If you know yourself but not your enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat

The Human Rights - Economics Connection by Michael Leung

"The violence that constitutes the majority of human rights abuses is a result of the dominant powers using force to maintain a status quo of vast inequality. Of the six billion people in the world, half live on less than $2 a day, and a billion of those live on less than $1 a day. ..."

The first two or three sections of this article are a pretty good primer on how the US is viewed by its enemies in terrifying Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea, for instance. Just add to it in Cuba's case a half-century of support for dictators and a half-century of support for terrorists, in Venezuela's case over a century of support for governments that have succeeded spectacularly at distributing the country's immense oil wealth to only a minuscule minority (and an unpopular and unsuccessful coup), and in North Korea's case a war that killed and injured millions of civilians in an attempt to impose an unpopular government composed largely of collaborators with imperial Japan.

But hey, why care what a bunch of commie foreigners think? Now if we could only make United Statesians (entirely) ignorant of themselves too, then we'd ensure that the U.S. succumbs in every battle - right, Sun Tsu?