EU as joke (modified)

And I am frankly sick and tired of the intellectual laziness and
dishonesty of a certain kind of Americans, who dismiss any
foreign critique of current US policy (and that is policy, not
even culture or values) as anti-Americanism.

LOL...yeah, there's no intellectual laziness in Europe, that quote from a
European may be the biggest case of "pot-kettle" I've seen in print. European
leftists began bashing Bush from the moment he took office, interestingly
enough for his "isolationist views". Such opinions were formed over such
things as his Texas accent, his and Cheney's work in the oil buisness and the
fact he had a ranch in Texas. Universally most of Europe knows Bush as a
"cowboy". Talk about intellectual laziness.

I am gonna have to agree. I have had discussions with some Europeans who are
just as apt to try and use simple stereotypes and classifications, because it
is just easier than thinking.
There are criticisms of Americans for not being fluent in European languages,
or not having mass transit to the degree Euros do. With just the slightest bit
of thought, one would realize that America is much more spread out, and even if
you do learn a language, if you never would have a chance to speak it, it is
forgotten very soon.

Using experiences from smaller, culturally and racially homogenous countries,
and using that to criticise a much larger and diverse country like the US, can
be intellectually lazy. So is acts of saying "No", but never offering
alternative solutions.

Honest criticisms can be needed and helpful. But when those criticisms are
born out of stereotypes, television shows, and a desire to criticise the US,
just because, that is intellectually lazy too.

But then many Europeans belittled Reagan as stupid and simple for daring to
think that the USSR could actually be defeated or rolled back.




Ron
Pilot/Wildland Firefighter

362436 (Ron) wrote:

There are criticisms of Americans for not being fluent in European
languages, or not having mass transit to the degree Euros do. With
just the slightest bit of thought, one would realize that America is
much more spread out, and even if you do learn a language, if you
never would have a chance to speak it, it is forgotten very soon.

I have, at one time or another, taken three different foreign languages
(German, Spanish, and Japanese). Of the three, I've basically forgotten
how to speak German and Japanese, and only have some Spanish left
because I work in hotels on a regular basis.

....and the Spanish speakers I work with mostly want me to speak English
with them so they can be more fluent.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

In article , "tadaa" wrote:

And best friends of USA have traditionally been military dictatorships, why
is that?

Britain hasn't be a military dictatorship for a *very* long time.

You've been sleeping in class again, haven't you?

(BUFDRVR) wrote in
:

Universally most of Europe knows Bush as a "cowboy". Talk about
intellectual laziness.

Most europeans know Bush, and his administration, as
responsible for misleading the United Nations, falsifying and manipulating
intelligence information in order to gather support for the most radical
action any nation can undertake - acts of war against another nation.

Though I guess wonder what "cowboy" would amount to these days, or how
many europeans you have spoken with on the matter.



Regards...

You were told not to do it.You did it anyways. Quit whining and pay the
bill.

The US whining? This must be European hipocrit day on RAM.

Subject of this thred : EU as joke. So this is just objective critisism, I
stand corrected ...


If you want to play humane world helper, why don't you start from Africa?


This from a European? Pot-kettle.

So what was the reason behind invasion of Iraq?
Was it :
a) weapons of mass destruction
b) getting troops from Saudi-Arabia to Iraq to please wahhabis in SA
c) help people in need
d) increase influence of USA in middle-east
e) election campaign
f) fight against international terrorism
g) big bad Saddam being mean to my daddy
h) lack of GWB's experience in foreign policy leading him into just doing
what he's told by his advisors
i) evil masterplan by really really really secret organization
j) some that I missed

Quite simply I believe it was combination of points a) to h) with some j)'s
added to it.
And why is that? The amount of money spent would could have been more
usufully spent in any single one of these points.

begin emulation of USA regarding crisis in Iraq

So we have concluded that regime change in Iraq wouldn't be that bad. Now we
just have to sell it to the people. People in USA are still suffering from
the shock of WTC, so we decide to use that fear as a leverage : we mention
WMD and terrorism.
Now we are ready to wage war against evil empire of Saddam! But dang, those
boring bureaucrats of UN and (most off the) rest of the world aren't so
enthusiastic, but it would be kinda nice to have them on board. So we try
again WMD, terrorism. (and forget the thing about target groups, buzzword
humanitarian crisis would have done better in Europe). It still doesn't
quite work and there are questions about the proof of these claims. Well we
don't need them anyways so we show them the finger and tell them how we can
do this alone if we have to.
We attack Iraq and sweep it's army (and Saddams control mechanisms) aside.
Now different groups all try to grab power in Iraq as much as they can. When
you combine this with Iraq and foreign Darwin awards winners blowing
themselves up here and there, remnants of Saddam loyalists doing their
stuff, general suspicion of USA by the population and Iran admiring shia
clerics you notice that managing this might me difficult (and expensive).
So now you use buzzword : "humanitarian crisis" for Europe but many
countries there are still sulking. Outside (and inside) Europe countries are
weary because they were just walked over in UN and now wonder if it really
is good idea to support someone that really doesn't care what they think. So
now we have to pay the bill in $$'s and risk Iraq being really turned into
chaotic state where terrorist organizations are going to have a field day.
d'oh

end

PS
The point i) is available for those who have a thing for conspiracy theories
(NWO, UFO, CIA etc).
PPS
The abundance of TLA's is purely coincidental and doesn't in any way imply
that i'm mr. Kurt Plummer.

Emmanuel Gustin wrote:

There is nothing wrong with having different values and opinions,
as long as you are capable of respecting each other and having
a healthy debate. If that fails, then friendship, alliance, and
ultimately democracy itself will break down, even down to the
point of Civil War. In a sense it is less the difference of opinions
between Europeans and Americans that is driving them apart,
than the contempt publicly shown by people who ought to know
better --- for example Rumsfeld's jibe about 'Old Europe'.

There's no shortage of contempt for America and this current
administration coming from Europe. In fact, European contempt for
Bush was being voiced even before he was officially President!

National values isn't really what is driving the divergence between
Europe and the US. It is national *interest*.

Europeans assume the US is basically just another European country,
with national interests in line with Europe.

That is really no longer the case, and hasn't been since the demise of
the USSR.

The sooner the US returns to a policy of neo-isolationism, the better
off we'll all be, at least on this side of the Atlantic. I no longer
much care what you on the other side think.


SMH

And best friends of USA have traditionally been military
dictatorships, why
is that?

Britain hasn't be a military dictatorship for a *very* long time.

Perhaps I should have written "And among best friends of ... ".

You've been sleeping in class again, haven't you?

Not since army classes

And best friends of USA have traditionally been military dictatorships,
why
is that?

Any Brits, Aussies, Japanese or Canucks offended at being refered to like
that?

Naah. Brits are too busy keeping their Islands from sinking from all the
rain, Japanese too busy reading naughty comics and Canucks too busy planning
invasion of USA to really take notice.
And Aussies just don't read threds which don't have "Beer" or "Beef" in
subject-line (or was it texans).

From: "Emmanuel Gustin"

There is nothing wrong with having different values and opinions,
as long as you are capable of respecting each other and having
a healthy debate. If that fails, then friendship, alliance, and
ultimately democracy itself will break down, even down to the
point of Civil War.

I get the sense from reading your posts that see Europe as representing
"Kultur" while America represents "Zivilisation." Now you speak of a Civil War
of the West, presumably between Europe and America. The fact that an educated
person would seriously raise this as a possibility is too depressing to comment
on. I thought this was 2003, not some writ large version of 1903.


Chris Mark

On Sun, 2 Nov 2003 21:10:16 +0100, "Emmanuel Gustin" wrote:

"Chris Mark" wrote in message
...

The European Right's anti-Americanism stems fundamentally from our
continent's loss during the twentieth century of its six-hundred-year
leadership role.

I doubt it. The 'leadership role' was at best a mixed blessing;
while some Europeans colonised the world (and got rich doing
it) others suffered economically because of the same process.
In the end the concept was perceived to be uneconomical and
immoral.

Not true, they decolonized because they got their butts kicked
out of the East Indies, India, the Congo, etc. etc.

It was therefore logical for Europeans to frown on
American attempts to run large parts of the world as their own
backyard; but this is not the fundamental conflict. Who cares
what happens to Chileans or Vietnamese? Only a tiny minority.

The Monroe Doctrine was forced on the US by Europe. The
Dictatorship installed in Mexico by the French, the "Zimmerman
letter", etc.

The real reasons for the increasing tension between Europe and
America are the different cultural values; a different conception
of what constitutes a just and decent society.

It is primary reason is that Europe is too cowardly and crass to
stand up for anything. Supporting Saddam was neither just
nor decent.

The Europeans who
colonised the Americas of course brought European values with
them, but they had to forget a lot of these in the struggle to wring
a sustenance from the new country -- "Erst kommt das Fressen,
dann die Moral" --, they often were outsiders to begin with, there
is still is an ocean in between, and America was relatively little
affected by the two world wars that burned Europe to the ground
and dramatically changed it.

We saved Europe on both occasions.

The outcome of it all is that American cultural values are now, by
European standards, rather old-fashioned. Disraeli or Bismarck
would feel perfectly at home in Washington DC; the way politics
is conducted there would be intimately familiar to them. But to
modern Europeans it is rather unpalatable.

OK, if decency, freedom, justice, and accountability are
old-fashioned, I suppose that you are correct.

Alain Peyrefitte, in his 'C'était de Gaulle,' quotes the general as
saying:
"In 1944, the Americans cared no more about liberating France than did the
Russians about liberating Poland." When one knows how the Russians treated
Poland, both during the last phase of World War II and then after they had
made
a satellite of the country, one cannot but be dumbfounded by the
effrontery of
such a comparison, coming from such a source.

Actually, de Gaulle was more accurate than you think. He had
to fight a very tough politically struggle to convert the Allied
occupation of France into a liberation, and it was not thanks to
the Americans that he succeeded. If it had been left to Washington,
France would have been run by the AMGOT, the Allied Military
Government of the Occupied Territories, with Eisenhower as
generallissimo. While CDG could be a terrible nuisance, and
was no doubt embittered by the unfair treatment he received
from FDR, his achievement in rebuilding France as a nation was
remarkable and he did it despite the opposition of his Allies.
If Iraq had a de Gaulle now (instead of, at best, a Giraud) I would
be a lot less worried.

CdG was given an "army", supplies, etc, and was allowed to
"liberate" Paris at the cost of US lives. If we had wanted
France we would still have it. Obviously we saw that France,
and the rest of Europe, was simply not worth the trouble.

Or do you really think that France could have defeated the US?

That is truly a fantasy.

Al Minyard