G
Guest
Guest
Dear DB
I read your piece on 11th September with great interest. I am English by birth and live in New Zealand, from where I followed the news on that awful day. A week later, I was in Singapore and Indonesia on business, where I also got the local 'take' on events.
Your suggestion that it is 'fashionable' to hate America has a small measure of truth in it, but I think your anaysis of the reasons why does not go nearly deep enough. If you look back through history, you will find that dominant empires (Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine, Hun and British, to name but five) were always feared and hated either by their neighbours or those whom they controlled. At the same time, the ruling states could often only see the benefits they were bringing - of course they acted arrogantly and fiercely, but they were imposing order, building roads, making trade safe, increasing wealth. All these were positive benefits, surely? Well, of course they were, but they also had the impact of keeping the ruling state on top.
Today, the USA is the dominant empire and has been for the past century. You may not call it an empire but an empire it is, spread by language, culture and product marketing, dominated by investment and ownership of multinational corporations and enforced by a self-serving foreign policy (like all countries') which masquerades as a 'united effort' by virtue of paying lip service to the United Nations and having a tame British governement still believing in a 'special relationship.' You commented that "Perhaps there are people who don't like the method in which we go about maintaining world order or the ways we go about it". I do not claim to be a political analyst, but could I perhaps suggest that no-one has ever asked the USA to maintain "world order", and that in any case the USA only seems to be concerned about maintaining world order when its own interests are threatened - the middle east being a prime example. As for the methods (leaving out the tendency of the Nixon/Kissinger years to go around the world toppling democratically elected governments because the people had elected the 'wrong' one), it is very noticeable from this side of the planet that the US seems to have developed the concept that a war can be fought without casualties - American casualties, that is. The fuss caused over the death in 'combat' over one US soldier is very obvious, while hundreds or even thousands of less well-equipped people can be killed - many of them totally innocent - without the American people seeming to care.
I say 'seeming' because, just as you have discovered that there are people in Canada, so those of us in the rest of the world know that there are many intelligent, sensitive, witty, amusing and thoroughly likeable US citizens. We know because we have met them in the US and in other countries, and because travel really does broaden the mind. The US is not served by its size and by the reluctance of many of its citizens to travel outside its borders, I would suggest.
The other thing the US is not well served by is the collusion between its government and its media. The technique was perfected by Margaret Thatcher during the Falklands War (called 'the Falklands Conflict' until Britain had won it, at which point it became elevated in status and Margaret Thatcher was re-elected). This ensures that correspondents' access to war zones are controlled by the military who will, of course, only find suitable transport for those who will write sympathetically. I know one New Zealand journalist who found it totally impossible to find a place on any of the official transports into Afghanistan because he was not a known quantity to the military's press managers. In the end, he managed to get himself smuggled in by the Mujahadin and was able to visit areas which were not controlled by the US forces showing journalists what they wanted them to see. He saw clear evidence of erratic bombings and innocent deaths, but you wouldn't have read about them in the US papers because your government wouldn't allow reporters into such unsafe' areas. Did you pick up the hint the other day in the story about the Peach video, where a spokesman said 'It is too violent even to be given to the foreign press?
Dear me, I sound like a conspiracy theorist - which is very far from the truth. If anything, I am a historian, and it depresses me to see the same patterns being repeated again. I regret very much that the American people - people whom I admire greatly on an individual level - are often not given sufficient perspective on their own affairs and their place in the world. America has given the world many things, but global democracy and the ability of nations to determne their own affairs is not among them. September 11th was a terrible crime. Terrible crimes happen every day - more of them on the scale of September 11th than you would realise - and of course the perpetrators must be found and care taken to ensure that it doesn't happen again, but creating a whole new generation of martyrs is not going to produce a long term solution (although it may win medals, plaudits and votes at home). Look at Belfast. Look at Germany after World War 1. Look, God help us, at Bosnia and Serbia and so many of the African states. South Africa may not be a paradise right now, but Nelson Mandela's leadership of that country into equality without revenge is a rare act of enlightenment and courage.
One last thought. Microsoft is the company which almost everybody loves to hate. It is hugely impressive, a magnificent performer, has led software development for years and has made global document transfer not just possible but simple through its almost total market dominance. Yet everybody hates it. Are they jealous, or are they frightened? Do they feel that some of their right to choose has been withdrawn from them? Do they feel that the Microsoft way is the way which is being forced on them, like it or not, and that if they are to work with it they must play by Microsoft's rules. Probably all of these things. You understand that in the US - hell, you've been taking anti-trust cases against them for long enough. Well, maybe - just maybe - it would help people in the US to understand just a bit of what many people in the rest of the world feel if you think of the US as our Microsoft.
I hope that this has helped to raise some further thoughts for you. I don't have the answers either, but I'm good at questions. But having been brought up in a UK where generations as recent as my parents still could not really comprehend the dismantling of the old British Empire, I am certain of one thing - Empires don't last forever.
Best wishes
Sally C
paintedl65@hotmail.com
I read your piece on 11th September with great interest. I am English by birth and live in New Zealand, from where I followed the news on that awful day. A week later, I was in Singapore and Indonesia on business, where I also got the local 'take' on events.
Your suggestion that it is 'fashionable' to hate America has a small measure of truth in it, but I think your anaysis of the reasons why does not go nearly deep enough. If you look back through history, you will find that dominant empires (Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine, Hun and British, to name but five) were always feared and hated either by their neighbours or those whom they controlled. At the same time, the ruling states could often only see the benefits they were bringing - of course they acted arrogantly and fiercely, but they were imposing order, building roads, making trade safe, increasing wealth. All these were positive benefits, surely? Well, of course they were, but they also had the impact of keeping the ruling state on top.
Today, the USA is the dominant empire and has been for the past century. You may not call it an empire but an empire it is, spread by language, culture and product marketing, dominated by investment and ownership of multinational corporations and enforced by a self-serving foreign policy (like all countries') which masquerades as a 'united effort' by virtue of paying lip service to the United Nations and having a tame British governement still believing in a 'special relationship.' You commented that "Perhaps there are people who don't like the method in which we go about maintaining world order or the ways we go about it". I do not claim to be a political analyst, but could I perhaps suggest that no-one has ever asked the USA to maintain "world order", and that in any case the USA only seems to be concerned about maintaining world order when its own interests are threatened - the middle east being a prime example. As for the methods (leaving out the tendency of the Nixon/Kissinger years to go around the world toppling democratically elected governments because the people had elected the 'wrong' one), it is very noticeable from this side of the planet that the US seems to have developed the concept that a war can be fought without casualties - American casualties, that is. The fuss caused over the death in 'combat' over one US soldier is very obvious, while hundreds or even thousands of less well-equipped people can be killed - many of them totally innocent - without the American people seeming to care.
I say 'seeming' because, just as you have discovered that there are people in Canada, so those of us in the rest of the world know that there are many intelligent, sensitive, witty, amusing and thoroughly likeable US citizens. We know because we have met them in the US and in other countries, and because travel really does broaden the mind. The US is not served by its size and by the reluctance of many of its citizens to travel outside its borders, I would suggest.
The other thing the US is not well served by is the collusion between its government and its media. The technique was perfected by Margaret Thatcher during the Falklands War (called 'the Falklands Conflict' until Britain had won it, at which point it became elevated in status and Margaret Thatcher was re-elected). This ensures that correspondents' access to war zones are controlled by the military who will, of course, only find suitable transport for those who will write sympathetically. I know one New Zealand journalist who found it totally impossible to find a place on any of the official transports into Afghanistan because he was not a known quantity to the military's press managers. In the end, he managed to get himself smuggled in by the Mujahadin and was able to visit areas which were not controlled by the US forces showing journalists what they wanted them to see. He saw clear evidence of erratic bombings and innocent deaths, but you wouldn't have read about them in the US papers because your government wouldn't allow reporters into such unsafe' areas. Did you pick up the hint the other day in the story about the Peach video, where a spokesman said 'It is too violent even to be given to the foreign press?
Dear me, I sound like a conspiracy theorist - which is very far from the truth. If anything, I am a historian, and it depresses me to see the same patterns being repeated again. I regret very much that the American people - people whom I admire greatly on an individual level - are often not given sufficient perspective on their own affairs and their place in the world. America has given the world many things, but global democracy and the ability of nations to determne their own affairs is not among them. September 11th was a terrible crime. Terrible crimes happen every day - more of them on the scale of September 11th than you would realise - and of course the perpetrators must be found and care taken to ensure that it doesn't happen again, but creating a whole new generation of martyrs is not going to produce a long term solution (although it may win medals, plaudits and votes at home). Look at Belfast. Look at Germany after World War 1. Look, God help us, at Bosnia and Serbia and so many of the African states. South Africa may not be a paradise right now, but Nelson Mandela's leadership of that country into equality without revenge is a rare act of enlightenment and courage.
One last thought. Microsoft is the company which almost everybody loves to hate. It is hugely impressive, a magnificent performer, has led software development for years and has made global document transfer not just possible but simple through its almost total market dominance. Yet everybody hates it. Are they jealous, or are they frightened? Do they feel that some of their right to choose has been withdrawn from them? Do they feel that the Microsoft way is the way which is being forced on them, like it or not, and that if they are to work with it they must play by Microsoft's rules. Probably all of these things. You understand that in the US - hell, you've been taking anti-trust cases against them for long enough. Well, maybe - just maybe - it would help people in the US to understand just a bit of what many people in the rest of the world feel if you think of the US as our Microsoft.
I hope that this has helped to raise some further thoughts for you. I don't have the answers either, but I'm good at questions. But having been brought up in a UK where generations as recent as my parents still could not really comprehend the dismantling of the old British Empire, I am certain of one thing - Empires don't last forever.
Best wishes
Sally C
paintedl65@hotmail.com
