The World Without US

Although gimmicky at times, and full of unneeded "beating of the dead horse" examples of how horrible the human race can be, this film actually has a very interesting message. What would happen if the United States did not have a military presence overseas? Then one begins to see that in the last 100 years, the Unites States has not "invaded" another country without it explicitly being related to the fact the supreme leader of that region was directly responsible for genocide.

Rather or not the film was well done, it got the message across to me clear as day. As a human race in the 20th century, will we tolerate the possibility of genocide happening at any place at any given time? If the answer is no, then we simply cannot leave any of these countries until they themselves are capable of not letting that happen again. If your answer is yes, then the entire United States deficit problem would be completely taken care of in 8-10 years. As selfish as I may be sometimes, I myself am going to have to side with absolutely no genocide tolerated anywhere. We are beyond that as a species, and that simply cannot be tolerated in any way. How that train of thought ever escaped my thought process, well it beats me.

I was a bit apprehensive about this film since it seemed to be such "one of a kind" so I had a look at their website before ordering. The trailer I saw really got my interest, the premise seemed to be so interesting and so timely for our nation. It reminded me a lot of another film, called "Why we fight?" (very popular about 2 years ago) trying to answer the same question, what is the purpose of the US meddling in the entire world? While "Why we fight" was a bit of a disappointment, this film really delivered on the promise. After the first twenty minutes you figure that the director is working an angle on the debate, but what I really liked is that he is building a really logical, coherent argument that I could follow from one end to another. And he surely supports it with footage from around the world.

I also liked the fact that it was more than an intellectual exercise. The film had some very touching personal stories that I didn't expect in a "geo-political" documentary. It made it one of those films that you still think about the second day after you saw it. As a minus, I wish the film makers also investigated some other regions also, say, South America or Africa... but I guess there is only so much time...

Excellent Pro- America propaganda. I really liked where this piece of pro-American foreign policy propaganda included N.Korean pro-communist propaganda to point an accusing finger at N.Korea. Yeah, N.Korea is insane...but Irony is amusing. Makes some "interesting" and potentially convincing points...if it wasn't leaving out some HUGE inconvenient plot holes. lol.

Although, one of the central points, of how others refuse to take responsibility for themselves, is valid.

Still, leaving out how we put Saddam in power, including flag waving "we love Israel" with no reason for WHY given, and saying that we had left Egypt abandoned and impoverished...when in actuality we have been giving Egypt BILLIONS in pay-off money...to a regime that was awful. All while the theme was the US CARES about oppressed peoples.

While rather interesting at times, the only people this movie will convince are Americans themselves.

The movie went to great lengths trying to explain that American interventionism was humanitarian based and not based on greed or colonialism. They used the example of Iraq selling more contracts to non US based firms, in fact firms that were not directly involved in the US invasion (putting aside how short sighted this argument is and how it doesn't understand world markets, all of which I will bore the people reading this to explain why that argument is faulty) can be easily rebutted: Africa. The USA keeps involving herself in the middle east but the humanitarian disasters are all in Africa and based around the Congo civil war which over 5 million people died. Why intervene in the Balkans for some 250,000 people when the biggest humanitarian nightmare is the Congo? The Rwanda genocide (a spin off of this larger civil war) claimed 800,000 lives. Srebrenica claimed 8,000 (and largely fighting age men). That's a factor of 100 in magnitude difference.

Lastly, the movie made her own achilles heel without realizing it: Taiwan. Just like the first world war was started over Serbia due to bigger powers having competing interests, so can Taiwan. With US insistence on protecting it at all costs, the world risks a thermo- nuclear war. With no such assurance, the world risks a very minor, very local conflict.

In the end, the reason the US keeps up the gigantic spending is because people don't want to be fired. Think about it. The military is now the largest employer and an effective lobbyier. Despite bases in Europe serving no purpose (whose going to invade Germany again?) we maintain them because the people paying our congressmen don't want to see their budgets cut.

First, this IS NOT a U.S. criticism film . It's just one that describes our current standing in all parts of the world and then asks, "What if we weren't there? What might occur if brought home our soldiers, sailors and airmen and closed down all these bases and outposts in all of the 90+ countries in the world?" This documentary was an quite an eye-opener for myself because I had never seen an almost fully encompassed story regarding what U.S. foreign policy have and has done; haven't done and the decisions made by multiple presidential administrations regarding our foreign policy and our sole superpower status and authority.

It also asks very many questions about our allies regarding what burden they carry or not, regarding maintaining peace and stability in the world. This is a question that each American citizen needs to understand completely. This point I cannot emphasize enough.

There are also numerous interviews from allied nations and some non-aligned nations regarding how they view us and what impact we currently make and some these interviews discuss the "What if the U.S. wasn't here?" question. These interviews are very sobering to say the least.

These are my words/opinion and are tangentially related to this film. In these last 12 years, since President George W. Bush (not his father, George H.W. Bush) and under President Barack Obama, with deficits soaring due to paying for two major wars and a number of other assisted military interventions in primarily the Middle East and North Africa and then with thousands (if not tens of thousands) Baby Boomer's retiring weekly (Full Disclosure: I'm considered a Boomer because I was born in 1964 however; I do not or ever have considered myself part of that generation and don't expect Social Security to be available to me until I'm 70 or older (if any, at all)), we are borrowing one dollar of every three dollars spend on our American Credit Card.For a detailed breakdown of our budget(s), please visit:

http://nationalpriorities.org/ - Non-political with accurate data

These are but two of the reasons why we have came to have multi-trillion annual deficits. Our total national debt is encroaching on the $20 trillion mark that will occur in the few years, unless we do these two things simultaneously: 1) Raise additional revenue and not just from personal income taxes (corporations need to bear a much larger portion) and 2) A serious reduction in spending annually in both military and entitlements. There will be hard choices for both the Democrats and Republicans to make in the next four years.