[Leica] Cloud Cuckoo Land & Yankee Bashing

[msmall at infionline.net (Marc James Small)]

At 04:39 PM 10/15/04 +0100, Beddoe, Neil wrote:
>Sorry Buzz, you are just plain wrong. I do live in a utopian cloud cuckoo
>land.  Graham Battison has posted plenty of pictures of clouds to prove it
>and I'm sure I've got a picture of a cuckoo around somewhere.

Actually, Buzz is dead on-target. Many Europeans, Australians, and
Canadians regard the US as a suitable target for a cheap shot or three.
Yes, our nations have different nterpretations of the role of government
and of the role of individuals withhin society.  

None of that matters, I guess, at this remove.  Still, if the British,
Canadian, or Australian members of this List believe that the First or
Second World Wars could have been won without the US contribution, you are
quite possibly wrong.  (World War I without the US would have led o a
stalemate in 1919, despite the huge improvements in the British Army which
made it the finest in the world by the later part of 1918.  World War II
without the US would have led to a Nazi Europe, a free UK, but a UK
divested of Burma, Malaya, Saawak, and Bruei.)

We are proud of our contributions to your freedoms and occasionally ask
that you acknowledge your respect for US lives lost in defense of the
French and British Empires.  Several years back, a group of French
hooligans defaced a US and UK cemetary in France.  The French government
has yet to acknowledge the problem or to offer an apology, but they did
repair the damage posthaste.  Sill, those in the US feel that the remains
of our dead, who gave all they had to give in the liberation of France, are
worth more than nazi crosses on their tombstones, and, yes, a French
apology is certainly in order.

Me?  I am a rational anarchist and an isolationist.  I am sorry that the US
ever got involved in the World Wars and its later conflicts.  But, then, I
am also a retired military sort, so I feel a great regard for those who
have died for this country.  They do not deserve mistreatment and dishonor.

Buzz is, again, quite right.  Positive contributions are always welcome, of
course --  suggestions from non-USians are always of interest.  But
dismissive attacks on US policy is neither helpful nor productive of sound
relations between our respective natons.  The US saved European butts in
the First World War and we did far more in the Second.   And then we spent
the best years of our lives paying taxes to keep you Europans free of the
Soviet menace.  And, in the end, it was our national deficit which paid for
your being freed from that Soviet threat.   My grandson is due to be born
in a month:  he will pay for your liberation into his dotage, while you
guys walk free.

If I were a European, I would simply bow my head when an American passed
by.  We gave our all for your liberties for 75 years and now all we get is,
"yeah, but what have you done for us lately?"

Quit being greedy.  Be grateful and be understanding.  Hell, my Uncle Bill,
a great person and a great influece on my life, suffered the indignity of
having his ass shot up when he was at the third wave on D-Day.  He then
spent six weeks on his stomach in England before rejoining his unit, which,
by then, had become a Civil GREG unit, burying dead civilian Frenchman.  I
never heard him say an unkind word about the French, even when de Gaulle
insisted on gold payments from the US for its balance-of-payment debts.

Grow up, Europeans, and act mature.

Marc

msmall@infionline.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!