> most of the United States efforts are designed to use persuasion counter radical movements Reminds me of an interview with Chomsky where he talks about inter

> most of the United States efforts are designed to use persuasion counter radical movements Reminds me of an interview with Chomsky where he talks about internal US policy: > But there was a more serious and considered answer given by the National Security Council, the highest planning agency. They pointed out that there's a perception in the Arab world that the United States supports status quo regimes which, of course, are brutal and oppressive, and does so in order to secure its own interests in obtaining oil, and then they said, well, it's hard to counter this perception because it's correct. They said it's natural for the United States to link itself up with the status quo regimes and try to sustain them and to pursue its interest in obtaining oil. So the end result is that there's a campaign of hatred against us among the people who we're basically robbing and on whom we're imposing harsh, brutal, repressive and corrupt regimes, and it's pretty difficult to counter that campaign. The notion that the US actively fights corrupt, despotic regimes and supports radical movements for democracy doesn't rhyme with US history of the past few hundred years. Look at support for Cuban Batista, or support for Chilean Pinochet, support for Iraqi Hussein, for Indonesian Suharto, Spanish Franco, Iranian Mohammed Reza etc. The list is very long. Anyway I don't want to get into too much of a political discussion. But this notion that US foreign policy (or any country's foreign policy for that matter, by the way) is dictated by good will, trying to curb radical movements that sweep away freedom, rather than geopolitics, is clearly missing something. US has practiced realpolitik for a long time now, first under the guise of fighting ideologically different communists, now under the guise of fighting ideologically different islamic extremists. It's simply the enemy of the week now, the product of the whole neoliberal clash-of-civilizations movement. The real motivation has always been geopolitics. The US isn't unique in this by the way, it's just easy to pick out as it's been the most successful at this the past 200 years and therefore it has the most stories of supporting crap regimes for its own good will.