Some Liberal Meanderings on the Berkeley city council resolution to keep the US Marine Corps from recruiting inside the city limits:
The Berkeley City Council won't accomplish it's goal of keeping the Marine recruiters out of the city, but the protests will make the US look a bit less, how should I put it..... less Nazi-ish in the view of other nations. I hear it from Europeans, from Asians, and - big surprise from Middle Easterners, we have a big problem with image. Foreign folks love to compare our fearless President's behavior to that of Adolf Hitler. Many have come to see us all as unfeeling, unstoppable marching minions of Bush.
The general consensus outside our borders is that we have gone off of the deep end in search for cheap oil, and we don't care what excuses we use to get it. The most common excuses we use are we that we are "Defending Freedom", or "Spreading Democracy". To the outside however, it appears to be a clear case of "Defending the Supply Chain" and "Spreading Boreholes".
Why do you suppose we have a naval presence in the Persian Gulf that plays tag with Iranian speedboats? Are our ships "Defending our Freedom"? Or "Spreading Democracy". Uh... No. They are maintaining security for the passage of Supertankers.
So when you are disgusted at the sight of a bunch of pink clad young people waving signs and behaving like infants, take a moment to thank your lucky stars that these folks are out there. Pray that video of their misguided antics makes the rounds in the international community. They are one of the few things that can show the world that we are not a monolithic block of oil grubbing sadistic mercenaries. Them and Brittany Spears, of course.
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3 comments:
The Europeans believe what they want to believe and no number of "pink clad young people waving signs and behaving like infants" is going to deter them from it.
My question is...why do you care what the Europeans think about us?
The ironic thing about the Berkely "protests" is that those Marines...every last one of them...would die to protect the right of those pink-clad nut bags to protest them.
Some people just have no understanding of the concept of "honor."
I care what the Europeans think about us because I see that the public goodwill for the American Soldier earned in WWI and WWII as Liberator and Protector has been destroyed in half a decade.
Swaggering foreign policy mis-statements like our President's premature "mission accomplished" and his boasting "bring it on" quotes accompanied by extraordinary renditions, torture and the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan are in stark contrast to the earnest sacrifice showed by the US in the European conflicts.
I have walked the fields of Flanders, where many of our Nations Sons lie yet undiscovered in the ropey mud. I have stood at the gates an American Military Cemetery in Europe and was struck with how the selfless sacrifices of those young men so long ago set in stone the view of the Noble American Soldier in the eyes of the European Citizen.
The current World War is a mixed idealogical/guerrilla battle, where the front lines are our public spaces. In this war, I fear the stakes are higher than in World War I or World War II. As a Western Nation at war, we desperately need the European citizens to be our allies.
"Many have come to see us all as unfeeling, unstoppable marching minions of Bush."
...and the wildly diverse press over there has helped them gain that accurate perspective, no?
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