Bu'Wai',we're always finding ways to intervene in other countries affairs. First we create the drug trade then we suppress the drug trade. First we send missionaries then we send troops to protect them for their abuses. We force other cultures to mutate into our own likeness, then, we're shocked when they do the same to us. See Africa, Japan,Iran.
Splinter groups in the US try to promote their alternate way of life by attempting to export it to other cultures. See Iran, see Margaret Mead. Maybe we need a new 12-step program for people who can't stop interfering in other Nation's affairs. See Tao, I-ching.
BTTT.......calling all kitties
When in an Athens (Greece) bed & breakfast in 2001, I was informed by the innkeeper, a Greek national, to make certain to keep the windows locked at night, as gypsies, Bosnian & Albanians were coming in drives to escape conditions resulting from Bosnia, would climb through the window, and rob us at the very least. Also, he mentioned that the largest business by far in Sarajevo had become heroin trafficking. Apparently, Greek state police were being murdered near the northern borders.
Maybe things have quieted a little by now.
For what it's worth, I agree with you on this sentiment. Although, it will probably get you (hell, maybe even me) banned from here.
From George Washington's farewell address:
"It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them."
"Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them) conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard."