[Ryzorian]

There isn't any stratosphere I need recede from. The US is not a war mongering imperialist. It does do things it thinks are in it's national interests, wether rightly or wrongly I suppose can be debated.

Russia didn't balance anything after ww2, they didn't test fire a nuke until 1949, the US had 4 years they could have forced Russia's surrendor via a nuke to Moscow and didn't. How do you think Stalin would have reacted to Russia's lack of that ablity, had he been president of the US at the time?...

After ww2 The US had pretty much complete controle of the Pacific basin and dominated politics in Europe, they could have dictated how the UN was crafted or even if a UN would exist. They could have forced Japan and Germany to become states, they could have created a colony out of China.
They could have claimed the European colonies of the middle east as thier own. Yet they did not.

The US mostly bumbles along like the Bipolar giant it is.
That's what none of you are seeing, sure the US does alot of inadvertant damage, entire nations will never forgot the devestation brought apon them by America's mistaken perceptions. That doesn't mean the US is an evil colonizer type nation because it isn't. You need to take people from history that we know were driven by that insane desire for power and realize what the USA really could be if someone like that was running it. Napolean, Hitler, Stalin, Ceaser, Attila the Hun, Kubli Khan, Pol Pot.

The USA has the potential to destroy nations with out even trying, You mentioned Lybia. 10 days of half hearted attacks has destroyed his air defense and 25% of his armor. Most of the US doesn't even care, they are more concerned about idol and what Britiny Spears is doing.

Japan was the last nation to truely anger the US nation as a whole, by that I mean all the citizens were motivated by only one thing, Japan's destruction. The US has never been that angery about anything since. Not even 911 kept us angery as a nation for more than a few months, perhaps some parts were and are still upset but most of us are back to watching football and whatever.

I honestly think that is what upsets so many of you, The US can be massively destructive and it does so almost in a disinterested way. The casual nature of how we approach things can be frighting by the meer fact that it seems as though we are only acting out of a form of mild curiosity and nothing more. Like a giant cat, we are only there as long as the shiny object holds it's entertainment value.