The Obama administration recently pissed off the Chinese and the Russians bad - very bad. So bad that it was the tipping point of what we see transpiring now in the Ukraine and soon to be in Southeast Asia.
This is not the Russians acting alone.
And yet, we have become like those we use to make fun of and look down upon. No one forced us into it, we did it all of our own free will, and we had a rationalization for every page we wrote in our own history book. Today, we are left as a nation lecturing others about human rights because they don’t accept homosexuals, that of course when we have a Patriot Act, FISA courts, extraordinary renditions and extraterritorial detentions, the 4th and 5th Amendments are suspended (probable cause, privacy, poison fruit- no longer matter), and we have been willing to side step our own morals and principals when a buck is involved (Hell, we supported/pushing along China’s entry into the WTO (2001) while Tienanmen square (1989) was happening)... Saudi Arabia today, Saddam, Shah, Noriega, Apartheid, the Taliban itself... Post WWII the US began to change in a very dramatic way. Whereas the US was the cause of revolutions around the world in 1776, today we help build the Saudi Arabian National Guard (which is a full time internal military force to protect the regime/royal family).
When the US talks about democracy, human rights, transparency, a rule of law, what does that mean? How do our words have any more credence than the words of the Russians or Chinese at this point? Other than having some loyalty or duty to serve this nation, besides our side paying better, how are we different today? This is a scenario not unlike the guy that says he’s a Christian, but then knowingly and unrepentantly commits horrible sins repeatedly. If he really believed, he would try to follow the law, and we as a nation don’t follow the real law anymore. There are still good people here, but when you look at our foreign or security policies, when you look at how we disregard our own Constitution, “we” have become no different than “them.”
We once had a sword in one hand, and a Bible in the other. Today we just have a sword.