[UK] Prince Andrew rebukes America over Iraq

International Herald Tribune ^ | February 4, 2008 | Stephen Castle

[mylife]

Yes. But I take exception to anyone calling the USA an imperialist nation.

We have defended our interests over this entire globe, but we are hardly imperialist.
We are as on would suspect rather touchy about the concept of colonization.

Our Nation was founded on the REJECTION of the very idea.

Now that we are done with all this ugly bickering, let me buy you a pint cousin.

[mylife]

Here ya go

[thundrey]

Oh yes, you’re right I do apologise. British, French and Dutch imperialism didn’t actually displace the native populations concerned and take them to the brink of extinction like American imperialism did.

Brings to mind an incident something that everyone’s favourite englishman Winston Churchill said when Eleanor Roosevelt criticised him over Britain’s imperial policy in India, to which he replied with words to the effect of:

“Which Indians are you reffering to? The British variety, who have multiplied and increased under the benevolence of British rule, or the red-skinned variety in the US, whom I’m given to understand have been driven almost to extinction?”

[Gay State Conservative]

Five’ll get ya ten that Andy is part of the 20% of Brits who believe that Churchill is a mythical figure.

[thundrey]

You mean welsh? Well, first of all, the conquest of Wales took place in the frickin’ middle ages, when everybody was conquering everybody else, secondly, the Welsh were made equal citizens in the 1530s, whereas it wasn’t until as late as 1924, when people were supposed to know a lot better, that Native Americans gained equal rights under the law as citizens....

[Gay State Conservative]

Daddy was a waste paper basket and mother was in the Guards....

[thundrey]

“Puerto Rico is a Puerto Rican decision, go, join, stay as they are; most of us would like to see them get off the fence.”

It didn’t start out that way. In the early days it was treated like a colony. The Phillipines was subjucated brutally when it was taken over from the Spanish and got the same sort of treatment the Boers got in South Africa from the British a few years later (concentration camps etc)...

[mylife]

While I agree that Britain tried to held the Indian folks, It was a long tortured history.

In this country the Indians rejected most of our efforts to include them and they negotiated sovereign nations.
Oh they still suck the Gov teat and have more rights than me but they have chosen to stagnate.

BTW when did England give up claims to India? 1967? (I’m sure I am thinking of Portugal and Goa.) No matter. My brother lives in India. You brought them trains and motorbikes and a parliamentary form of gov. They fought it tooth and nail. “The whitemans burdon”
Here, the Indians have been free since the late 1800s

[mylife]

BTW I dated a commanche girl. I didnt know they were extinct.

They were trying pretty hard to kill us too.

[thundrey]

*Sigh* I don’t actually hate the US (despite what it might look like here). I lived there for three years and it is a great country. But I am not going to stand by and watch ignorant jerks slag off my country when they don’t even know what they’re talking about, and if I see someone making a hypocritically ignorant attack on my nation’s history that their own nation has a less than stellar record on itself, you can be bloody sure I’m going to point it out....

[mylife]

“Mummy was an asteroid and Daddy was a small nonstick kitchen utensil.”

Dont ask me what that means. It just sounds funny.

BTW a Brit wrote it.

[mylife]

And I bought you a pint.

[Finalapproach29er]

They don’t make Brits the way they used to.

[Centurion2000]

LONDON: While Prince Andrew declares himself a fan of the United States - and his cellphone ring tone comes from the American TV drama "24" - the man who is fourth in line to the British throne has some critical words for America's Iraq policy and thinks that Washington should have listened to advice from London.

Hey Mr Andrews .... STFU and deal with the moslems in your own country first since they are exercising more authority and power over British subjects than your own royal family.

[mylife]

Also. I know that many British and French fought for emancipation of the slaves, but you know, and I know that it was this country that lead the charge. We shed the blood for the disenfranchised while gentlemen in powdered wigs debated in gilded halls.

Then you all point you fingers at us to this day and we bear the brunt of your sins.

Piss on that.

[thundrey]

“No it is the America flag.”

Thanks for that Captain Obvious, I was merely pointing out that it was largely Nazi German techincal know-how that got it there...

“Thanks to the British coward prime minister in the 1930’s, we won the war for the Brits and beat everyone to the moon.”

In the first place, not only is your judgement on Chamberlain woefully simplistic, it is also wrong. It was the governments of the 1920s who are largely to blame for Britain’s position wrt Nazi Germany in the 1930s, as they decimated Britain’s armed forces to ridiculous levels. It is difficult to blame them too harshly for this considering that the arms race with Germany had been an important contributing factor to the tensions that led to the First World War, coupled with economic problems caused by the strain of said war.
Chamberlain, far from being the stupid coward others take him for, was actually working feverishly to re-arm Britain and prepare her industry for war again. in 1938, he pushed peacetime conscription through parliament for the first time in British history, but he knew Britain wasn’t ready for war, and was trying to buy time. The fact that Britain and France ended up being evicted from the continent under the German Blitzkrieg showed that it still wasn’t ready even when war did come.
On your second point, it was actually the Soviet Union that won the war. They fought the overwhelming bulk of the European Axis forces and inflicted 80% of all German casualties on the Eastern Front. (BTW before you bring up ‘Lend Lease’, if you’re even informed enough to even know what that was, US equipment did not arrive in significant quantities until the middle of 1943, after the Soviets had already turned the tide at Stalingrad)...

[bmwcyle]

You would be speaking German without us.

[fr_freak]

“Which Indians are you reffering to? The British variety, who have multiplied and increased under the benevolence of British rule, or the red-skinned variety in the US, whom I’m given to understand have been driven almost to extinction?”

Fascinating anecdote. I highly doubt that it is true, given that the indian tribes living in the Canadian region under British rule did not fare much better than their southern counterparts. That subject area is hardly one where the British can feel superior.

In fact, your entire analogy is flawed, apparently from your faulty definition of the word "imperialism". It was British imperialism which created the 13 colonies, and it was the American revolution which ended British imperialism in North America, with the exception of the Canadian provinces. The conflict between Americans and the indians after the US became a country was more akin to two native cultures vying for supremacy. You may balk at my use of the word "native", but given that those people were born and raised on the land they fought for, with no foreign sovereign, their status could hardly be compared to that of British subjects who arrived on foreign soil to subjugate the native peoples.

Europeans try very hard to create a moral equivalence between their countries' imperial history and the history of the US, but the truth is that US presence on foreign soils have nearly nothing in common with the European tradition. One huge difference is that the US tends to put much more money INTO the countries that it occupies than it takes out. Granted, countries like Britain often improved the infrastructures of the countries they subjugated, but had there been no profit, this would not have happened. The US, on the other hand, gets attacked, invades a country, tears it up, and then rebuilds it better than when they found it, and eventually leaves it to its own rule (see Germany and Japan).

Your inclusion of Puerto Rico and the Philippines as examples of US imperialism is also flawed, given that the US inherited those possessions from the defeated Spanish rather than conquering them and, as usual, improved the area and left them to their own rule. Puerto Rico is only a US territory now because the Puerto Ricans keep voting to remain so.

[mylife]

The fact that Britain and France ended up being evicted from the continent under the German Blitzkrieg showed that it still wasn’t ready even when war did come.

Yet somehow they won. Could it have been the blood of the Yanks?

[A knight without armor]

To: Prince Andrew
From: The World

When we want something out of you we will squeeze you.