Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
Yes Ken I understand that no one wants to see their country humiliated internationally... but don't let that blind you from the truth.
In reverse order, never has. The US constantly and quite deliberately humiliates itself internationally in a futile attempt to show the World we're the good guys. We aren't, really but we're fairly decent and generally do more good than harm. The humility act really does us few favors but we continually do it; it gets misunderstood and people think we're even dumber than we are. Not a big thing, as I said, I've watched it for a good many years.
The problem is that the cause of the humiliation was gross incompetence. So don't go after the messenger... go after the idiots who thought China (which does not have an aircraft carrier yet) is going to allow the US sail one of theirs right into the Yellow Sea and thumb its nose at China.
Let me count the ways...

In order, you do not know if it was gross incompetence or a deliberate ploy, you do not know if the initial plan was announced by 'A' and then 'B' overruled him or her -- in short, your allegation is, yet again, ill informed and an assumption that since it was not done as you like to think you'd do it, it was incompetent or incorrect. Sorry, no prize for that leap.

I'm not "going after the messenger" -- presuming you consider yourself the messenger -- merely pointing out the message, as are so many, is short sighted and possibly erroneous. Nor do I believe the rest of that paragraph is correct, though I certainly don't know, anymore than do you, so there's no sense in either of us even acting like we're 'going after' anyone.

Lastly, as Entropy said above, we've got said bit more pizazz than to worry about diplomatic turnarounds -- if indeed that's what it was; we'll see. I'd have used self confidence rather than self esteem but the principle is the same. Nations are not people and one should IMO avoid trying to talk about them as if they were human but they do have national attributes and one of ours is trying to not offend just to be offensive. You might consider that...
In these cases it is not the US and Israeli policies that are so repugnant but the incompetence as mentioned.
Ah, yes. Being a gentleman (on occasion) I'll forego asking about events of the last 30 plus years in your neck of the woods; I'll merely point out that no one, no nation, is error free.
While knee jerk reaction is often "we don't care what anyone thinks" it is obvious that the American people do care what the world thinks of them. The answer is quite simple don't make it so hard for people to be a friend of the US.
Oh, you got one right!!! Yep, thus my comment above that we often humiliate ourselves in efforts to win friends and influence people. Doesn't usually work; the big clumsy and seemingly inartful guy is always going to be a target for the gibes of the smaller and more apparently agile. The big guy just has to take it and keep smiling or he gets labeled a bully. That works until one the gibers gets stupid and carried away, overdoes it and then gets smacked. Since the big guy is clumsy , his smack may go awry, they often do but the last thing you want to do is get him really upset and let him catch you in one of these.

Nope, most Americans do care. Having been around the world in both directions a few times and having learned that most others do not care, I tend to not worry about it either way. I do smile when those others scream about American ineptitude and greed out of one side of their mouth, totally fail to understand Americans (or the domestic political dynamic that impacts what said Americans do) in their brains and scream "What are the Americans going to do to fix this?" from the other side of their mouth...