"since the first sentence in your post could easily be taken as an argument against my point, that's how and why I took your post to represent a contradictory argument, especially since nothing else in your post more fully addressed the point I had made."


Fair enough.


"I also don't quite see why so many on this forum seem to bring up our own faults so quickly"


I can't speak for others, but for me, it's a question of balance, fairness and control. Balance because our leaders tell us, always, that we are good and have only people's best interests at heart and the other side is bad and has only nefarious aims at heart. This is not always true, as the examples I brought up in my previous post attest. Fairness because our leaders, like all government officials, lie about what they're doing and why they're doing it. It's generally known what bastards the Soviet were, or Bin Laden is. The bastardy things we have done are not as well known. Control because I am much more disappointed when my own country acts badly than when another one does and we can control these things more easily than we can other governments.


Those who call critics the "blame American first" crowd miss the point completely. No one (or vitually no one, I would think) denies that the world is a dangerous place and that some battles are worth fighting. This is why Bush has such a high approval rating. But when I see us pursuing injustice, I say so.