On 27 Oct 2004, at 22:56, Stan Shebs wrote:
Jens Ropers wrote:
On 27 Oct 2004, at 17:53, Delirium wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
>> On 10/27/04 9:32 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com>
wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Sorry, Jeff, I wrote hastily. I should have said "Anti-US
>>> Military" bias
>>> or "Anti-Bush Administration bias". I apologize for my offensive
>>> wording.
>>>
>>>
>> You keep on digging the hole deeper. How was it "anti-US military"
>> bias?
>>
I find this issue of semantics is kind of annoying, because although
I'm a strong Bush opponent, I tend to agree with Ed's phrasing. It is
not *in principle* "anti-US" or "anti-US-military" bias, but I'd
argue
that *in practice* many people do have an anti-US bias that leads them
to look for and promote stories that make the US look bad. This has
nothing to do with anti-Bush bias---it was the same people doing the
same thing when Clinton was president and bombing Kosovo.
-Mark
With the possible difference being that a complaint that others are
biased against you just sounds so much more convincing if you're not
engaged in an illegal war at the same time.
Careful on the nationalism thing
Huh?
What nationalism thing???
And why should I be careful about it??
- every nation has much to
criticize. Germans especially should not be lecturing anybody
about "illegal wars"...
Let me say I'm talking from experience (secondhand experience actually,
I'm not an octogenarian). Read [[Oradour-sur-Glane]]. As I recently
contributed the German POV it really struck me as I typed how it all
sounded so awfully familiar in terms of some more recent events.
Oradour-sur-Glane may been much more outrageous than than any single
killing of civilians in Iraq, but, well, what can I say? It appears
that 60 years on the ''excuses'' are still the same.
I hate Bush as much as anybody, but if Europeans and
USians
are not in agreement, it's as much a failure of the Europeans
to sell their ideas in Iowa as it is of the US to sell its ideas
in Belgium. Bush would get even more votes if the average US
voter got a look at how much anti-US sneering by Europeans is
found on WP talk pages.
True, and both any sneering and the defiant "hurt pride" protest vote
for Bush are unconsidered, immature reactions. However, IMHO Ed's
initial post clearly shows that there are Americans who already are so
much in defiant denial mode that they will perceive even factual NPOV
points argued against "their guy" as "sneering". I mean. Ed's
outraged
initial post sounded as if there was an evil Democratic conspiracy to
loot and kill.
Did "liberals" make up this story? No. (They merely recounted and
editorialized.) Does it really matter whether the explosives
technically went missing under Iraqi or American watch? They were known
about and sealed and accounted for before the invasion and went missing
at some stage during the invasion, which may or may not have been
before U.S. troops had a chance to properly protect them. But really.
There are over 10,000 civilian dead and what Ed chooses to scream
murder about is how unjustly it was claimed (wrongly or correctly; it's
still far from clear) that the U.S. military (and by extension the
current administration) could be faulted for them going missing. This
is a theoretical dispute about whether or not this rather futile "blame
pinning" exercise was grounded in reality. Don't we have more pressing
things to worry about? Especially as regards Iraq?
Or let me put it like this:
It appears that in recent times the GOP got insufficient intelligence
which they overexploited to illegally invade a sovereign country.
It appears that more recently the Dems got insufficient intelligence
which they overexploited to try and make Bush look bad.
Ed chose to scream murder about the Dems trying to make Bush look bad.
Words fail.
Oh, and Ed:
As regards international attitudes towards the US:
You cannot tell somebody to f*ck off and then complain of them dissing
you.
Remember the famous "You're either with us or against us"? Now Bush
said that to America's allies and old friends as they moved to indicate
that they would not join the Iraq endeavour. In diplomatic terms said
phrase was absolutely lethal because as said allies were indicating
that they would not join Bush was effectively saying that he thus
considered them opponents. In other words: "You don't wanna join us?
Well f*ck off then. U R teh enemeh." That did not go down well with the
international public, foreign governments and international diplomats
(including U.S. diplomats, many of which have since resigned for being
"unable to do their job").
And again, most people of most other countries now preferring to shun
and defile the U.S. may not be the righteous thing to do, but it's a
quite understandable human reaction to being told to f*ck off. So don't
complain. You've got no one to blame for that but your own
administration and its "diplomacy".
Not setting much of an example for
international cooperation!
Oh, but we are! We Wikipedians are actually talking. Which is ''way''
better than doing a "Freedom Fries" routine or accusing all Americans
of being daft, respectively.
Stan
-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
www.ropersonline.com