Is the US a force for good in the world?

Mehdi Hasan goes head to head with Thomas Friedman on the morality of America's global role.

Al-Jazeera - 15 Jun 2013

The US appears to have taken a back seat role in international relations. Is the US in decline? Or is it just taking stock as it accommodates to the new emerging world order?
In this episode of Head to Head at the Oxford Union, Mehdi Hasan challenges one of the world’s most influential columnists and authors, Thomas L Friedman.

Advisor to presidents and kings, Tom Friedman of the New York Times has won the Pulitzer Prize not once or twice, but three times.
He is the best-selling author, among many others, of The World is Flat and he argues in his latest book, That Used to Be US, that the US must rebuild itself to remain a global power.
Critics say American self-interest has trumped democracy and human rights time and again, and that Obama’s America is no different. So is the US foreign policy counter-productive? Or is America a force for good in the world?
The US “is not an NGO”, admits Friedman, explaining that America “is a country like any country with its interests, it pursues them, and sometimes pursues them very narrowly.”

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