Arrogance and the short memories of Europeans

OK, I'm ticked. I was reading the comments postings in response to a British piece criticizing B.O. being given the Nobel peace prize. I'm DEFINITELY not ticked about the piece, but about some of the comments. The last comment, coming from a Norwegian I suspect, since not a lot of Americans and non-elfs have the name Olef, said (in part):

"As much as admire the man and what he appears to stand for, Obama is still the president of one of the most aggressive martial nation on the planet, which to date has refused to sign the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty, which aims to eradicate a scourge, which has maimed and killed millions of innocent children, a terror which is still ongoing every day. This treaty has been ratified by 133 countries, but the US has to date refused to do so.

The intention of closing down the most hideous and unlawful institution devised by a western nation since WWII, the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, is laudable, but has yet to be accomplished....

...If you want to name heads of governments in the cause of peace, France’s Jacques Chirac, and Germany’s Schroeder would be more deserving, for not joining in the Iraq adventure, but most of all Canada’s Jean Chretien, who must have been under enormous pressure from a nation, which then counted for 87% of Canada’s foreign trade."

There are TONS of things I could respond with on this, I could get into the whole, "the US saved European butts more than once, and blah, blah, blah," but I'm not going to do that. The one thing that I haven't head anyone bring up yet, on this subject of the US and allies going into Iraq and Afghanistan is:

If Europeans hadn't felt the desire to colonize everyone and everywhere they could get their grubby little mitts on, and subsequently leave those areas in such states of utter chaos, the US wouldn't have to get involved in those areas. Look at the two areas primarily under European oppression: Africa and the Middle East. Look at the conditions those areas have been in since the Europeans conquered them, then left. The poverty, the fighting, the identity conflicts, I could go on and an about the problems of those areas, but the bottom line is that those problems arose because of European intervention and arrogance. European greed and the need to oppress free people left those areas the way they are.

So perhaps instead of criticizing the "evil US," Europeans like Olef should be thanking us for once again trying to fix the problems that Europe has perpetrated on the world.