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They question of how the United States should conduct itself in international affairs does not have a single "correct" answer, and it is open to a wide room of debate. The U.S influences the world militarily, economically, politically, and by the providing of aid to those in need., that being "right" or "wrong" is fully opinion. Having power, and the ability to project that power, tempts the powerful into using it. A lot of nations are powerful (India, China, Russia to a lesser degree) but lack the ability to project that power. Since the USA is so powerful when we use our military, it is always against someone weaker. Even in situations with nothing to gain (Somalia) one can wind up with a bloody nose. We went to feed the starving victims of the civil war in Somalia, identified war as the problem, and tried to set peace. Unfortunately the guys fighting were not ready to stop, or give up their power. Some people think that we should not have even gone to Somalia, that it was none of our business. Now, what would have happened if we did not try to save all those starving people? All the humanitarian countries and the starving people themselves would not be too happy with us. As the world power we are expected to help the less fortunate, even if we will lose something by doing so. But, we don’t always do what we are expected to do. In Desert Storm we could have taken Saddam Hussein out of power and taken control over Iraq with little trouble. There were many allies inside Iraq that were going to do this with our help, mainly the Shiites and the Kurds, but we did not help. Why? Because our other, more powerful, allies did not want to prolong the war. We have left would-be allies hanging with no support. The point is, we can't be on the same team as everybody, and we should not do what the other countries that have power want us to do. We need to make our own rules, rules based on freedom and Human rights.
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