On Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:31:18 -0400, John VanSickle wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:52:32 -0400, Warp wrote:
>> 
>>>   Call me nationalistic or whatever you want, but IMO the main
>>> responsibility of a government is to protect its own people.
>> 
>> You don't protect the people of a nation by pissing off the rest of the
>> world, though.
> 
> And you don't protect them by letting your policies be limited by the
> opinions foreigners have about those policies.

Sure, but it's not about the opinions.  It's about treating people with 
respect.  And BTW, it's not just foreigners who have these opinions about 
the policies.  I live in the US, and I think it's total bullshit.

Why?  Because the terrorists know what our measures are.  They know 
they're going to need a better fake ID to get into the country.  They 
know that instead of recruiting middle-eastern looking people, they need 
to recruit people who look like me (average middle aged white guy).

All measures like this do is keep the stupid terrorists out.  But stupid 
terrorists do things like set the time on their bomb vest wrong and blow 
themselves up before they leave the workshop.

It does us absolutely no good to put measures in place that depend on the 
people we're trying to prevent entering the country being total idiots.

> Let's be frank.  Every nation on the planet that is run by anyone with
> any brains at all makes protection of its own interests the first
> priority of its foreign policy.  The French government does what it
> thinks is best for France, and if the Americans don't like it, the
> French really don't care.  Same goes for the Spaniards with regard to
> Spain, the British with regard to the UK, the Germans with regard to
> Germany, the Russians with regard to Russia, and so on.

Yes, but the thing that most governments miss is that protection of one's 
own interests DOES include not pissing off other countries.  "Why do they 
hate us?"  Because we're IN the middle east.  So what's our solution?  
SEND MORE TROOPS.  Duh, what kind of stupid foreign policy decision is 
that?

> The only real difference is that much of the world has this notion that
> the US, and another nation I will not name here, are somehow not
> entitled to place their own interests first, but must, for reasons that
> never bear close scrutiny, place other nations first.

As I said, there's a difference between placing your interests first 
without regard to the effect it has on other parts of the world, putting 
your interests first but protecting relations with your allies, and 
putting measures in place that actually work and don't *depend* on "the 
enemy" being as stupid as a potted plant.

"Oh, if I want to fly in from Europe without a visa, I need to register 
on a website.  I guess I'll get a visa from a non-European country, fly 
in to Mexico or Canada, and find a place to cross the border.  Or maybe 
I'll go to Haiti and hop a boat there with a bunch of immigrants - I may 
not make it, but there will be plenty after me and one boat is bound to 
get through."

Jim

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