Posted by: Cristobo Carrín
How disappointing - 11/06/04 02:12 PM
It is disappointing. Soon or late (in fact, sooner than later) you find the damned gap! I know, I know, in debates about how beautiful monuments are, you can keep manners; but damn, just as politics are involved, everything gets upside down in a twinkling of an eye!
We all like travelling, we all like nice views, yummy food and exotical traditions, and yeah, I guess this Madridman site is about travels, mostly. But I would like to see for once, only once, someone being able to understand the mindset of the "other side". I for one am quite fedup of being labelled "US-hater" of "far leftist" for holding some opinions that it took me a long time of reading and thinking to shape.
It is a pity that MM locked the Florida Ballots thread, just when I was starting to agree on some of the things that the Americans were writing. I don`t see the Grenada incident as some shameful imperialist action, but rather as the American version of the Perejil ("Parsley island") incident. And yeah, I see now (I didn`t know a word of it) that locals had called for help. All right, I guess.
I am also happy that the UK won the Falkands island war. It is good that they won, since they didn`t start it. It is good, also, because the final defeat of Argentina helped to kick the military regime out of power. If the US had necessarily to take part in the war, I guess they had to stand on the British side, although sure our American friends will agree that the US would never, in one million years, have helped any country against the UK. You know just as good as I do, that this will never happen.
I would like to state, for the record, that the UK covered itself in dishonor during that short war. Public opinion, especially certain tabloids, ran into a frantic rally of filthy jingoism. The Americans, as far as I know, have never displayed such a disgusting reaction against an enemy. I have always seen the Americans as noble people, and nothing in the horrible events of these latter years has made me change my mind. I may dislike the foreign policy of your government, but it is completely obvious that your public opinion believes all the time that you have good reasons to do what you do.
"In 1982, the UK sank a ship carrying 1200 naval conscripts in a fight over two rocks the British had forgotten they had.
The ship in question, the Belgrano, was so old that it was to be turned into a museum at the end of the year; was armed with a single gun with a 14-mile range as against the 20-mile range of guns on British warships; and was sunk without warning, without declaration of war, in international waters, with two torpedoes from a nuclear submarine, while heading back to Argentina. The officer responsible for the sinking, Capt. Wreford-Browne, returned to Britain as a "war hero", and was rewarded with a medal.
"DID 1200 ARGIES DROWN?" "GOTCHA!" [headlines in British tabloid press, i.e., The Sun, etc..]
Prior to this incident, in which 366 Argentinans were burned alive or drowned, not a single British subject had yet been killed, because the Argentinans took the Falklands by firing their weapons in the air after 17 years of negotiations, although they were killed by the dozens in so doing (source of information: Financial Times, 2 April 1982. Other sources dispute this, and maintain that only one Argentinan was killed. What is beyond dispute is that no British subjects had yet been killed)"
Really, I don`t imagine anything remotely like THIS being carried out by the American army or the American public.
We all like travelling, we all like nice views, yummy food and exotical traditions, and yeah, I guess this Madridman site is about travels, mostly. But I would like to see for once, only once, someone being able to understand the mindset of the "other side". I for one am quite fedup of being labelled "US-hater" of "far leftist" for holding some opinions that it took me a long time of reading and thinking to shape.
It is a pity that MM locked the Florida Ballots thread, just when I was starting to agree on some of the things that the Americans were writing. I don`t see the Grenada incident as some shameful imperialist action, but rather as the American version of the Perejil ("Parsley island") incident. And yeah, I see now (I didn`t know a word of it) that locals had called for help. All right, I guess.
I am also happy that the UK won the Falkands island war. It is good that they won, since they didn`t start it. It is good, also, because the final defeat of Argentina helped to kick the military regime out of power. If the US had necessarily to take part in the war, I guess they had to stand on the British side, although sure our American friends will agree that the US would never, in one million years, have helped any country against the UK. You know just as good as I do, that this will never happen.
I would like to state, for the record, that the UK covered itself in dishonor during that short war. Public opinion, especially certain tabloids, ran into a frantic rally of filthy jingoism. The Americans, as far as I know, have never displayed such a disgusting reaction against an enemy. I have always seen the Americans as noble people, and nothing in the horrible events of these latter years has made me change my mind. I may dislike the foreign policy of your government, but it is completely obvious that your public opinion believes all the time that you have good reasons to do what you do.
"In 1982, the UK sank a ship carrying 1200 naval conscripts in a fight over two rocks the British had forgotten they had.
The ship in question, the Belgrano, was so old that it was to be turned into a museum at the end of the year; was armed with a single gun with a 14-mile range as against the 20-mile range of guns on British warships; and was sunk without warning, without declaration of war, in international waters, with two torpedoes from a nuclear submarine, while heading back to Argentina. The officer responsible for the sinking, Capt. Wreford-Browne, returned to Britain as a "war hero", and was rewarded with a medal.
"DID 1200 ARGIES DROWN?" "GOTCHA!" [headlines in British tabloid press, i.e., The Sun, etc..]
Prior to this incident, in which 366 Argentinans were burned alive or drowned, not a single British subject had yet been killed, because the Argentinans took the Falklands by firing their weapons in the air after 17 years of negotiations, although they were killed by the dozens in so doing (source of information: Financial Times, 2 April 1982. Other sources dispute this, and maintain that only one Argentinan was killed. What is beyond dispute is that no British subjects had yet been killed)"
Really, I don`t imagine anything remotely like THIS being carried out by the American army or the American public.