PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - 1st International Air Show and Live Fire Demonstration/Kabul Int'l Airport
Old 24th Sep 2001, 14:50
  #50 (permalink)  
Jackonicko
 
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Just behind the back of beyond....
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KBF,

"No tangible result from Allied Farce?"

How about from the domestic political pov? It let Tony Blair wrap himself in the Union Jack and come the 'great war leader routine' and appeased a public desire to be seen to be doing something? Remember that most people were brainwashed by CNN and the BBC and believe that it was another great success.

Let's hope that Dr America treats the disease of terrorism, and doesn't just slap on some B-52 ointment to alleviate the immediate symptoms.

"Why should America have jumped into yet ANOTHER BLOODY WAR started by Europeans yet again (in 1939, old chap, not 1940)".

Because then, as now, America set itself up as a force for good and as a state with a moral foreign policy, who would fight evil and enforce what was right and true. Then faced with the evil of Adolf Hitler, it sat back and did exactly nothing. Had the USA as a nation committed itself to the struggle in 1939 (as did so many of its brave citizens) it is quite possible that the attack on the West in May 1940 would not have happened, and likely that Italy would have stayed out of the war. Thousands of lives would have been saved. And the USA's national interests would not have been defended by the Europeans, while America enjoyed the cynical but profitable neutrality of a major arms supplier.

With regard to our 'climbing lofty peaks and preaching the higher morals, patience, and wisdom of English foreign policy over the last few centuries', you will find no-one more self-flagellating than the average Englishman when it comes to our colonial mistakes, appeasement in the 1930s, etc. But at least we admit to making mistakes, and look at the big picture to try to work out how to avoid repeating them. And nor do we come out with this black/white for us/against us torrent of ultimata.

It's not a matter of anti-Americanism - it's disappointment in a nation which we generally admire so much when it does occasionally slip from the moral position it normally chooses to occupy.

If I could end on a lighter note, I'd ask whether, since you respect the Brits so much, perhaps you'd check your facts (and spelling - negociate, indeed!). We have four of your C-17's, not two! JOKE!!!!
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