Jesus, still dragging on.
Ever had a relative that you found irritating? You ever walked around slagging them down to your friends? Ever had one of your friends slag them down in support of you and you say "**** off, that's my family, you can't say that!"
Point is, Americans (or most of the ones on this board) are aware of the, erm, insensitivity of their government. And some of the actions by that government are not the most conduicive (sp) to worldwide health and harmony. They know that, and state it.
But there is a little bit of the above coming out when people from other countries start going a bit over the top and really giving it to your country in the back. You are going to defend it.
I'm the same. We have sh!t weather (most of the time), a lot of the people you meet in town are townie scumbags, we have a reputation for hooliganism, our country is hella expensive, and in order to run 70 percent of the world you have had to do some terrible things. Some of the things that happended in India were ****ing atrocious. The British government continues to make silly foreign policy errors, IMHO.
But, if you go too far in slagging it down then I will fight like a cornered rat to defend it and the people, because ultimately : it's my home, and its the only place in the world I really feel safe.
So, Shadow et al., if you're trying to have a reasonable debate with a group of Americans about Sep.11 you will probably do best not to put them on the defensive. It doesn't take a lot to put an American on the defensive at the mo, understandably.
Amercians don't like people saying "its all your fault, you deserved it". Because its not all their fault, and they didn't deserve it. Red5Angel, the reason I posted that link is not because I was saying "this is why you got bombed, suck it up" but I was rather trying to say "this is the world wide perception of American foreign policy, see why people get ****ed off?"
Take a country with a different religion than ours, or even just A religion which is followed countrywide. Say for whatever reasons, maybe a combination of geograhic unluckyness and a corrupt government there is mass poverty, social unrest and always a few seperatist groups trying to take control. So you have all these existing problems.
And in the middle of this, the corrupt government sees a way of making some more money out of the downtrodden people and invites the US to buy up their oil, whatever. So the locals wake up one morn and see a group of rich Americans building a pipeline to take their oil.
They get up and go to work in a sweatshop producing Western goods, knowing full well how much they get paid for making them and how much they are worth in the West.
And then they go eat in McDonalds in the evening.
So we have a country with many exisiting problems, dogmatically religious, and along comes the US (UK in tow) and puts its big size 10s right in the middle of this mess. So instantly the corrupt government see this incursion as a way of unloading its problems.
"Look at the Americans with their lack of morals, exploiting our country, using us to produce cheap goods, using us to make money, they are the cause of all your problems!"
And really, the problems were there before we got there, we just took advantage a bit, and became the scapegoat.
'"4 ounces deflect 1000 pounds" represents a skill potential, if you stand in front of a 1000 pound charging bull and apply four ounces of deflection, well, you get the picture..' - Tai Chi Bob
"My car has a lot of parts in there that I don't know about, don't know what they're called, haven't seen them and wouldn't know what they were if someone pointed them out to me .... doesn't mean they're not in there." - Evolution Fist
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