You want to protect us? Stop starting wars, stop bombing people in other countries

[brush]

40. Ahh . . . we've been involved in coups, overthrows, invasions and assassinations . . .

. . . around the globe for over a century. For more info check out this book:

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer.

We've been throwing our weight around since the 1890s when Navy gunboats backed a coup by ex-pat American growers against the Hawaiian monarchy. We've been at it since then in protecting "American interests".

That of course should read "corporate interests", which is why we were in Iraq. Remember the "no blood for oil" chant that we demonstrators shouted before the Iraq war began? We knew the deal then and we all should know it now.

We have, and I'll use a euphemism here, rubbed many countries the wrong way for a long time. We're not innocents on the world scene as we've made a lot of enemies so we shouldn't be naive to thing there won't ever be any retaliation. I think the current term that's in favor now is "blowback."