America and England: true love?
 

Yesterday I posted on some other forum in the OT zone (the place where normal things don't happen very often), something I don't do that often. What triggered my response was something written by an U.S. citizen on when the next world war will start.

Of course, this is a pure theoretically subject, but someone made a pretty decent argument that an escalated indian/pakistan issue (not that unlikely) could force china to intervene (not that unlikely either).

This "bloke" responded that that would never happen, since the U.S. would take a side and no one would dare oppose the U.S.. Well, I never thought too highly about the american school system, but what he said next made me shiver: he found it more likely (compared to above example) that the next ww would be between the U.S./G.B. and Europa/Russia!

Ahem.

Well, obviously I'm missing his joke here, since he couldn't possibly mean something like that seriously (my former roommate is in the states now at some university, the emails she writes are really, really disturbing...) but it made me wonder: of course everybody and his mother suspects that blair is actually G.W.'s lackey, but I suppose the english people still fancy europeans more than the american people. The dislike of the E.U. is obvious, but I thought that it'd end there. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[shabba]

P.S. No offence intended towards our intelligent american member, their response is more than appreciated.

ah, I think Americans on average are smart, but instilled with a 'we are the center of the universe, God's own country, the best of the best, Heil America (Canada beware, we will annex you, smae as Mexico)' feeling throguhout their kindergarten, school and college time that it really is hard for them to see the US as a normal country among others.

I have found that many quiet Americans feel Bush atm is making the not-so-absurd notion that the US is a bully come true for the rest of the world - but people who feel like that usually lie low in the US.


So, there is no surprise if they totally misunderstand the love/hate relation between England and the rest of Europe - and how no British citizen would be so dumb as to subjugate his will to (that is a quote) 'hamburger munching degenerates who got kicked out of all proper countries in the world'....

I saw a newsitem last tuesday about soldier wives and that they were wondering wtf they we're doing in iraq. So luckily they're not that silent.

And I've no doubt that there are very smart people in the states. I think the 'premium' universities are of a very high standard. My roommate (as a clarification, my roommate in the room where I'm working at the university) is at the university of Delaware atm, and she has attended some courses on 'Western European Politics', and even the professors there have a strange, tainted view on Europe.

Well, I'll probably have the same strange, tainted view on the US...

well, Shabba, as opposed to most Americans, for you or me it involves only a short drive to leave our home countires - for many Americans, it takes a far longer drive just to leave their state...... If you have no contact with different cultures at all - how can you even imagine some being different without fitting the TV image?

Some people (including myself) would argue that a there has been a third and currently a fourth world war: the third ocurried during what the western world was engaged in the so-called "cold war" The States and the U.S.S.R. where at war and the "third world" was the wargrounds, hence Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, Afganistan... That war ended with the subsequent fall of the U.S.S.R. and the emergence of the States as the first world power. The fourth and current world war is this whole globalization crap where the targets are cultures not in-line with western society and it's values: "liberty, equality and democracy" Or as I like to say it: Liberty to screw whoever country they can, equality amongst themselves and democracy as the retoric to enforce it. And there you have the entire "with us or against us" policy of that fuckball Bush; you either support our world view or you die, end of story. When Mexico decided to vote against the war in Iraq in the Security Council we got screwed economically, politically and of course the border thing got sour.
The States have already anexed more than half of our territory; culturally they've anexed the entire elite ...Mexico is an efective colony, welcome to globalization... and then they have the cojones to push for the "Free trade zone of the Americas"!?! they have some fucking nerve!

Hmmm... lotsa steam there, but this does have a point... there have been, in my view, three world wars, and we are currently engaged in a fourth.

Well, no doubt that the cold war is a war, but that's not the kind of war I'm really afraid of. That view doesn't do right to the millions of casualties in both the first and second world war.

Killer, you're right, but that's still their own choice. I can have a proper view on america without even been there (of course, that's a weak spot...), so could they vice versa.

I think part of the problem is that the USA does not 'import' cultural things from other countries like other countries are forced to do with the USA.

Many of us know about the USA's foreign policy because they enforce it wherever they like. We know about what they do in many other ways because of American TV that is beamed around the world. We are forced in to stupid and damaging (to us) trade agreements because they are the largest (and only super-) power in the world.

The next world war may not be in the USA, but it will be started by them, of that I am sure. Maybe World Wars can't even happen anymore - I think EA's comments (and the recent wars in the Middle East) demonstrate that the USA feels it doesn't need to consult the rest of the world or get them on side in these arguments. You can see how many countries roll over when the economic embargos and the briberies start piling in from the USA.

Hmm, I guess the only real chance of a true World War is if the whole muslim/arab world unites against the USA, and I think that this is definitely a possibility that should be considered. The "war on terrorism" seems to be the only excuse the USA needs to openly flaunt the Geneva Convention on human rights and attack and kill and imprison whoever they want. This can only escalate tension in the arab/muslim world, and even if the USA doesn't directly initiate it we could see terrorist nuclear attacks happening in the USA, and then the Middle East.

In summary: we're fucked, so enjoy it while it lasts!

You know, the U.S. doesn't have to stay number 1. They aren't the economic powerhouse they once were. Of course, this might trigger war in itself...

Except Nutella, mmmmm Nutella, though I am not sure where the ‘forced’ part comes into play.

On topic I think it likely that the next WW will be fought in the middle of the EurAsian zone. Current best candidate for fire starter is definitely India/Pakistan, and they have a few small nukes too! Could be lots of fun. But there is also allot of tension in the southern and eastern former USSR, not to mention Iran, Iraq, Turkey, etc. It may well be that the US will play only a peripheral roll in the next WW, it would take a serious Islamic alliance to bring a large number of US troops into that sort of conflict. I don’t think the cohesion exists among them now, and it would probably take a generation or three for it to develop.

The US will be fine if we can get stupid buttholes like Shrub out of the white house. As long as we don’t get into religious mode, like that arse Boykin’s, and see the world as an opportunity for a holy war.

Edit - in some ways Africa has been in the middle of a WW for quite a while now. Just doesn't rate the same attention as the rest of the world.

Made me think, too.
But then again, along w/ Cuba etc, Germany is in the axis of weasel and France is even worse. A government that doesn't officially support US foreign policy seems to be regarded as potential foe... there you have Europe as foe image. Just look at Killer's sig which says basically "Every country has to decide: Either be on our side or..."
Propaganda is a powerful tool to polarise the folks.
Btw, recent polls show decreasing support for the 'anti-terrorism' war in Iraq, strange - an at least 5 years old video showing cruel police methods is *somehow* making its way to the editorial department of that Faux organ.