Daniel J. Morlan wrote:

I'm hearing a lot of news with a certain spin that can only come from a
genuine dislike of America. It's subtle, of course, but you have
opinionists from Radio Netherlands for example, comparing George W. Bush,
Condoleeza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld to Hitler, Himmler, and Goebells.


They didn't make this comparison and explicitly said that. Twice. He (Robert
or Richard Green, not sure which) said that we don't need to hear about the
personal lives of public figures. This was about the controversial Hitler
movie that shows his "human side" - playing right now in Germany. He only
introduced the others to make the same point. It makes no difference to
anyone if George Bush, Tony Blair or Donald Rumsfeld pat their dogs, tell
jokes to children or whatever. He was decrying the tendency to make
celebrity out of politicians and leaders. As if we need to know.

As for America bashing on the world stage, the unilateralism of the USA
during Bush Jr's first term was sufficient to justify it. That "New
American Century" stuff. He's changing this during his second term, but
there's a lot of damage to repair on the world scene. I know half perhaps
of Americans don't care about world opinion (given your past election's
voting patterns), but there you are. And I know that Sept 11 attacks are a
defining moment in your country,taken to justify subsequent decisions,
policy and military intervention. The Sept 11 attacks are taken in context
by the rest of the world and not as an aberration,whether that is right or
wrong is another question. They are seeing things differently. What I
like about SW is i get to understand how others think and feel, whether I
agree or disagree.



They obviously cite our pre-emptive war in Iraq, and our war on terror as
a logical means to make these comparisons, yet...

They never mention or debate the justification that the insurgency (I hate
to use that word, because a true insurgency has real numbers behind it.
What these people lack in numbers, they make up for in sheer brutality,
and unrestrained terror.)

The way these news organizations display the situation is that everything
was just fine in Iraq, we went there, and since being there, there's been
nothing but an orgy of destruction.



There is progress being made, and we can debate the war 24/7 if it suits
someone, but the intellectual dishonesty and abusive rhetoric has the
potential to do a lot more damage to international goodwill between Europe
and the U.S. and might eventually be planting the seeds of an alliance
against us.

I'll use Europe giving the Chinese weapons and technology as an example...

Just don't think the TRUTH is being sought, is all. I reserve the right
to be wrong, but I don't know why our credit rating is so bad with the
PEOPLE
of Europe. I can only think that would happen because of a propaganda
machine.

DJM