Is the US Ambassador in Kabul a Liar or an Idiot?

Karl Eikenberry, the US ambassador in Kabul, was quoted in the UK Guardian by Jonathan Steele (The Taliban’s wishlist, 21 June, 2011) as solemnly pronouncing:

America has never sought to occupy any nation in the world. We are a good people.

This is staggering. Americans incessantly complain that the rest of the world hates them, and always want to do them harm, even though they are “good people”. Are these Americans, blind, or deluded, or are these just neocon lies to feed the self righteous ignorance of the US public?

Eikenberry is a diplomat and sits in the center of a ten year long war against the present occupation of Afghanistan by the US and its sycophantic allies. Nor can he be unaware that the US just fought a terrible war for no obvious moral cause in Iraq, dividing and devastating the country, and still occupy it with tens of thousands of soldiers. They have just joined with France and the UK via NATO in an unjustified attack on Libya, which has again divided the country and will require another occupying force to prevent a civil war if Gaddafi is ousted.

Richard Carter, replying to Eikenberry in the Guardian adds the following historical synopsis of significant US occupations, omitting minor ones:

There’s Honduras (seven times between 1903 and 1989), Nicaragua (seven times between 1894 and 1933, not to mention the support for the Contra terrorists in 1981-90), China (six times between 1894 and 1949), Cuba (five times between 1912 and 1933), Haiti (five times between 1891 and 2005), the Dominican Republic (four times between 1914 and 1966), El Salvador (twice: 1932, 1981-92), Mexico (twice: 1913, 1914-18) and Vietnam (once, but for 15 years)….

Isn’t it about time that the US public caught on—they have a problem with their leaders, and that means with their much vaunted democracy. These wars do not and cannot help the ordinary US citizen whether poor or middle class. Only the rich profit out of them, and the US has been ruled on behalf of this rich minority for the whole of the time R Carter surveyed.