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May. 2nd, 2006 01:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mighty_aphroditeI am so fucking pissed I can't even see straight. My German history professor diverted from the syllabus and gave a lecture on "Germany in the Age of 9/11" which basically consisted of a long string of criticisms of the Bush administration's foreign policy occasionally punctuated with the qualifier "Most germans thought...". and half of what she said was totally fucked up. Example: most Germans thought that if Americans really believed a.) that the war would be over quickly, b.) that restructuring the government would be easy and without opposition, and c.) that few civilians would get hurt, that those Americans were stupid." I'm sorry, when did we make those claims? I seem to remember Bush saying that we wouldn't be out of Iraq any time during his presidency, that work would go on in Iraq long after he was out of office, and that it would take a lot of hard work and would cost some livs in the process.
Then she moves on to talk about the 'selfish" nature of American foreign aid, saying that we only gave aid so that we could force third world countries to buy our expensive products, and that "Germans felt" that the real way to prevent international problems was to eliminate economic misery so that nobody would want to go to war and everybody would be happy. Socialist drivel, pure and simple. Finally, she expressed the opinion that, since the US was the world's only super power, we had upset the balance of power, and when that kind of thing happens, the sole power is likely to run amok. She said, Americans either had to voluntarily restain themselves, or else Europe had to become strong and united so that they could "check" the US if it should become necessary. That Americans didn't know what war was really like becasue tey hadn't fought one ontheir own soil in so long. They didn't know what it was like to be bombed, the Germans did.
Excuse me. For one, the Germans were the perpetrators, hence they were bombed. In the second place, we were putting our lives on the line to rescue them from a dictator. We then pulled them out of the depression and gave them demoracy. Don't like us fighting foreign wars? Then don't ask for our help next time you start one. There's a reason we don't have domestic wars--we know what the fuck we are doing.
Then she moves on to talk about the 'selfish" nature of American foreign aid, saying that we only gave aid so that we could force third world countries to buy our expensive products, and that "Germans felt" that the real way to prevent international problems was to eliminate economic misery so that nobody would want to go to war and everybody would be happy. Socialist drivel, pure and simple. Finally, she expressed the opinion that, since the US was the world's only super power, we had upset the balance of power, and when that kind of thing happens, the sole power is likely to run amok. She said, Americans either had to voluntarily restain themselves, or else Europe had to become strong and united so that they could "check" the US if it should become necessary. That Americans didn't know what war was really like becasue tey hadn't fought one ontheir own soil in so long. They didn't know what it was like to be bombed, the Germans did.
Excuse me. For one, the Germans were the perpetrators, hence they were bombed. In the second place, we were putting our lives on the line to rescue them from a dictator. We then pulled them out of the depression and gave them demoracy. Don't like us fighting foreign wars? Then don't ask for our help next time you start one. There's a reason we don't have domestic wars--we know what the fuck we are doing.