The English arn't all bad

[zenbabe]

I love you Dickie!


When you think about it, maybe we should hear more of this from our own press.......


No matter what your views on President Bush's
statement of upcoming war, this, from an English
journalist, is very interesting. Just a word of
background for those of you who aren't familiar with
the UK's Daily Mirror. This is a notoriously
left-wing daily that is normally not supportive of the
Colonials across the Atlantic.


Tony Parsons ... Daily Mirror ... September 11, 2002

One year ago, the world witnessed a unique kind of
broadcasting -- the mass murder of thousands, live on
television. As a lesson in the pitiless cruelty of
the human race, September 11 was up there with Pol
Pot's Mountain of Skulls in Cambodia, or the skeletal
bodies stacked like garbage in the Nazi concentration
camps.

An unspeakable act so cruel, so calculated and so
utterly merciless that surely the world could agree on
one thing - nobody deserves this fate. Surely there
could be consensus: The victims were truly innocent,
the perpetrators truly evil.

But to the world's eternal shame, 9/11 is increasingly
seen as America's comeuppance. Incredibly,
anti-Americanism has increased over the last year.

There has always been a simmering resentment to the
USA in this country; too loud, too rich, too full of
themselves, and so much happier than Europeans -- but
it has become an epidemic. And it seems incredible to
me. More than that, it turns my stomach.

America is this country's greatest friend and our
staunchest ally. We are bonded to the US by culture,
language and blood. A little over half a century ago,
around half a million Americans died for our freedoms,
as well as their own. Have we forgotten so soon? And
exactly a year ago, thousands of ordinary men, women
and children -- not just Americans, but from dozens of
countries -- were butchered by a small group of
religious fanatics. Are we so quick to betray them?

What touched the heart about those who died in the
Twin Towers and on the planes, was that we recognized
them. Young fathers and mothers, somebody's son and
somebody's daughter, husbands, wives, and children,
some unborn.

And these people brought it on themselves? Their
nation is to blame for their meticulously planned
slaughter?

These days you don't have to be some dust-encrusted
nut job in Kabul or Karachi or Finsbury Park to see
America as the Great Satan. The anti-American
alliance is made up of self-loathing liberals who
blame the Americans for every ill in the Third World,
and conservatives suffering from power-envy, bitter
that the world's only superpower can do what it likes
without having to ask permission.

The truth is that America has behaved with enormous
restraint since September 11.

Remember ... remember .... remember ... the
gut-wrenching tapes of weeping men phoning their wives
to say, "I love you," before they were burned alive.

Remember those people leaping to their deaths from the
top of burning skyscrapers. Remember the hundreds of
firemen buried alive.

Remember the smiling face of that beautiful little
girl who was on one of the planes with her mum.

Remember .... remember ...

And realize that America has never retaliated for 9/11
in anything like the way it could have.

So a few al-Qaeda tourists got locked up without a
trial in Camp X-ray? Pass the Kleenex ....

So some Afghan wedding receptions were shot up after
they merrily fired their semi-automatics in a sky full
of American planes? A shame, but maybe next time they
should stick to confetti.

AMERICA could have turned a large chunk of the world
into a parking lot. That it didn't is a sign of
strength. American voices are already being raised
against attacking Iraq -- that's what a democracy is
for. How many in the Islamic world will have a
minute's silence for the slaughtered innocents of
9/11? How many Islamic leaders will have the guts to
say that the mass murder of 9/11 was an abomination?

When the news of 9/11 broke on the West Bank, those
freedom-loving Palestinians were dancing in the
street. America watched all of that -- and didn't
push the button. We should thank the stars that
America is the most powerful nation in the world. I
still find it incredible that 9/11 did not provoke
all-out war. Not a "war on terrorism." A real war.

The fundamentalist dudes are talking about "opening
the gates of hell" if America attacks Iraq. Well,
America could have opened the gates of hell like you
wouldn't believe.

The US is the most militarily powerful nation that
ever strode the face of the earth. The campaign in
Afghanistan may have been less than perfect and the
planned war on Iraq may be misconceived.

But don't blame America for not bringing peace and
light to these wretched countries. How many
democracies are there in the Middle East, or in the
Muslim world? You can count them on the fingers of
one hand -- assuming you haven't had any chopped off
for minor shoplifting.

I love America, yet America is hated. I guess that
makes me Bush's poodle...

But I would rather be a dog in New York City than a
Prince in Riyadh. Above all, America is hated because
it is what every country wants to be -- rich, free,
strong, open, optimistic. Not ground down by the
past, or religion, or some caste system. America is
the best friend this country ever had and we should
start remembering that.

Or do you really think the USA is the root of all
evil? Tell it to the loved ones of the men and women
who leaped to their death from the burning towers.

Tell it to the nursing mothers whose husbands died on
one of the hijacked planes, or were ripped apart in a
collapsing skyscraper. And tell it to the hundreds of
young widows whose husbands worked for the New York
Fire Department.

To our shame, George Bush gets a worse press than
Saddam Hussein. Once we were told that Saddam gassed
the Kurds, tortured his own people and set up
rape-camps in Kuwait. Now we are told he likes
Quality Street. Save me the orange center, Oh Mighty
One!

Remember .... remember ... September 11. One of the
greatest atrocities in human history was committed
against America.

No, do more than remember. Never forget.