I imagine that you probably care more than the average American. But saying there’s room for improvement, while the USA has the largest military presence in the world, and uses it to bully everyone else, is quite frightening for the non-West.
> Vietnam and Iraq wars
It’s exactly these (older) examples which I am talking about. The West continues to fuel atrocities in the Middle East on literally a daily basis:
He is not more outspoken than “other Americans”. It’s a common sentiment for our past mistakes. Why? Because we don’t hide from them and pretend they didn’t happen. Our mistakes are recorded in literature even school textbooks, TV shows, and movies for all to see. Why? So there’s a much higher chance that we don’t repeat our mistakes, and we can be proactive at fixing issues that arise from them. This is a key feature of a democracy, though there are exceptions like Japan.
I think mainland Chinese people have a hard time separating the US government from the US population because of the forced conformity that the CCP demands of them, or they would realize that a large contingent of the US population on both political spectrums has wanted to pull back our military presence for a long time now. The US population and the US government are a lot less aligned than you think.
For the record, I’m a Chinese American so I’m not ignorant of what’s going on in mainland China.
For the record, I mentioned Vietnam and Iraq not in the context of the present day, but because a significant proportion of Americans were very outspoken about those wars as they were happening.
You're right, it's harder to remain actively informed about the day-to-day military action that accumulates into something awful. Even when we know about it, our political system doesn't give enough opportunities to give fine-grained feedback about specific issues. Usually the national conversation is dominated by culture war issues, and I can't help but feel that it's an intentional distraction so the public will forget that we're plundering the middle east etc..
But at least I am free to voice my opinion, and to bother all my friends and family about geopolitics when given the opportunity.
I imagine that you probably care more than the average American. But saying there’s room for improvement, while the USA has the largest military presence in the world, and uses it to bully everyone else, is quite frightening for the non-West.
> Vietnam and Iraq wars
It’s exactly these (older) examples which I am talking about. The West continues to fuel atrocities in the Middle East on literally a daily basis:
- Syria: “CIA sold arms to Syrian rebel groups” - https://www.georgetownjournalofinternationalaffairs.org/onli...
- Afghanistan: “UN says more civilians killed by allies than insurgents” - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49165676