Its been a while since the last blog as I am ridiculously busy with university work. Anyway, just to keep the raving masses at bay, I'll chuck in something that I found very funny and very, well, right.

Here's the story: The Inquirer published a story that took a jab at Dubya and the Americans. They got this reply from an angry redneck reader:

The folks in Europe should be damn happy that the U.S. is willing to protect your asses from the many rogue nations who can reach your country with missiles. When the time comes to prove our mettle - and it will, the U.S. will stand and fight to protect the world as we have done for centuries, unlike the rest of the western nations who pander to political agendas.

A European reader (I assume he's British) replies:

I wonder idly, just which are those "rogue nations" that "can reach your country with missiles"? Most of the "rogue nations" denounced by the US administration are conspicuous by their lack of missiles. The "Axis of Evil" - from memory, Iran, Libya, and North Korea - don't have a single ICBM between them. Nor, AFAIK, a single functioning nuclear "device". On the other hand Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and France have nuclear weapons and missiles. Which of them is a "rogue nation" in the eyes of Americans? Oh, and which is the only nation that has ever used nuclear weapons on another country's civilians?

I wonder, if push came to shove and someone decided to turn these isles of ours into smoking ruins, if the Americans would really lift a finger to stop them? Especially if that involved risking any of their own tender pink skin.

They certainly didn't lift a finger to help us fight Hitler and Mussolini, until those blokes declared war on them... two years, three months, and a few days after the real war got under way. They looked on calmly (and safely) through Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the evacuation of Greece and Crete, and the invasion of the USSR.

I wonder how many Americans nowadays know that:

1. The USA remained neutral for the first 27 months of the great war against Fascism.

2. The USA did not enter the war until the Japanese sank its fleet at Pearl Harbor, and Hitler personally declared war on it. After those events, they were at war whether they liked it or not.

3. Britain paid in full for everything the USA sent to support the war effort - even the retired WW1 destroyers that the US Navy didn't think were good enough to send its own sailors to sea in. Actually, we finished paying either last year or this year, depending on which government department you believe.

It was interesting to hear Randy tell us how the USA has protected the world "for centuries". Hmmm, that would be all two and a quarter centuries, since it came into existence. In the 20th century, the USA protected about 25 nations - for instance by killing 3 million people in South-East Asia, and bombing more countries than the Luftwaffe did in 1939-45. It also protected the Philippines, where its forces killed only about a quarter of a million people while liberating them from the Spanish (who had actually left some time before).

How about the 19th century? There was the protection of the Native Americans, which reduced their numbers by over 99 percent and caused them generously to hand over all their land to the USA. There was the protection of Texas, California, and what are now several other states of the USA, which were forcibly stolen from Mexico against the wishes of their Mexican inhabitants. Then there was the invasion of Mexico itself, which led General Grant to say: "The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times".

All this was admirably summed up by H. L. Mencken (himself an American):

"All [of the Americans’] foreign wars have been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily engaged elsewhere to make more than a half-hearted attempt. The combats with Mexico and Spain were not wars; they were simply lynchings".

Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35261