You may be right, but as I said, I do agree with most of your assertions. Turkey is listed I think around 10th....not sure.
It would be interesting to follow their bomb raids to find out the logistics. Wish I had the time.
Enjoy your posts as well as others who have some actual knowledge. I do get tired of those know-nothings constantly bashing the French.
“I do get tired of those know-nothings constantly bashing the French.”
I am very conflicted about the French. I have French heritage, and a French surname...but I am a little queasy about the French Vichy period. It seems like they rolled over a little too easily, and let the Nazis round up French Jews. Quite frankly, I’ve always believed that the French complicity in the holocaust has been an overlooked part of history.
And I know that’s ancient history, but they seem so unapologetic about it. And it manifests itself today in a very un-American attitude in France. Tourists are told not to act American, our NATO member wouldn’t let us fly over on the way to Libya, etc. In high school, we had a French foreign exchange student. I tried to befriend him, and I sort of did - but it was tiring to hear him tell me how much better everything in France was. It was as if he had no sense of history - instead of bragging about France’s superiority, perhaps he should have visited a war cemetery to thank some people.
Anyway, I can understand the anti-French sentiment. Yes, usually it is boiled down to jokes about dropping rifles...but I understand the sentiment.
I’m actually critical of most of Europe...especially what Rumsfeld called ‘old Europe’. These nations spent the colonial period using the world as a chess board, trying to exploit labor and resources...and generally screwing up any semblance of order that may have existed in Africa or the mid-east (and those places are still in disarray), started a couple of hellish global wars, and nearly exterminated the Jews...and their descendants look down their noses at the rest of the world. I find it maddening.
Especially European bashing of Israel. The Europeans (led by the British) set up Israel as a place to solve their ‘Jewish problem’. And now they complain when the Israeli’s build houses in the west bank? Truly maddening.
So, in the words of my former platoon sgt, I’m an equal opportunity racist, I hate everybody :)