Peter Kemp wrote:

On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 14:26:24 -0400, Stephen Harding
wrote:

Brining up "US' less golden moments in recent history" has been de rigeur
in discussing American foreign policy for some time now.

I presume that is because they seem so much better documented than the
"less golden moments" of others.

Hardly, I doubt there's a country in the world who's happy for their
closets to be examined for skeletons (although Iceland doesn't seem to
have done anything too bad........yet), and they're all documented,
even if not in the US, which does have the biggest media voice.

Yes most countries of the world have done bad things at one time or another.
I mention US atrocities being much better documented because of two major
factors: A free press for most of its history, and the hugh leap in
technology that has occurred during a significant part of its national history
(say 150 years) in conjunction with that free press. I think that puts US
deeds under better focus than those of many other nations.

European nations have done far more to brutalize indigenous peoples, steal
their lands, exploit their populations, enslave and kill than Americans
have ever done, yet the standard for underhandedness seems to be American
slavery and colonial through national Indian policies, followed perhaps by
CIA operations during the Cold War.

Hell, I'm proud to be a Brit (ok, ok, half-Brit), and we did some damn
nasty things in our past.

Yet the focus always seems to be on the nasty things done by the US.

BBC, CNN, ABC and the like can be right in that Baghdad neighborhood when
an errant bomb from those aggressive, bloodthirsty Americans goes off, but
are absent when Saddam's thugs round up Kurdish villagers "for interrogation"
never to be seen again.

Wonder what our opinion of the Swedes or Danes would be if BBC was on scene
in 900 AD to record [on *film*!] the results of a Viking raid, and we could
bring up that footage for viewing whenever we had a disagreement with
nationals from those countries?


SMH