Nothing Special

There has never been a "Special Relationship". From America's point of view, why should there be?

In fact, America destroyed our naval alliance with Japan, with all that followed from that destruction. America subjected us to Lend-Lease, not paid off until 29th December 2006, though paid off on that date, so that no debt from the War can any longer be said to exist. America required us to decolonise far too quickly, with disastrous consequences for numerous of the countries that they had forced us to leave. "America saved us in the War"? Look at any American depiction of the War and you will see that we are not in it.

America has subjected us to more than 60 years of the presence on our soil of foreign forces, politically as unmentionable as they are permanently unforgettable, without any parliamentary authorisation. America maintains bases here with fake British names, entirely unaccountable to us. America also maintains such bases on two other pieces of our territory, denying democratic representation to the British inhabitants of one of them, and forbidding the British people of the other to set foot there at all. America charges us for the privilege of hosting American nuclear weapons and pretending that they are our own, and we have so little self-respect that we pay up.

America forced us to join the European superstate. America, fundamentally defined against any British presence in the Western Hemisphere, did everything short of send forces to fight for Argentina in 1982. America spent decades arming and directing our terrorist enemies (who "haven't gone away, you know") in order to bring about a United Ireland within NATO and the EU, up to and including more than complicity in the murders of at least three British parliamentarians, one of them a member of the Royal Family.

America invaded a Commonwealth Realm in the Caribbean, and has long had legislation in place providing for the forcible incorporation of Canada. America seeks to disperse the inmates of Guantánamo Bay by flattering politicians in British Overseas Territories as if theirs were the sovereign states that their electors have consistently voted not to become. Slavish devotion to America took us to war in Iraq, and slavish devotion to America keeps us as at war in Afghanistan.

To say these things is not to be anti-American. It is to be faithful to George Washington's Farewell Address, and to be truly concerned for the life and health of America's youth.