The Source Of America's Power

Ymarsakar writes:

America’s power comes from our ability to harness the good from both our allies and our enemies, to protect those who cannot protect themselves, and to extinguish the evil in men’s souls.

Not bad, eh?

I remember when I was in sixth grade, living in the country in Japan. It was 1961, just 16 years after Japan’s surrender. I was riding a bus and an old woman facing me across the aisle (the seats faced sideways) glared at me intently and long with dripping hatred. Obviously, she had lost much in the war and still blamed the Americans for that loss. I had lived in Japan several years by then and had never experienced anything remotely approaching her hatred.

Every other Japanese, it seemed to me, sensed that it was right that their country lost the war. I always felt this was simply because we did so much to rebuild the country after the war, but I think it was really because we removed the evil that had lived in their souls when they were under control of their fascist pre-war and wartime government.

Related Tags: Foreign policy, War on terror