Atrocities

After the confirmed death of Gadhafi, President Obama, apparently referring to America's participation in the air war of Lybia, said something to the effect: "Other countries may turn a blind eye to atrocities, but America is different." 

Different? America? Different how? The main difference I see is that America creates more atrocities, turns a blind eye to more atrocities, and responds to more atrocities with military action than all the other kids on the block combined.  America does it all.

The very creation of the United States was an atrocity, with the extermination of an existing civilization. Other American atrocities include slavery, the Mexican War, the Civil War, violence against labor unions, Viet Nam, and so on, and so forth. The United States commits atrocites by the bushelfull.

For several years before Pearl Harbor the American people and government did nothing while Hitler killed Jews and savaged Europe. Atrocities in Cambodia , Sudan, and numerous other places have largely escaped our attention. Obama himself had no interest in helping the rebels in Lybia, and was persuaded by the French and British. America often turns a blind eye because its in her best interest to do so.

America responds to atrocites in whatever way she perceives to be in her best economic and political interest. There are no lofty, rigid, inviolable principles guiding American foreign policy.

If the President is telling us that we the Americans respond to atrocities  in a manner based upon the highest moral principles alone, and if he expects us to believe it, heaven only knows what he'll say next, but it might be even more humorous and entertaining.