Posted on 01/07/2004 9:24:40 PM PST by quidnunc
Down history's road, 2003 may shine brightly as marking a major improvement in how things are going abroad.
The spring crushing of the Baathist regime and Saddam's capture a month ago were the top stories abroad. And look what has happened largely as a consequence:
• Libya has announced it will scrap its nuclear program.
• North Korea, with assistance from the Communist oligarchy in China, has declared it might do the same.
• Our good friends the Saudis have begun to get serious about terrorism.
• Russia has conditionally promised to forgive its Iraqi debt.
• Israel has moved to dismantle a few West Bank settlements.
• In an "Afghan Spring" perhaps surpassing the "Prague Spring" of 1968, a land that just two years ago boasted one of the planet's most oppressive regimes saw 502 delegates representing warlord factions across Afghanistan create an enlightened constitution.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at timesdispatch.com ...
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Great quote found by Ross Mackenzie:
At hand is a
1946 Life magazine article by novelist John Dos Passos, written aboard a Navy ship returning from Europe. As you read the following, keep in mind what Germany and France soon became - and what the naysayers are saying now notably about American efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq...A tour of the beaten-up cities of Europe six months after victory is a mighty sobering experience for anyone. Europeans, friend and foe alike, look you accusingly in the face and tell you how bitterly they are disappointed in you as an American. They cite the evolution of the word "liberation." Before the Normandy landings it meant to be freed from the tyranny of the Nazis. Now it stands in the minds of the civilians for (despicable things).
You try to explain to these Europeans that they expected too much. They answer that they had a right to, that after the last war America was the hope of the world. ... But they blame us now.
Never has American prestige in Europe been lower. ... They blame us for the corruption and disorganization of the (United Nations relief agencies). They blame us for the fumbling timidity of our negotiations with the Soviet Union. They tell us that our mechanical de-nazification policy in Germany is producing results opposite to those we planned. "Have you no statesmen in America?" they ask.
The spring crushing of the Baathist regime and Saddam's capture a month ago were the top stories abroad. And look what has happened largely as a consequence:
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Truth and consequences, ping!
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