OUR FRIENDS

Prince Metternich by Thomas Lawrence

Americans cling to their assumed naivete about the world outside our borders, while their government maintains a foreign policy in support of ruthless religiosity and inequality around the globe. American foreign policy is not wise or scientific. It is based on the same balance-of-power strategies of Metternich's 19th century Austrian Empire. And it simply fails nearly every time for everyone except American business interests.

The method of concealing this is mass distraction. American media has a long history of colluding in the sanitizing of American brutality abroad. When American brutality has been matched by the uprising of extremists in the Muslim world, the media has focused on select madmen as the cause. We need to look at our own American Exceptionalism as well, before we sanctimoniously preach "peace" to others.