Torchlight

Torchlight

4p

3 comments posted · 0 followers · following 0

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - \'Culturally Sensitive... · 0 replies · 0 points

It's amusing that you think there's any kind of grand strategy behind the British involvement in Afghanistan, other than "keeping in with the Americans."

I also find it ironic, for someone who professes the views that you do, that you talk disparagingly of "reflexive anti-Americanism." There are plenty of good reasons why intelligent, thoughtful and moral people would be anti-American without there being anything "reflexive" about it. Your country, quite clearly, is a predatory power, spending vast sums of money on armaments; taking traditional rivalries between nations into new spheres (space, computer networks); constantly prosecuting wars and threatening to start new ones; inventing preposterous pretexts for global belligerence (Cold war, now War on Terror). According to the Pentagon website you've launched about one new military action in someone else's country for every year of your existence as a nation.

It's impossible to be anti-war without being anti-American - unless you're in severe denial of reality about what your country represents. You may cling to some forgotten ideal of what America might have been - the rest of us have to deal with what it is. And, in practice, that means being "anti-American" - not reflexively, but thoughtfully, cerebrally, and with an understanding of the threat your country poses to the rest of the world. Anyone who's not anti-American by this stage is either a moral cripple or simply unacquainted with the facts.

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - Eastern Europe and the... · 0 replies · +2 points

You seem kind of confused. You say I call them quislings because they "don't want any kind of empire to rule over their countries." Actually, that's just the opposite of what I said. It's precisely because they do want to put their countries at the service of a foreign empire that I call them quislings. And, yes, in the analogy, the US represents the Nazis. Seems kind of appropriate for a country that has started an average of one war per year in the three hundred odd years of its existence, don't you think?

And the last time I checked the EU wasn't going around invading or torturing anyone. Such depredations as it does commit are at American behest. If you don't like the EU, please leave it. No one forced you to join. You've been nothing a burden ever since you did join. Accepting the basket case countries of Eastern Europe into the EU was the biggest mistake we ever made. They are the European equivalent of America's Deep South.

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - Eastern Europe and the... · 2 replies · +2 points

Excellent analysis. One of the most pitiful displays of servility I've ever seen. It's clear that some people can never escape from their slavery. Experiencing it, they develop a slave mentality which stays with them even when their bonds are broken. The external shackles can be cast off, but the ones inside never can. These East Europeans are nothing but a quisling fifth column inside the European Union, attempting to make it ever more pliable to America's warmongering. Fortunately, as their letter suggests, there are hints that their own people are not quite as keen on the whole empire project. Indeed, in their contempt for their "backsliding" populations, they sound much like the communist overlords of old, who would castigate the selfish masses for wanting Western consumer goods, etc.