"Why should we care about Ecuador?"

On Rick Sanchez' CNN program, some one emailed in the question "Why should we care about Ecuador?" Here is the answer from Mr. Bush's and Mr. Obama's Secretary of Defense;

Repeatedly over the last century, Americans averted their eyes in the belief that events in remote places around the world need not engage the United States. How could the assassination of an Austrian archduke in the unknown Bosnia and Herzegovina affect Americans, or the annexation of a little patch of ground called Sudetenland, or a French defeat in a place called Dien Bien Phu, or the return of an obscure cleric to Tehran, or the radicalization of a Saudi construction tycoon's son?
-Robert M. Gates from "A Balanced Strategy; Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age" in Foreign Affairs, January/February 2009

This is why U.S. and other citizens should be studying History, Geography and Languages. And I don't mean just those of Ecuador for those of you whose studies didn't include literature, hence irony.