Another day, another academic (in "Film, Media and Cultural Studies") graces the pages of OLO to give us the benefit of his expertise in international politics.

Who cares what this bloke thinks about anything at all?

Ford gives us just another one-sided anti-American rant.

Poor Pakistan, where numerous international terrorists and criminals hide out with military connivance, wasn't consulted before the US took out bin Laden. No consideration by Ford of why that might have been necessary.

Obama "escalated the violence in Afghanistan"? Terrible. And the other side just want to be left in peaceful Islamist extremism.

Obama "stayed in Iraq". Actually, they've left.

Ford tells us that "the USA is arguably the least democratic society or state in the Western world", yet then claims that 80 per cent of the US population thinks that the US is "going in the wrong direction". Ford omits to tell us which direction these people think is the correct one.

Ford doesn't explain how 80 per cent of the least democratic society in the Western world, get to express their views on the national direction without government retribution.

It boils down to concepts of the civic competence of the respondents when you run polls like that one, but that's too nuanced for Ford.

The rest of Ford's rant merely references psycho-babble from Noam Chomsky, whom Ford describes as "the world famous public intellectual". World famous intellectual to Ford, an idiot to many others. Anything Chomsky says can safely be ignored. You won't miss anything important.

OLO really needs a remake. Far too much pap from "students" and academics is published and OLO becomes a magnet for more such pap because it's a soft touch.

KenH

You should take off your rose coloured glasses and have a good look at what the USA is doing around the world, and have been doing since they forced the Japanese into WWII. Will they never learn?

David

Hi David,

I can remember writing a secondary school history essay in which I argued that Japan had been forced into WWII. In retrospect, one can argue that only if one ignores the long history of Japanese aggression in Manchuria and China from 1931 and the barbaric behaviour of Japanese troops during that period in Nanking and later throughout south-east Asia.

Japan was seen as a serious threat to Australia from at least the mid-1930s, perhaps earlier. Japan had its own imperial ambitions and was expansionist.

So I don't think the proposition that Japan's entry to WWII was entirely the fault of the US actually stands up to examination.

While it's probably correct that the US failed to distinguish adequately between nationalist and communist movements in such places as Vietnam, that doesn't necessarily go to prove anything about US involvement in Iraq, for example. Nobody has yet shown me that leaving Iraqi civilians exposed to daily mass murder under Saddam was a preferable alternative to removing him.

So, for my money, the US is generally a force for good, even if the record is patchy.

While the US has a mixed international record mainly over their paranoia around communism, hypocritical and sometimes bizarre religious beliefs and their klutzy cowboy shock'n'awes, they have generally been a force for good.

Perhaps the author would prefer a visit by Robert Mugabe, the new Kim and a delegation from the taliban.

"Imagine the response if this appalling event was reversed and it happened to us."
Chomsky was referring to Chile in 1973, but the response was imagined. The two towers were brought down and the fix was in. The American Generals and the Zionist lobby have been openly ensconced in the halls of power ever since. (They were there before that criminal act on 9/11, but at least we could still pretend they weren't)
And what have they brought us? A ruined Iraq, a ruined Libya, Egypt heading who knows where, Syria looking like a rabbit caught in a drones headlights, let's not talk about Afghanistan and forget about Pakistan.
And for what? The overthrow of habeas corpus, that most basic of legal rights, and assassination adopted as official policy.
Adding to our sycophantic shame, in Australia we now have a PM who simpers like a school girl when the Yankee pres comes to town.

The worst part about this Author, and his views , is that they are being passed onto another generation , at Uni , as the absolute Truth.

Scarey, Eh ?