The World Without US

It's odd, but we happened to watch another unashamed propaganda film - perhaps propaganda is like buses, they arrive in clumps - we also watched a propaganda film about creationism ('Expelled'), this week.

Again, it's just Leni Riefenstahl re-make. Only somebody ignorant of history since WWII and naive to the techniques of emotional manipulation, lying by omission and logical fallacies would be persuaded by this rubbish.

Amazingly, for what claims to be a documentary, the film ends with a long clip from a post- apocalyptic science fiction film, full of scenes of destruction & weeping children - not as a reminder of what was done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and the firebombing of Tokyo), but to try to support the claim that the world needs the 'protection' of those who committed the atrocities to be safe....

I do wonder about this sort of propaganda. It can't actually be intended to persuade anybody who has a mind. I suppose that it must be, like Leni Riefenstahl's films, something to persuade those who follow the party line, but can't help having strong moral qualms, that the end justifies the means. Atrocities, massacres, assassinations and invasions are all fine, decent things to do, as long as they are done in the name of the right Fatherland.

I was a bit apprehensive about this film since it seemed to be such "one of a kind" so I had a look at their website before ordering. The trailer I saw really got my interest, the premise seemed to be so interesting and so timely for our nation. It reminded me a lot of another film, called "Why we fight?" (very popular about 2 years ago) trying to answer the same question, what is the purpose of the US meddling in the entire world? While "Why we fight" was a bit of a disappointment, this film really delivered on the promise. After the first twenty minutes you figure that the director is working an angle on the debate, but what I really liked is that he is building a really logical, coherent argument that I could follow from one end to another. And he surely supports it with footage from around the world.

I also liked the fact that it was more than an intellectual exercise. The film had some very touching personal stories that I didn't expect in a "geo-political" documentary. It made it one of those films that you still think about the second day after you saw it. As a minus, I wish the film makers also investigated some other regions also, say, South America or Africa... but I guess there is only so much time...

While rather interesting at times, the only people this movie will convince are Americans themselves.

The movie went to great lengths trying to explain that American interventionism was humanitarian based and not based on greed or colonialism. They used the example of Iraq selling more contracts to non US based firms, in fact firms that were not directly involved in the US invasion (putting aside how short sighted this argument is and how it doesn't understand world markets, all of which I will bore the people reading this to explain why that argument is faulty) can be easily rebutted: Africa. The USA keeps involving herself in the middle east but the humanitarian disasters are all in Africa and based around the Congo civil war which over 5 million people died. Why intervene in the Balkans for some 250,000 people when the biggest humanitarian nightmare is the Congo? The Rwanda genocide (a spin off of this larger civil war) claimed 800,000 lives. Srebrenica claimed 8,000 (and largely fighting age men). That's a factor of 100 in magnitude difference.

Lastly, the movie made her own achilles heel without realizing it: Taiwan. Just like the first world war was started over Serbia due to bigger powers having competing interests, so can Taiwan. With US insistence on protecting it at all costs, the world risks a thermo- nuclear war. With no such assurance, the world risks a very minor, very local conflict.

In the end, the reason the US keeps up the gigantic spending is because people don't want to be fired. Think about it. The military is now the largest employer and an effective lobbyier. Despite bases in Europe serving no purpose (whose going to invade Germany again?) we maintain them because the people paying our congressmen don't want to see their budgets cut.

This film is a breath of fresh air in the group think that grips public opinion in US and worldwide. The content is well researched, supported by facts and number of credible insiders. It explains why the isolationist policy that US practiced before world wars is not the answer and how regional conflicts left intact can explode and come back to hunt us. Film reveals for example that, despite the outcry and huge material and life sacrifices, US firms did not have preferential treatment in Iraq.

It also shows that those who stand on the side of freedom and democracy world wide expect the USA to act to protect them and those ideals. US presence is the only thing preventing North Korea from invading South, China from invading Taiwan, Arab countries from invading Kuwait, Arab countries from invading Israel, Israel from invading West Bank etc. Now that threat of USSR has abated, European public opinion on this subject is naive and inadequate. Europeans born after 1980 have no memory of cold war during which the only thing standing between Stalinism and self destructed Europe was the US. How does all this compute for those who accuse US of imperialism? Looking at some of the reviews here, it doesn't.

Fact is that we may live to see the world in which US can no longer afford this role. Perhaps Europeans will take over and keep the world stable with considerable firepower of their cynicism.

@thornsthorns: If you consider that Japan was at war with China and Russia in Early 1930s WWII did start in Asia.

First, this IS NOT a U.S. criticism film . It's just one that describes our current standing in all parts of the world and then asks, "What if we weren't there? What might occur if brought home our soldiers, sailors and airmen and closed down all these bases and outposts in all of the 90+ countries in the world?" This documentary was an quite an eye-opener for myself because I had never seen an almost fully encompassed story regarding what U.S. foreign policy have and has done; haven't done and the decisions made by multiple presidential administrations regarding our foreign policy and our sole superpower status and authority.

It also asks very many questions about our allies regarding what burden they carry or not, regarding maintaining peace and stability in the world. This is a question that each American citizen needs to understand completely. This point I cannot emphasize enough.

There are also numerous interviews from allied nations and some non-aligned nations regarding how they view us and what impact we currently make and some these interviews discuss the "What if the U.S. wasn't here?" question. These interviews are very sobering to say the least.

These are my words/opinion and are tangentially related to this film. In these last 12 years, since President George W. Bush (not his father, George H.W. Bush) and under President Barack Obama, with deficits soaring due to paying for two major wars and a number of other assisted military interventions in primarily the Middle East and North Africa and then with thousands (if not tens of thousands) Baby Boomer's retiring weekly (Full Disclosure: I'm considered a Boomer because I was born in 1964 however; I do not or ever have considered myself part of that generation and don't expect Social Security to be available to me until I'm 70 or older (if any, at all)), we are borrowing one dollar of every three dollars spend on our American Credit Card.For a detailed breakdown of our budget(s), please visit:

http://nationalpriorities.org/ - Non-political with accurate data

These are but two of the reasons why we have came to have multi-trillion annual deficits. Our total national debt is encroaching on the $20 trillion mark that will occur in the few years, unless we do these two things simultaneously: 1) Raise additional revenue and not just from personal income taxes (corporations need to bear a much larger portion) and 2) A serious reduction in spending annually in both military and entitlements. There will be hard choices for both the Democrats and Republicans to make in the next four years.