Some old Reagan and Bush the Elder hand was on The World At One, decrying Britain's action over Lockerbie as, from America's point of view, "the most duplicitous in the post-War period", and the sort of thing that Americans would expect "from France and some other people in Europe".
Well, I still do not defend the decision over Lockerbie. But sheer bloody-mindedness has won the French at least as much American military assistance and support, and incomparably greater independence, than our very different attitude has ever won us. France, you see, is a self-respecting country. She was also our real ally during the Falklands War.
And the other Europeans? Germany, at least, has always been America's real ally of choice, even during the War. As soon as that was out of the way, first West Germany and then Germany attained exactly the prime position that one would expect, considering that Germans are America's largest ethnic group and that the House of Representatives once came within one vote of making German America's only official language. German recognition of the UDIs of two old Hapsburg provinces received immediate and unlimited American backing, resulting in the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.
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The House of Representatives never did that, it is a myth.
ReplyDeleteNo, it isn't. And yes, it did. An adjournment motion still counts. That is how these things work. That is the point of an adjournment motion requiring a vote, rather than simply passed nem con or whatever.
ReplyDeleteAnd in this case, they decided not to “consider the matter at a later date”. By one vote. Because that narrowest of majorities knew what the result would be if they failed to get even one man there.
If an American town is called Liberty, then its name was probably changed in 1917 from Berlin, or Vienna, or what have you. Look how many such towns there are.
And look how it is acceptable to be rude about the French over the War, but not about the Germans, the Italians, or indeed the Swedes or the Irish. It is not hard to see why. American English is full of German phrases carried over word-for-word, such as “What gives?”, so it looks as if those losers by one vote won, sort of, in the end.
I like Americans, but America is a foreign country. We need to wake up to that fact. We might never get the affection reserved for the German, Irish or Italian motherland. But we’d get far more respect. Like the French.
Hi all,
ReplyDeleteYou may want to have a look at this link, which seems relatively well done, on the matter;
http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/officialamerican/englishonly/
All the best,
Martin
Er...isn't that a little revisionist?
ReplyDeleteGermany and France recognised Slovenia's independence ; while Major & Hurd [after US intimidation to NOT support a seceding state from a union] vetoed the joint european declaration - thus Serbia thought it had free rein to invade [and was proved right ; until the US invented the Kosovan war in retaliation for NATO's humiliation]
"isn't that a little revisionist?"
ReplyDeleteNo.
Assuming that you mean "revisionist" as something bad, rather than simply "how history, as a discipline, works".