What the war looks like to an American abroad(triple bagger)

Mpls (red)Star Tribune ^ | 3/28/03 | Linda Schulte-Sasse

[Valin]

VIENNA -- Watching the war from outside the United States calls to mind my favorite childhood joke, involving the Lone Ranger, Tonto and a force of hostile Indians. Tonto delivers the punch line: "What do you mean, we, Kemosabe?" Writing from Vienna, I empathize with the Ranger's loneliness and with Tonto's impulse to ditch his longtime companion. Do I want to be part of a "we" that undermines everything "we" stand for? Do I have a choice?

[Valin]

A phone call from Germany drives home my personal accountability: "What the hell are you guys doing?"

The same %$*&^%$**& thing we did in 1941-45 effecting a regime change! Or maybe this kraut would prefer the party running germany in 1944?

[Conspiracy Guy]

Should be titled Ex-American Aboard.

[babyface00]

Where to begin?...

Impotent to counter the news or homeland statistics, I opt for a curious ambassadorial strategy. Inspired by our preemptive strike, I outdo the Europeans in my condemnation of U.S. aggression, I hate Bush and his war more than they do. I'm determined to show my friends what I can't tell them: that "we" are not pod people, that we dissent, we think. But my "we" is seriously and permanently handicapped.

So, because she's an airhead or doesn't bother to inform herself, she just embraces the rest of the airheads rather than defending her own country. Then, she thinks that is somehow noble. Further, she has the audacity to say "...we dissent, we think", as if this spineless drivel she's spouting is the result of some intellectual high-ground.

I see the dissent, but no evidence of her actually thinking.

Though the European lens I'm looking through is not flawless

The understatement of the year.

[MEG33]

I thought the triple bagger meant almost a home run.Deceptive advertising!She should stay in Europe.

[wbill]

I would like to invite Ms. Schulte-Sasse to stay right there in Germany. It's a good place for her.

[Adder]

"Though the European lens I'm looking through is not flawless, it offers a useful corrective to the insular view of ourselves we're trained not to question. Its virtue is to make us look (literally) from another place at "what it means to be an American." And at a time when being American means being what they call "un-American.""

What a complete idiot. I am glad he has chosen to be in Vienna...we don't need him here. "insular view we are trained not to question"...what is he? Nuts?? Why do these people think they have some divine lens the rest of us lack? Elitist snobs.

Gawd, I despise them.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

No kiddin ! Mustn't remind those touchy Euros in Vienna about their anti Semitism, a couple of world wars, the death camps the Swiss and Swedish neutrals who traded with the Nazis. They're oh, so social !

[Valin]

what is he? Nuts??

Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.
Heinrich Heine (1797 - 1856)