The United States overall is a benefit to mankind

The video here is a 17 part documentary explaining US media corruption and US East Timor involvement. Let's go to my opponents first point about Innovation. In the first round he gave a list of American inventions, some of them not even being from America. An example of this would be the Telephone, which was actually invented in Canada. he also mentioned many products that really have no impact on life, like basketball, which for the record was invented by a Canadian. While basketball may be popular in some areas, soccer/european football is without a doubt, the world's sport, and provides far more benefits than basketball. Also, with Steel and the Bessemer process, the US was not the first country to invent that, in fact Europe had been using it hundreds of years before anyone, just not on an industrial level, so the innovation point on that one goes to Europe, not the United States. But, even if you want to believe that this is a US innovation, the Bessemer process hasn't been used since 1968, so clearly it is not a benefit to society. He mentions rocket fuel as well, but he fails to provide how that benefits the world economically, so it really isn't relevant. While the US may have started some of these communication industries, they do not continue them, and there were multiple other inventors around the world who were on the verge of creating those anyways. When it comes to television and electronics now, Japan and South Korea dominate those industries, with companies like Samsung, Nintendo and Sony, and are by far the leading innovators in technology, since their economy is based around technology. As with the issue with cars, the only reason why the US is near the top is because they have a high population, and lack other means of transportation such as trains, so citizens are essentially forced to buy cars to get anywhere in the country. He also tries to say that the US is leading in the making of hybrid cars, this is NOT true. the two main leaders of hybrid cars are Nissan and Renault, both of which are non-us groups. Also, I suggest voters look to the movie An Inconvenient truth, the US was listed as the highest contributor of pollution in the world by a mile, because they refuse to switch to eco-friendly materials. Now let's move to the idea of world peace. My opponent says that the Taliban was similiar to Al-Qaeda, but the goal of the war was NEVER to overthrow the taliban to begin with. Here, take a look at a passage from Noam Chomsky on the taliban. "The war aim in Afghanistan was not to overthrow the Taliban. That was an afterthought, so whatever you think about it is irrelevant. There were people who were very much committed to overthrowing the Taliban -- Afghans like Abdul Haq, who was one of the most respected Afghan leaders. Haq's position was that it was undermining their efforts to overthrow the Taliban from within and in his view the US was bombing the country in order to show its muscle and to scare the world, but not to overthrow the Taliban. One can argue about right or wrong about bombing Afghanistan, but that was not the aim, it was added three weeks later when the war was almost over." As for Iraq, oil is the EXACT reason why they are there. There's a reason why almost every country in the UN vetoed on the war in Iraq. But, because the US doesn't care, they went in anyways. Sadam Hussein was not a good leader, but the US had ZERO reason to overthrow him in the first place. Plus, at the moment, Iraq is on the verge of civil war, so their occupation provided little benefit. Also, look to where most troops are stationed. They are covering the oil heavy areas and Baghdad, that's about it. Plus, there were much better ways to handle the situation. Here's another passage from Noam Chomsky to show my point: you can go down a list from A-Z and pick out a lot of countries of which that's true. Does the US have any special right to do this? Of course not. In fact if anyone believed Bush's arguments, and the arguments of the pro-war people, there's a very simple way to overthrow Saddam Hussein which has many advantages to the one that's being pursued -- help Iran invade. The Iranians will tear Saddam Hussein to shreds, they'll kill anyone who's anywhere near him, they'll destroy all the weapons of mass destruction, they'll make sure any successor never develops any "weapons of mass destruction", which is a great contribution to disarmament, there'll be people on the streets of Basra and Karbala cheering as the Iranian liberators come in, there won't be any problems with the UN, there won't be any US casualties, there won't be any Israeli casualties. Now, I invite you to take a look at my opponents source he had about South American invasions. He claims that the countries I listed were never invaded. However, even his own source proves me right, it mentions the innocent killings in Nicaragua as well as El Salvador. He mentions the dictator being overthrown in Chile, that was in 1974, a LONG time ago, and the US stopped occupying most of these nations after 2002. While the US never directly occupied places like Argentina and Brazil, their occupation of other nations preveted these nations from being successful, since they lacked trading partners. Ever since they have stopped with South American occupation, they have all found success economically, and South America may become influential in the future. Here's a better list of foreign occupations in history. It even shows the CIA OVERTHREW democracy in Iran for the Shah system, clearly providing no benefit. http://academic.evergreen.edu... As with the issue with East Timor: Indonesia was part of it, but the US and other nations took sides with one of the tribes and killed off thousands of innocent people. They also gave substantial amounts of weapon aid to Indonesians. However, the issue was barely covered by the New York Times compared to that of the Khmer Rouge. He also brings up the Somailia invasion, however that went absolutely NOWHERE. Somalia is still the #1 most failed nation in the world, and provides zero benefits to society. http://www.chomsky.info... http://www.youtube.com... My opponent today has listed countries that were freed from the US in the Wars so im going to cover that now. 1. Phillipines - The US actually tried to turn them into a territory, so they only wanted to occupy them. They have provided little benefit to the country, as election fraud is common there and they do not really benefit the world economically http://www.historyguy.com... 2. Cuba- The US also put an embargo around them in the Cold war and US citizens are not even legally allowed to visit Cuba. So clearly, his point is moot here. 3. China- The only reason why China was able to become free from Japan was because of the extremely unethical nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing thousands of innocent civilians who had no war involvement. 4. France: In WW1, the US barely helped, and it was actually France that did the vast majority of the work. That is why they are #3 in number of casualties in WW1 5. Britain- The British royal air force saved the day on this one, not the US. Even my AMERICAN history textbook says this 6. Israel- But, as i've said, this aid has also lead to large scale oppression on Palestinians, so no real benefit here. Now onto social ideologies. The constitution has not spread worldwide, South American's tried to adapt it but do not even go by it now. Women suffrage was not US first- they just followed suit from multiple other European nations. While he mentions non US ideal nations that fail, Germany now doesn't even go by US ideals and multiple South American, European and Asian nations are extremely successful without following US ideals. I suggest we have a part 2 to this. 4 rounds doesn't allow me to make all my points with limited the limited space.