Drivel from the loony left...

[url]http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/05/08/do0801.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2003/05/08/ixopinion.html[/url]

I loathe America, and what it has done to the rest of the world

By Margaret Drabble
(Filed: 08/05/2003)

I knew that the wave of anti-Americanism that would swell up after the Iraq war would make me feel ill. And it has. It has made me much, much more ill than I had expected.

My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world.

I can hardly bear to see the faces of Bush and Rumsfeld, or to watch their posturing body language, or to hear their self-satisfied and incoherent platitudes. The liberal press here has done its best to make them appear ridiculous, but these two men are not funny.

I was tipped into uncontainable rage by a report on Channel 4 News about "friendly fire", which included footage of what must have been one of the most horrific bombardments ever filmed. But what struck home hardest was the subsequent image, of a row of American warplanes, with grinning cartoon faces painted on their noses. Cartoon faces, with big sharp teeth.

It is grotesque. It is hideous. This great and powerful nation bombs foreign cities and the people in those cities from Disneyland cartoon planes out of comic strips. This is simply not possible. And yet, there they were.

Others have written eloquently about the euphemistic and affectionate names that the Americans give to their weapons of mass destruction: Big Boy, Little Boy, Daisy Cutter, and so forth.

We are accustomed to these sobriquets; to phrases such as "collateral damage" and "friendly fire" and "pre-emptive strikes". We have almost ceased to notice when suicide bombers are described as "cowards". The abuse of language is part of warfare. Long ago, Voltaire told us that we invent words to conceal truths. More recently, Orwell pointed out to us the dangers of Newspeak.

But there was something about those playfully grinning warplane faces that went beyond deception and distortion into the land of madness. A nation that can allow those faces to be painted as an image on its national aeroplanes has regressed into unimaginable irresponsibility. A nation that can paint those faces on death machines must be insane.

There, I have said it. I have tried to control my anti-Americanism, remembering the many Americans that I know and respect, but I can't keep it down any longer. I detest Disneyfication, I detest Coca-Cola, I detest burgers, I detest sentimental and violent Hollywood movies that tell lies about history.

I detest American imperialism, American infantilism, and American triumphalism about victories it didn't even win.

On April 29, 2000, I switched on CNN in my hotel room and, by chance, saw an item designed to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war. The camera showed us a street scene in which a shabby elderly Vietnamese man was seen speaking English and bartering in dollars in a city that I took to be Ho Chi Minh City, still familiarly known in America by its old French colonial name of Saigon.

"The language of Shakespeare," the commentator intoned, "has conquered Vietnam." I did not note down the dialogue, though I can vouch for that sentence about the language of Shakespeare. But the word "dollar" was certainly repeated several times, and the implications of what the camera showed were clear enough.

The elderly Vietnamese man was impoverished, and he wanted hard currency. The Vietnamese had won the war, but had lost the peace.

Just leave Shakespeare and Shakespeare's homeland out of this squalid bit of revisionism, I thought at the time. Little did I then think that now, three years on, Shakespeare's country would have been dragged by our leader into this illegal, unjustifiable, aggressive war. We are all contaminated by it. Not in my name, I want to keep repeating, though I don't suppose anybody will listen.

America uses the word "democracy" as its battle cry, and its nervous soldiers gun down Iraqi civilians when they try to hold street demonstrations to protest against the invasion of their country. So much for democracy. (At least the British Army is better trained.)

America is one of the few countries in the world that executes minors. Well, it doesn't really execute them - it just keeps them in jail for years and years until they are old enough to execute, and then it executes them. It administers drugs to mentally disturbed prisoners on Death Row until they are back in their right mind, and then it executes them, too.

They call this justice and the rule of law. America is holding more than 600 people in detention in Guantánamo Bay, indefinitely, and it may well hold them there for ever. Guantánamo Bay has become the Bastille of America. They call this serving the cause of democracy and freedom.

I keep writing to Jack Straw about the so-called "illegal combatants", including minors, who are detained there without charge or trial or access to lawyers, and I shall go on writing to him and his successors until something happens. This one-way correspondence may last my lifetime. I suppose the minors won't be minors for long, although the youngest of them is only 13, so in time I shall have to drop that part of my objection, but I shall continue to protest.

A great democratic nation cannot behave in this manner. But it does. I keep remembering those words from Nineteen Eighty-Four, on the dynamics of history at the end of history, when O'Brien tells Winston: "Always there will be the intoxication of power… Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever."

We have seen enough boots in the past few months to last us a lifetime. Iraqi boots, American boots, British boots. Enough of boots.

I hate feeling this hatred. I have to keep reminding myself that if Bush hadn't been (so narrowly) elected, we wouldn't be here, and none of this would have happened. There is another America. Long live the other America, and may this one pass away soon.

I read that a couple days ago.  What a dumb fucking cunt.  I especially love this part:



Were we insane when the Army Air Force painted shark mouths on the Flying Tigers to defend China from the rapacious Japanese?  Or to protect American bombers that struck at Nazi Germany?

This bitch is completely consumed by irrational hatred.  Talking about imperialism for what we have done in the last two years, compared to the centuries of authentic imperialism of Great Britain, waging wars for the commercial interests of opium merchants in the 1800's.....there's your legacy of Great Britain.  Who does she think she is, as if her country is somehow morally superior?

This trashy slag is on the cusp of full blown mental illness.  These types have major problems to be so hateful, personality disorders and other psychiatric problems.

Thank you Raven for saying it for me..
> Were we insane when the Army Air Force
> painted shark mouths on the Flying Tigers to
> defend China from the rapacious Japanese? Or
> to protect American bombers that struck at
> Nazi Germany?

I'd be very surprised if the RAF planes out there werent similarly painted up.

No mention of Churchill wanting to gas the rebellious Kurds...

I dont know, some of the people in my country really worry me.

/Phil

My granddad flew B52s before retiring from the Airforce. In the history of the B-52, I only know of 2 that ever had shark teeth painted on the front of them. Of those 2, only 1 flew a mission with that paint scheme, and that 1 was painted by my dad when he was in the Airforce.

Don't let America's doors hit you in the ass!

why bother reading cowshit like that?  who the fuck is she that we should bother reading her shit?  fuck her. and the parents that brought her into this world.

that brit would be a nazi bootlicker if it wan't for America.

And how many folks in mass graves does she deem acceptable before something was done in IRAQ?

TXL

Well, it's probably a big waste, but I couldn't let this one go without a response:

Good response Marv.


As for this stupid... *cough*... I think we all know the worst thing America has done to the rest of the world is introduced pop music to it.  I see why a lot of people hate us...

So, she finds the American justice code inhumane?  Why is she so outraged and hateful towards us, but not say, Saddam?  Would she say Iraq's regime is more humane?  She finds Disneyland and Coca-Cola repellent but not Saddam's brutal tyranny and 80 gaudy palaces?  His Orwellian portraits on every street corner and office?

Guantanamo the Bastille of America? LMAO. This woman is clearly unhinged.  I only wish America as it is now was the most evil, unjust, mad, violent and dangerous country in the world.  

no doubt, she has procreated and in doing so, created generation two of Euro-morons.

All I can say is, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, bud.  We don't want you and we don't need you.

You don't like america, fuck off and go live in china or mexico.

She's a foreigner, if you didn't know.

I find it amazing the author doesn't also detest the concept of protection of free speech, and what was done to insure it!

Margaret [s]Drabble[/s] Dribble must have "Mad Cow Disease".

She's just another commie pining for the good ol' days of Stalin's Gulags and Mao's re-education camps.

[hail2]  nice job, i was going to e-mail but you took care of it
 the Flying Tigers came to mind for me too

HELL,  I'm sure RAF pilots had stuff painted on their Spitfires & hurricanes durin the battle of Britian.

who is this friggin [b]MORON[/b] anyway ??

that was a British paper right ?
so she a whiney Eurowench ???

That was great.

SG

Since she doesn't like it here....She can pack her bags and leave.