It's not just Muslim fundamentalists. History is riddled with megalomaniacal leaders and parties that kill indiscriminately.
Also, I was not avoiding "telling the whole story." My point was to indicate that we are not alone in losing huge numbers of people. 100,000 people starving to death in one year is a lot of people. Of Sudanese Christians, as many as 2+ million have been killed, and many enslaved. They do starve due to politics, and fanacitism on both sides, but I did not imply U.S. involvement. As far as I know, there is none in this case, but I could certainly be wrong.
Nic, what are you talking about? There is a huge difference between providing humanitarian aid that is requested and going into someone else country and helping overthrow their governments in order to maneuver some shady character into power that you think will be easy to manipulate for economic gain (and then getting all bent out of shape when he doesn't do what you want, and sending in American soldiers to die fighting that person).
I resent those poor decisions when it costs people their lives.
I believe Bin Laden to be another one of these cases. I do not think the U.S. should have supported him, but it did, because it didn't want Russia to win (there is a recent article in the LA Times about this - also, if you speak French, there are some interesting articles in the French Press). Guess what, once again, the guy turns out is a nut job.
For the other folks, by no means do I think we are unique. In the British press, there was a note referring to the U.S. that said, "a bully with a bloody nose is still a bully." or something to that effect. Much of the world sees us that way. But, I think it is a little ridiculous for any former colonial power to throw stones at the U.S. Current concerns exist as well - take a look at India, or what Shell oil did to the Ogoni in Nigeria, with the help of the Nigerian dictator of course; or, what the Togolese think about what the French have done to them.
And, there are plenty of other countries that are doing terrible things to their people, without the help of any of the superpowers.
But, I still think that when the grieving subsides, we need to take a good hard look at ourselves and figure out what we want for our future.
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