Why is it that America always gets involved with over sea situations?

Question

Why does America always get itself involved with over sea situations. Is it to show our power amoung the other nations, or to make others think we are kind and are always willing to give a welcome hand? 10 points to the answer i think completely answerd the insides and outs of my question.

Answer 1

It is to fund excesses by the military industrial complex and to get power for special interests who benefit from influencing the worlds largest military power at our (taxpayer's) expense.

I'll find a video that is tongue in cheek but pretty good.  I warn you, it was made by a Ron Paul supporter, though, so the issues are framed towards him.

Here ya go:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aNHZI66B...

Answer 2

We are busybodies who think we have all the answers.

Answer 3

we cant mind our own business.

Answer 4

Because if we don't, we're called heartless b******s. Just look at all the people screaming for us to get involved in Dafur.

Of course, when we do get involved, we're imperialistic pigs.

America's in a no win situation.

Answer 5

The world is a hypocritical place, whenever the free world has been in need; the U.S. showed up to save the day. But when things go slightly downhill or those same countries aren't gaining anything, they talk that America needs to mind it's own business and stay out of world affairs not involving them.

I say pull out all of our troops, and when a power rises, much like the n***s did, let the world sit there and cry for help with no American forces on the way to help.

Answer 6

We don't always get involved:  Darfur, South African apartheid, communist takeover of China in 1949.  And it isn't always easy to figure out a sufficiently strong self-interest to justify some actions, cynical or not:  Grenada, Panama, the Spanish-American war.  In those cases, the best conclusion is that sometimes we engage in war to show our power, but only when the outcome is certain.  Most of the time, the reason is clear enough:  Good reasons: Afghanistan in 2001 and in the 1980's, Kuwait in 1991, Nicaragua in the 1980's, Cuban missile crisis; Suspect reasons:  Iraq now, Vietnam, Korea in 1950.  Sometimes we are just humanitarians: Kosovo, Berlin in 1947.  So I guess the right answer is that there is no single answer, nor sometimes even a rational answer.  Every situation is different.

Answer 7

Cause the American people no longer believes that its own people can fix problems and that our government is the so to speak easy button.  So when we saw Hitler, Saddam, Castro, and other Powerful extremist that could possibly pose as a threat we react quickly, as the Worlds police.  We saw what happened with Castro and Hitler when we sat on our hands for too long.  Be as everything does the way this is accomplished has changed into where we came in with military at the beginning such as vietnam and force our way through military war now we are forcing our way through a much uncivilized way of doing things sanctions and trade embargos which cause's people who are totally innocent suffer for what there government is doing.  A Japanese King gave his life long enemy rice and salt when his enemies people were starving due to a bad crop production that year.  He said wars are won with swords and spears not rice and salt.  there is no honor is starving innocent people.

Answer 8

I'm afraid there is no single simple answer to your question. Sometimes the U.S. gets involved in an overseas situation because we are asked by the nation involved, and/or by the international community as a whole. Believe it or not, the government of South Vietnam actually asked for U.S. help before we sent out troops there. In the case of Kuwait, that government also asked for our help in getting Iraqi troops out. In the case of Somalia, the U.S. got involved because the international community as a whole was trying to save that nation from mass starvation, and the U.S. at the time had the greatest resources with which to assist that effort.

Sometimes the United States gets involved for its own self interests. Such was the case in the Spanish-American War, which may very well be the best example of American imperialism in history -- the war gave us the Philippines (for many decades), Puerto Rico, Guam, and other territories. The United States also prodded revolutionaries in Colombia into full-scale civil war in order to clear the way for the nation of Panama to emerge and, therefore, have somewhere to build a canal.

But there are also times when the United States gets involved in a situation overseas simply because we as a nation want to help people in trouble. For example, U.S. troops assisted United Nations efforts to stop the civil war in what used to be Czechoslovakia.

While I certainly agree that the United States has been known to "stick its nose" into regions of the world it probably shouldn't have, I do not agree that it has ever done so simply to show how "big and strong it is." For the most part, I believe that whoever was President at the time truly believed that a particular situation warranted U.S. involvement.