My guess is that the profoundly wise novelist Graham Greene will be spinning in his grave after being invoked ( a quote from Greene's book The Quiet American) by President George Bush in his latest rant about Iraq. Ignoring most of the advice from military strategists, Bush continues to insist American forces will stay there as long as he is President. Which, for the record, is another 15 months.
Bush is so deluded that he even has the temerity to make comparisons with Vietnam - where US policy similarly encouraged extremism and guerrilla warfare. In Vietnam, of course, then Labour PM Harold Wilson did NOT make the fatal mistake of committing British troops to military action. And Gordon Brown has got to start listening to the wiser voices on this side of the Atlantic who counsel an exit strategy - fast.
By the way, how crass is Bush's assertion that America is the "greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known." Right, well tell that to the 655,000 Iraqis who have died since spring 2003 - with God knows how many more to come. Not to mention the victims of the many other repressive regimes aided and abetted by America over the years. Chile, Nicaragua, I could go on.......plus the CIA's.FBI's hounding of anyone remotely on the left
PS: The film version of The Quiet American, an exceptionally good anti-war polemic starring Michael Caine, was made before 9/11. American distributors banned it for a year before release.
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5 comments:
Whatever you think about Vietnam or Iraq, the US role in WW2 alone justifies Bush's phrase about the US military being the "greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known."
And Hiroshima????
Luke said,
"Whatever you think about Vietnam or Iraq, the US role in WW2 alone justifies Bush's phrase about the US military being the "greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known."
What a pile of nonsense.
Yes, the US made heavy sacrifces during WW2 to which all of us should be gratefull. But the US effort alone was not the sole contributary force in ending the conflict. Forces from the British Empire, the cadre of partisans in occupied europe (not to mention their countrymen fighting for their freedon with us) and ofcourse the USSR. The Soviet Union had the most losses during the war. They tried in vain before the war to get an alliance set up between the british, the french and themselves to challenge facisim and stop Hitler in his tracks, alas it never happened.
Yeah, I'm tiring of the American Exceptionalism. Unquestioning worship of mass-murdering militarism is getting old.
Please realize that a great many Americans are horrified (and have been horrified for years) by our own military history. As for Bush, don't forget that almost half (more than half if you believe the election was stolen) of the country voted for Kerry (or Gore in 2000). Long story short - feel pity for Americans, because we're the ones who have to suffer the shame of such a government.
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