident that sums up the Republican approach to criticism of America can be found at their national convention. When the (admittedly, very very annoying) Code Pink activist tried to interrupt in the name of antiwar protest, she was shouted down by chants of USA! USA! USA!

Unfortunately, global problems can’t be simply shouted away by a chorus of flag wavers forever.