Farren

I noticed a miscronstructed sentence in my earlier post and the edit limit is expired:

1a. the US spends less per capita on aid than any other developed nation.

1b. US aid is _invariably_ conditional on a favourable environment for US business. European aid is _sometimes_ conditional on good governance and accountability.

Vorkosigan

LOL. Farren, when it comes to aid, Europeans are pretty much as venal as Americans are.

When it comes to aircraft too. Perhaps you didn't read the letter Airbus sent to Taiwan last year when they and Boeing were fighting over the aircraft sales here, and Airbus threatened Taiwan's future relations with Europe. Over a lousy 6 aircraft.

And let's not forget that Europe is always ready to bend-and-spread'em for China. When the Europeans gave President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan a human rights award, they refused to give him a visa out of fear of offending China. Also, can you point out to me the European aircraft carriers that stood off the coast of Taiwan during the 1996 missile tests that threatened Taiwan? Probably, with the French so busy pursuing their "special relationship" with China, they must have forgotten to send them.

I don't mind Europeans hacking on the US for our venal foreign policy. What pisses me off is when they do it while trying to pretend that they are not as venal as we are.

5.The US used WWII as an excuse to test nuclear weapons "in the field" on an enemy already ready to surrender.

It always amazes me when left-wingers adopt the views of the Japanese facist right.

Vorkosigan

Ut

Of course. You'd get the same opposition if you asked: "Are you in favor of military action against Kazakstan?" or against Cuba, or against Egypt, or against Guatemala.

It is not really surprising that Europeans are not in favor of randomly attacking foreign nations. They're in favor of attacking when there is a genuine casus belli, like when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

leonarde

Partial post:Do you really think that the US and UK and Spain and Turkey and (possibly)Australia are on course to "randomly" attack a country????? If so, you must have a (sub)definition of "random" which is not part of my lexicon. Iraq, after losing a war to a UN-endorsed coalition agreed to abide by resolution 687 which stipulates that they are....heck, read it yourself:Above partial timetable from:
http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynami...ologyframe.htm

Yet, 12 years later, we required just a couple months ago a NEW RESOLUTION (1441) essentially saying the same thing. Again, this wasn't just some pie-in-the-sky resolution: it was part and parcel of a war-ending ceasefire . When country X violates repeatedly a crucial element of the very ceasefire it signed at the end of a war, that isn't merely a causus belli ; it is de facto war itself.

Cheers!

Ut

Spare your saliva, I was only replying to this claim of yours:

Is it so surprising that they wouldn't agree to attacking a nation randomly substituted to X? I took it as obvious that 'X' could mean any nation chosen by any random criteria by the one asking the question, not simply Iraq.

leonarde

Yes, but you missed my point: I was comparing a (proposed) NON-random invasion (that of Iraq) with a (notional)truly random invasion (country X) and observing that there probably wouldn't be much of a percentile difference (at least in the case of a nation like Spain).
But there should be logically a (VERY VERY) big difference between public reactions to proposals to invade a truly randomly-selected nation and reactions by the same populations to invade a nation with the recent history (of invading its neighbors and of violating the ceasefire provisions I referred to)of Iraq. YES, that IS surprising . And
quite disappointing....

Cheers!

azidhak

All this french and german-bashing because they're not "with you". They're with you: they're with Tim Robbins and Madonna. Compare Madonna to George W. Bush: Who would you rather be with? By the way August: FYI Norway had a quite effectice resistance movement thank-you-very-much.
Haakon

sullster

What a bunch of leftist drivel.

The US did not demand "reparations" from it's Allies. That is one of the most ridiculous statements ever. The US gave the USSR thousands of trucks, tanks, ammunition. The Russians did most of the fighting and dying and ripped the guts out the Kraut armies, I readily admit. The US gave England ships and enormous economic aid.

Don't give this about the US entering the war "at the last minute". It was bloody Europeans who were doing their best to kill eachother off which led to the conditions where the US was drawn into the war. Hitler declared war on the US, for crying out loud.

Yes, there were Nazi Sympathisers in the US. Big deal. I am sure that South Africa was full of Nazis.

Finally, what unmitigated nonsense to make the use of the Atomic bomb on Japan as test "in the field". The racist imperialist Japanese had fought a horrendous war of aggression in the Pacific and were fighting to the death on the last islands before Japan.

Amen-Moses

Actually WWII bankrupted several countries well before the US entered the arena purely because the US extracted extortionate prices for goods sold to them. There wasn't any charity at all until the US government realised that noone had any money left to spend!

After that the "payment" was extracted in promises of trade agreements and "repositioning" colonial areas after the war.

If the US had stopped trading with Japan and Germany in 1938 the outcome may have been very different!

Please also remember what the US got out of the war - technology, especially in advanced engines, radar, sonar, communications, rockets, computers etc. With all that free technology and the large influx of scientists from Europe the US came out as the only real winner in the whole war.


Amen-Moses

Happy Wonderer

Actually, no and this suprised me as well since it is not well-covered in most history books that I have read. (Remember, though, that "Lend/Lease" doesn't have "give" anywhere in the title.) The US sold the USSR thousands of trucks, tanks, ammunition, rail cars, etc. What really surprised the heck out of me is that the USSR actually paid us something eventually (about 1/3 of the value we claimed.) This is kind of amazing considering how frosty our relations were at the end of the war.

We also held the UK to the contracts, as Amen-Moses points out.

This doesn't take away from the heroism of those who shipped the goods to the USSR in one of the most dangerous and unglorious jobs of the war.

(I wonder if we charged the Russians for what we shipped them, or what they actually recieved. The Germans were pretty efficient at sinking those convoys.)


HW