Blame Canada

[KnoxVegas]

The Great Lakes are part of it and yes, ice does count! Americans forget how much land mass Canada controls and exactly how much of that is covered by ice. Ever heard of a little thing called the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act http://lois.justice.gc.ca/en/I-17/245665.html?

Please read the article at the following links: http://www.american.edu/ted/water.htm.

Canada possesses 20% of the earth’s fresh water. Half of this percentage is renewable and can be accessed from rivers and lakes. While the rest of it remains untouchable in the form of snow in the north.
Water plays an important role in both Canada and the United states. Both Canadians and Americans are considered to be the world’s most consumers of water. They use 100 gallons per day per person which are mostly lost in toilets and bath drains. Moreover, their usage of drinking fresh water is three times higher than that in Europe. Water also plays an essential role in agriculture in which irrigation is considered to be the biggest user of water. It accounts for 80% of water consumption.

http://www.american.edu/ted/water.htm

http://www.elements.nb.ca/theme/water/paul/muldoon.htm

The Case Against Water Exports by Paul Muldoon

Canada is at an historic crossroads. With little effort we could simply allow increasing pressures to transform Canadian freshwater into another commodity governed by the marketplace, trade agreements and large corporations. Or, we can take a different path that embraces conservation as a national policy; a policy that would underscore a ban on water exports as well as allowing us to provide assistance to countries in truly desperate need.

The Canadian Gov't Freshwater information page:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/water/en/manage/removal/e_remove.htm

Am I still wrong?

[StrykerFSU]

Rob, I just ordered the book on Amazon for $4...thanks for the recommendation.

I find it rather interesting that the point has been brought up that we as Americans are forced to defend our nation's foreign policy. If you don't agree with them, don't defend them. I work with students from many different countries and if they bring up American foreign policy I am more than happy to ask them about their own native countries' policies. I hold French, Russians, and Chinese citizens just as intellectually responsible for explaining their home nations policies as they do me. If they want to explain to me why, for example, their governments bribed Hussein through Oil-for-Food then I am more than happy to listen.

The larger point here is that our world is getting smaller and the great masses of the world are choosing the prosperity of capitalism and democracy. No longer can some cleric in Afghanistan or Iran control information and keep their people living in the Dark Ages. Globalization is here to stay and everyone on the planet will benefit. It has become fashionable to bash American culture but the fact remains that a common refrain is ringing out from around the connected world, "I want my MTV!"

[laxfan25]

Is this what was meant to be said?

The thing I find so fascinating is the length of memory and instilled thoughts from different parts of the world. The people of Iran don't forget that we ousted the Shah,

I thought we actually helped oust an elected prime minister in 1953 and installed the Shah. Then the Iranians booted him in 1979. Are you telling me that the US took him out in 1979? The Iranians were so angry still that they held the US embassy staff hostages to make sure the US would not try to install another stooge, (so they could have one of their own. (stooges.))

You are correct. The overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh was conducted with the assistance of British and US intelligency agencies.

Mohammed Mossadegh was the democratically elected prime minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953. He was removed from power by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, and pro-monarchy forces in a complex coup led by British and US intelligence agencies

Replaced by our good friend - Shah Reza Pahlavi.

This was a period when the CIA was very actively conducting its own foreign policy program. A few years later -

Patrice Émery Lumumba was an African anti-colonial leader and the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo after he helped to win its independence from Belgium in June 1960. Only ten weeks later, Lumumba's government was deposed in a coup during the Congo Crisis. He was subsequently imprisoned and assassinated under controversial circumstances in January 1961. Patrice Lumumba continues to serve as a significant inspirational figure in the Congo as well as throughout Africa.

...there had previously been U.S. and Belgian plots to kill Lumumba. Obviously either they failed or they were abandoned. Among them was a CIA sponsored attempt to poison him, after U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower apparently ordered the CIA to eliminate Lumumba. CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb was a key person in this by devising a poison resembling toothpaste. However, the plan is said to have failed because the local CIA Station Chief, Larry Devlin, had a conscience issue and did not go forward.

His replacement? Colonel Joseph Mobutu, who would later gain infamy as dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

Salvador Allende was President of Chile from November 1970 until his removal from power and death on September 11th, 1973. He was the first democratically elected Marxist president in the world. Allende's increasingly bold socialist policies (partly in response to pressure from some of the more radical members within his coalition), combined with his close contacts with Cuba, heightened fears in Washington. The Nixon administration began exerting economic pressure on Chile via multilateral organizations, and continued to back Allende's opponents in the Chilean Congress. Almost immediately after his election, Nixon directed CIA and U.S. State Department officials to "put pressure" on Allende's government.

His replacement, our good friend Augusto Pinochet.

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the President of Iraq from 1979 until April 9, 2003, when he was deposed in the United States-led invasion of Iraq. In 1958, a year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq. The Ba'athists opposed the new government, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted United States-backed plot to assassinate Prime Minister Qassim. He was sentenced to death in absentia. Saddam studied law at the Cairo University during his exile. Army officers with ties to the Ba'ath Party overthrew Qassim in a coup in 1963. However, the new government was torn by factionalism. Saddam returned to Iraq, but was imprisoned in 1964. He escaped prison in 1967 and quickly came to be a leading member of the party. Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, Saddam, and others overthrew Abdul Rahman Arif in the bloodless coup of 1968, again with the backing of the CIA. Saddam became the real strongman, and was soon named deputy to the President al-Bakr. According to biographers, Saddam never forgot the tensions within the first Ba'athist government, which informed his measures to promote Ba'ath party unity as well as his ruthless resolve to maintain power and programs to ensure social stability."

You can also add in alleged plots against Castro, one of which was to feed him some type of poison that would make his beard fall out, thus causing him to "lose face" with the populace.

There was a prolonged period where US foreign policy was based on the belief that it was better to have a dictator in control (who could be easily influenced with payoffs) than to have a democratic government, which would be much tougher to control and influence. We were quite happy to have Saddam in power when Iraq was engaged in battle with Iran, but for some reason he fell out of favor with his US backers.

Now, we've turned 180 degrees, with our espoused mission the spread of democracy and "freedom" throughout the world. A noble goal, but the results can be equally messy. The current Iranian president was democratically elected. Hamas won the election in Gaza, but we don't seem particularly pleased with those results. Why not a public campaign for free elections in Saudi Arabia? That's one of the most undemocratic countries on earth, with no rights for women at all. What if free elections were held today in Egypt? Muslim Brotherhood would do well. Pakistan? Guaranteed fundamental Islamist state, same as Saudi Arabia. Next Lebanese election? Big gains for Hezbollah. Be careful what we wish for, we might not always like the results. Meddling in other country's affairs, whether it is back channel through the CIA, or outright invasions, seems to generate a nasty backlash against the US. It's a big, complex world out there, and to think that we can control its destiny is a fool's errand. Why not focus on making our country the best it can be - so that it again becomes a beacon to the rest of the world, and our citizens become the beneficiaries of our treasure. What possible good could we have done at home with the HALF TRILLION dollars we will eventually end up spending in Iraq?

I'm not advocating a head-in-the-sand approach. I realize there are groups out there that mean us harm, and we need to track them down and neutralize them. But they are not nation-states, and our current foreign policy does nothing but breed increasing contempt among moderates and people that used to support us. There's got to be a better way than "stay the course". Those that don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

[Zeuslax]

Solid post laxfan25! I still wonder what the world would look like and how we (the US) would be perceived if we would have put all of our focus into Afganistan: money, troops, international assistance, etc.......