[Tuor]

Originally posted by Moni: First off are you aware that saying "patently obvious" is basically saying "obviously obvious"? Redundancy out of you is suprising! Secondly, I fail to see where Americans value their own lives over other people's in this world. Who is most willing to go into other countries and lend a hand against terrorism attacks world-wide? I don't know of any one country that can be pinpointed as the first one in line, but America does not turn a blind eye to the suffering of others through terrorism. Before the treaties preventing the execution of terrorists, was America not more than willing to go in armed and rid the world of such fear-mongers as terrorists? The Red-Cross is active on an international level when it comes to supplying needed medical attention, blood, food, and water to people all over the world who suffer from natural and terrorist based tragedies as well as in the aid of war-torn communities. This American based organization has spread the word world-wide that we are all worthy of life. Yes, we love our families and neighbors a tad more than we (are able to through lack of personal contact) love a total stranger across the ocean but that does not mean we don't care, that we hold our existence above theirs as being more important because we are "Americans". If we did, we'd be no better than those who live to terrorize the rest of the world! Just my opinion.

A point of accuracy here:
Since Vietnam and the occasion on which 17 GIs got killed and 51 were injured in a shoot out in a Somalian market the US has not been 'most willing to go into other countries and lend a hand against terrorism attacks world-wide.'

The US has however been more than willing to launch cruise missiles against terrorist targets and quite rightly so many people would say. There is a important difference between those two policies. One endangers the lives of servicemen the other does not.

The US has been willing to act in a peacekeeping capacity and invade other countries to maintain the peace (and oil supplies) but there is a difference between that and anti-terrorist operations. In anti terrorist operations your soldiers are a target every day and you will lose soldiers regularly-examples are Northern Ireland, Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Spain etc etc

The US government has repeatedly shown that the protection of its servicemen is of prime importance-even below the importance of retailiation in some cases.