What is America's responsibility to our fellow man, and should we use American foreign policy and intervene in world events?
I hope I answered the question, but this is mostly my feelings. Here we go:
America’s first and foremost responsibility is right here, inside our borders. It lies with the homeless on our streets, the struggling entrepreneur, and the single mother. America should be very concerned with all of its citizens and their well-being. This includes the care, supervision, and education of our children, the number of people in prison and just how they got there (beyond the guilty verdict and into the why), the affordability of our food, the quality of our health care, and the future of our energy.
Our responsibility does extend, though, past the green acres of the territories of the United States and beyond those with the proper paperwork. Just as every individual has a social responsibility to the other people around him, the United States has the implied task, as the richest nation in the world, to care for the unprotected. The women and children in Darfur who are mercilessly beaten, raped, murdered, and mutilated on a regular basis are in dire need of help from any nation with the means to do so. Before the genocide, these people did nothing but live happily surviving with each other.
We do belong out in the world as good Samaritans, but only as such. Only to protect and help the vulnerable should we be there. Not to reform their government and oppress the people; only to keep them alive and productive, and give them hope. To let them live as they wish, in safety, comfort, and freedom as a people. The developed nations should step in, stop the killing, provide for their own mens of education and well-being, and leave the people to their own accord.
Our assistance to the people in these troubled countries is a measure of the United States' own success and heightened solidarity in our national security. To quote Barack Obama in The Audacity of Hope, “Globalization makes our economy, our health, and our security all captive to events on the other side of the world. And no other nation on earth has a greater capacity to shape that global system, or to build consensus around a new set of international rules that expand the zones of freedom, personal safety, and economic well-being. Like or not, if we want to make America more secure, we are going to have to help make the world more secure.” Obama, p. 304
Politicians tend to believe that if we don't help these countries in need, our world inside these borders, where our homes and friends are, could crumble. If we leave alone the civil wars, brewing terrorism, crumbling economies, and radical genocide, evil will spread throughout Earth and destroy what freedoms we have made for ourselves at home. Senator Obama also quoted President Kennedy in his inaugural address, supporting this claim: “To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required – not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” Obama, p.314
So if we want to help the world, one country at a time, we should. Nobody likes to be oppressed or tortured, or to lose loved ones based on the radical beliefs of another. There is a standard of simple, uninterrupted life that we can help sustain, and it is our duty as humans to take that part. The flow of global society depends on good ideas, especially those that help the masses, and the United States and its allies should never miss a chance to make one real.
Reference: The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
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