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Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

gisterme - 03:25pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3420 of 3427)

rshowalter wrote: "...If you can't imagine people from N. Korea, or China, or Vietnam looking at Americans that way -- then you're missing something basic. If you were in their position -- how would you feel?..."

They've been programmed to feel that way by a half-century of cold war propaganda and not-so cold battles, just like folks in NATO countries have been programmed to hate communist governments. That war is over. Why would one expect it to take less time for any of us to become deprogrammed than it took to do the programming? The world needs to pass some time in a more relaxed condition, one where international trust can be gradually built. That might take a generation or two.

I don't agree with your Casablanca/Maj. Strasser = world percption of Americans equation. Some folks undoubtedly feel that way; but to extrapolate that to a generalization requires gross oversimplification. Same kind of oversimplified categorization that Hitler used while proclaiming various ethnic groups to be sub-human. Doesn't such categorization tend toward bigotry? Of course it does. We should have already learned that lesson.

If Americans are so universally dispised, then why do so many folks from around the world want to immigrate to the US and become Americans?

gisterme - 03:41pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3421 of 3427)

Americans, especially American officials and military officers, look very much like Major Strasser in Casablanca.

Seriously, though, it's interesting and a bit puzzeling that you want to superpose a stereotype from the '40s (Maj. Strasser), created by Americans as anti-nazi propaganda, onto Americans 60 years or so later. America has enough atrocity in its own history...enough that it has no need for nazi sins to be attributed to it.

rshowalter - 03:45pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3422 of 3427)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I should have put a "some" in a couple of places --- even so, I stand by what I said, from a lot of people's perspectives. And a lot of what the Bush administration is doing is insensitive to those feelings, and acts to reinforce them, in ways that are in no one's interest.

For example, fire bombing and dam bombing of N. Korea by Americans killed more than 2 million people. The N. Koreans asked for some sort of apology -- some sort of statement of regret -- got none -- and haven't been able to surrender -- in their own terms. If you just say "they were Communists --they don't matter --" then you close off a lot of humanity in yourself, and you perpetuate a great deal of hatred in the world.

The Kerrey-Vietnam story revisits a great deal of ugliness in that war -- where, from a Vietnamese perspective, "merciless, murderous bullying" happened a great deal, and American forces looked a great deal like the Germans portrayed in Casablanca.

I think a great deal of what you've said on this thread would score that way -- you think war excuses all? Most people, especially victims, don't feel that way.

I don't think anybody doubts that there are plenty of fine things about America. There would have been plenty of fine things about a victorious Germany in the year 2000, had she won.

To a great deal of the world, American military people look a great deal like Major Strasser in Casablanca - - - and so would you.

rshowalter - 03:47pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3423 of 3427)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

And I can see their point of view.

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