DeAnander will vouch for my ability to defend my countrymen.  And women.

But as much as I'm glad you've posted this information because the world needs to know we are not all neo-con sycophants, I think you are just terribly oversimplifying the matter.

First off, when you make statements like your opening paragraph, you really should cite something to support such a claim.  

I know a lot of lefties, from both here and abroad, who think there is something intrinsically wrong with the economic or electoral system in America.  Who think there is something intrinsically harmful about the lifestyle choices (cars, fast food, TV, wasteful consumption, etc.) of many or most Americans.  Who think that there is something intrinsically evil about the agenda of the cabal currently in power.  Who think that when Democrats have been given the opportunity to rectify our current situation or to even speak out against it, they have taken a pass, and therefore it is no stretch of the imagination to assume that they will continue to act in this manner.  Especially since a majority of them have benefited from the economic and electoral systems which are intrinsically "wrong," or biased.  It has been a while since our leaders have made foreign policy decisions which have not harmed, badgered or neglected the international community, and many of us also believe that acts of global irresponsibility are intrinsically "wrong," or hurtful to the welfare of the citizens of the earth.  There may be some on the left who feel that our position as a rogue nation is a permanent one, but I don't hang out on those listserves.  The majority of us, as evidenced by Kos and ET and Booman and comparable on-line communities, as well as those in the real life communities we inhabit, feel that with hard work, raising awareness, holding leaders and media accountable, whether supporting candidates in the system we already have or bucking the whole thing altogether, we can radically change what most non-lefties have accepted as a permanent situation.  Until then, many of us believe it is in the best interest of the rest of the world to recognize our current administration for what it is and ... act accordingly.  It won't help us fix this nation if the rest of the world is appeasing the idiots who've broken it.

Most Americans have a surprising amount of common sense, empathy, decency and courage.  I think most lefties, most American lefties, would agree that there is nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what is right with America.  We're just sick to effing death of being told we can't say that there is anything wrong with America!  How can we fix the problems if we aren't allowed to acknowledge and discuss them?  

Concern for our future, disgust resulting from the actions of our government and the people who support them, disappointment in our reality given all of the possibilities, and the driving desire to face reality however bleak or horrible or politically incorrect it may be should not be mistaken for some judgement on the intrinsic rightness or wrongness of this country.  A country can't even be right or wrong.  I personally resent those who try to even tell me what "right" or "wrong" is.  Words like "wrong" have little meaning.  

But the people, leaders and governing systems of a country can very well be irresponsible, harmful, ignorant, cruel, biased, arrogant, sick and unreasonable.  No country can be intrinsically any one of these things, though.  And to propose otherwise is just intellectual laziness.

I'm not necessarily directing this comment at Marek (except the part about citing proof of this sentiment), just at anyone who supposedly embraces it.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

The American opinion on international law is that if the US isn't a party to a treaty or an international convention, then it doesn't have to follow it.

I noticed the old bugaboo about the international criminal court. We never signed on to that one, so if any US government official is sent to the Hague, then that's an act of war.

The US has never been in favor of symbolic treaties, or at least hasn't been since the Coolidge administration.

There are all sorts of so-called "human rights" conventions which are subscribed to by most countries in the world and then plainly ignored.

The US is attacked for not subscribing to many of these things, and is thus assumed to be breaking "international law."

If the US isn't a party to a treaty, then it's not bound by it. Simple, no?

US militarism has gotten out of hand. As has been pointed out above 50% of the discretionary federal budget is devoted to this sector:

http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

There have been other periods in time when the military budget was such a large fraction of the GDP, but these were in times of emergency like WWII. What is new this time is that starting in the 1990's there was no enemy, but the military continued to grow anyway. Threats have been exaggerated or manufactured in order to justify the continuing level of spending. Just yesterday Bush tried to equate the cold war with the "war on terror" as a justification for permanent unchecked spending.

In addition the military/industrial sector has gotten much smarter in the last 50 years. Projects are now spread over many states and congressional districts to insure that legislators have a local interest in keeping projects going.

While all this has been going on other sectors of the society have been allowed to back slide. The poster child being the Katrina preparation and response. Similar failings can be seen in education, the manufacturing sector and civil engineering projects.

I hate to bring up Rome, but the US is starting to look a lot like the end of empire. None of the recent critics of current policies have been able to offer any suggestions on how to turn the ship of state around.

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

 I have a couple of comments;

one concerns care in interpreting poll responses in cases of questions which call for a response in which the respondant can reasonably be supposed to be subject to the feeling that a fully candid answer may reflect badly on him-- and this is true even though the interview is usually an 'anonymous' one done by telephone-- that is, even though the respondant is confident that his responses shall be part of an aggregate in which he is anonymous.

 My favorite standard example of this problem concerns polls which ask respondants to declare whether or not they believe in God, in Heaven and Hell, in miracles such as the immaculate conception, etc.  My view is that in practically every such poll, the results may be safely assumed to under report the actual proportion of people who do believe in the things just listed.  That is for a fairly common-sense reason: in answering such questions, there is little or no reason to imagine that those who do not believe in these notions shall reply falsely that they do.  On the other hand, there are always some proportion of the public which is reluctant to admit their religious beliefs out of the concern for the impression that would make on the interviewer; thus, in an random telephone poll, they'll report that they do not believe in such things even though in fact they do.

  Stating one's opinion on such sensitive questions as whether or not the US--as a people or a government--should be responsible for their actions abroad, and, more importantly, should be liable to be held accountable by some real or potential independent authority is just the sort of question that is liable to elicit false statements of approval or agreement, as in "Yes, I believe the US govt., etc., should be held legally accountable for..." .  Again, my hunch is that such polls shall always over-report the number of responses which conform to the socially-accepted and respectable response, thus masking the true number of people who in fact do not hold these respectable opinions.

My second comment concerns the notion of what we are talking about when we speak of "the United States" does, or did, this, that or the other; for all practical purposes, the "United States" really only exist as a present-day collectivity of people.  Though that seems obvious, it is not necessarily always what people have in mind when they argue over what the US (or any other nation, for that matter) once did or is now doing, or what they have to been proud or ashamed of.

  To illustrate this, many people are proud of what they think of as "their nation" having done in the past.  As in, for example, "the US won the Second World War and liberated Europe."  Many people easily accept that what some of their forebears did once upon a time is a matter which reflects positively on their own present-day worthiness.  They do not, somehow, accept the converse, that the disreputable acts of their forebears should be regarded as reflecting poorly on them--as they disavow any responsibility for such acts of long past generations.

  Of course, a nation is, for better or for worse, the sum of its present-day population's acts and beliefs, broadly speaking.  It is of no account what some generations of Americans may have done long ago in determining, especially, whether or not "the United States is a democratic nation".  It may very well have once been--or, that is, the American people of another time may very well have been more or less "democratic" than are the American people of today.  But the only meaningful question is, "What are Americans doing now?  Not, "What is the best and most noble thing we can point to about ourselves from the past?" and claim that as exemplary of what "we really are" today.

  What we really are today is of course to be determined by what we really are doing (or not) today.

  By that measure, we are perhaps not such a free and democratic nation as we may like to believe.  But that doesn't prevent people from taking as their ideal of what their nation is, the glorious portions from its most respectable past.

  Finally, about the treaty obligations of the US; I had an interesting (to me) discussion with a member at Dailykos on this very topic.  I argued that, according to the terms of the US Constitution, when the Senate ratifies a treaty, and the president signs it into law, it becomes the law of the land and has the same force and authority as the various provisions of the US Constitution itself.  Not so, replied the other person.  As he claimed to know, under a long ago ruling of the US Supreme Court, the provision of the Constitution which makes treaties part of the law of the land along with the federal Constitution, is interpreted as meaning only that the several states of the United States are legally bound to respect the treaty's terms.  Interestingly, by the Court's ruling, I learned from this fellow in the Dailykos that the US government--that is the federal government is not bound by any treaty from the moment that said treaty's terms come into conflict with a subsequently passed law of the United States.  Thus, apparently, if the US have obligations under the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war, it is the opinion of the Supreme Court, according to this ruling--I've now forgotten which one and can no longer find this exchange in the archives of the Dailykos, sorry-- that those obligations become null and void as soon as the Congress passes and the president signs any legislation to the contrary.  All of that came to me as flatly incredible.  My view has always been that the treaties were valid and in theory enforcable even if in fact that was not the case;  here I learn that, no, all that counts is what the last-passed and enacted laws may say on any given treaty issue.

 Amazing!  So, I asked the other fellow, "So, tell me, whether or  not the Supreme Court's case law is as you've described it to me, do you personally agree that this is how things ought to be ?

  At that, he ran out of time to answer and explained that he wouldn't be able to answer.  There ended the discussion.  I'm really sorry I couldn't link to it.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

Go to C-Span and search their video archive for 'Scalia Foreign Law American Enterprise Institute'. Particularly interesting is the Q&A segment after Scalia's speech on foreign law, when he tells law students that they are stupid, ignorant, cannot think straight and that they must SIT DOWN! and BE QUIET!. In two instances kids are thrown out of the conference room. Scalia approves of it but urges the AEI security guys to NOT use violence against the law students. He also barks at a German student who asked him a question about the Iraq war and torture and tells an American student to SHUT UP. Great performance of supreme court justice A. Scalia!

"The USA appears destined by fate to plague America with misery in the name of liberty." Simon Bolivar, Caracas, 1819