[quote]1-packlondoner wrote:
It’s not so much that we accuse you of empire-building but rather, like an elder brother, we know all the reprehensible mistakes we made in our past and comment on you guys doing exactly the same thing in a hope that you will learn from them.
And just like a younger brother you dismiss us out of hand, lock yourself in your bedroom and listen to angsty guitar rock, determined to make and learn from your OWN mistakes.
Those who forget the lessons of history are destined to repeat them.
And for the record, you ARE a young country. There’s nothing wrong with that. Why would you consider that an issue?
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As to your first point, trying to compare the nineteenth century British Empire to the United States circa now is easily disproved. Look at a map.
The Brits, with far less relative power, CONQUERED vast sections of the globe. Just off the top of my head, British troops occupied and British government controlled India, much of coastal Africa including South Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, a large chunk of the Arabian Peninsula, Ireland, Canada, chunks of China, Australia, colonies in South America, and dozens of islands in between. If the British had enjoyed an economy bigger than the next several powers combined, a military which could defeat the next several powers combined, and huge natural resources and population, it would be safe to say that the rest of the world would have been singing “God Save the Queen” at the business end of a bayonet.
While the United States maintains bases and troops in different countries around the world, I don’t think anyone could seriously argue that Japan, Germany, South Korea, Italy, or the UK are somehow “subject nations”.
To repeat the mistakes of the British Empire… for all the good that the Empire did (and I believe they actually did far more good than harm in the long run), if we REALLY want to start listing the differences between the American approach and the British approach I guess we could. I’ll start! When Britain faced a low-level rebellion in Iraq in the last century, their response was to send up their planes and deliberately target civilians with bombing attacks. They also employed massive brutality, not the Abu-Ghraib-naked-pictures variety, but the cut-off-your-balls-ears- and-tongue variety that was employed throughout the disintigrating empire (for an i.e. ask the Kenyans).
So forgive us if we don’t think you’re the right guys to be giving lessons on “how to do it” in a condescending manner. You may be Greece but we are certainly no Rome.
As to your second point, there was nothing remotely resembling a modern German state until our country was a century old (1870’s). There may have been Saxons and Wurtemburgers, but no “Germans”. Since unification, they have tried a military-industrial oligarchy, a weak federal state, a brutal dictatorship, and then split between representative government and communism 50/50. Now their nation is fifteen years into having a representative government. Big deal.
“Germany” as a nation as we would recognize it has what – about fifteen in its current form, maybe 50 VERY shaky years total years of unity? We’ve had continuous unbroken national, state, and local elections as the United States of America for about 217 years. Same constitution, same government, same us.
So yes, we think it’s strange to hear the Germans, the French, the Italians, etc. call our nation “young”. They make fun of us as “stupid” too, but don’t realize how “stupid” not knowing their own history is.
