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| William_Cleland |
George Soros, the Iraq War and "de-Nazification"George Soros ruffled a few feathers in the United States a year or so ago by suggesting that the future of the United States will be determined by the extent to which there is a "de-Nazification" process in the aftermath of the Iraq War through which the people who plunged that country into that conflict would be purged from the political system.http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001922.php He later backed off on the terminology (he's Jewish and a Holocaust survivor from Hungary so he could get away with it to a greater extent than most people) he used but his underlying point is an interesting one. Should something similar to what he is proposing happen in a British context and would the British Army even have been there in the first place if Britain had truly come to terms with its imperial past? |
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| Aventinian |
For all the rubbish about Iraq, it had nothing to do with imperialism. | ||||
| William_Cleland |
Thank you for that insightful analysis, Arventinian. As stated previously simply typing "I disagree" might save you a bit of time. A lot of people tend to perceive the UK elite as still hankering after a global role despite no longer being a genuine global power and that hanging onto the USA's coattails in its imperial adventures as being their way to retain that. By way of an "O wad some power the giftie gie us" sort of perspective here's how a Slovenian band called Laibach sees things:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF0AqPujjaM |
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| Aventinian |
I disagree forcefully with a specific part of it. Perhaps you should worry about what you type rather than what I type.
The UK is a global power insofar as its armed forces have a world-wide reach. |
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| Anthropos |
Well I am not sure I entirely agree with that, but the military historian Correlli Barnett does argue something similar to this with regard to the British overstretch in Iraq and Afghanistan being the result of "the lasting legacy of our transient world hegemony in the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras". It is obvious that Britain could not do much on its own, and the Iraq war would never have happened with George Bush giving it the go ahead. However you have to also take into account Blair's own delusions with regard to military intervention in the post 9/11 world, but perhaps Parliaments decision to back him in that endeavour does owe a little something to the above. |
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| William_Cleland |
The vast sums being spent on Trident and aircraft carriers definitely look like delusions of grandeur to me. Here's an interesting read on why aircraft carriers are potentially a colossal waste of money these days even for the Americans:-
http://www.exile.ru/articles/deta...ARTICLE_ID=15976&IBLOCK_ID=35 I'm surprised the SNP doesn't make more noise about what could be done instead with the Scottish taxpayers share of the money spent on this sort of stuff. For example the Norwegians are very sensibly moving ahead with carbon capture technology not as a way to help combat global warming as the media usually spins it but primarily as a way to try to keep oil production going from mature offshore fields for significantly longer by significantly enhancing recovery rates:- http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news1.25d.html while in a British context this is what happens on that:- 
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Peterhead39s-doomed--BP-.3699878.jp maybe Brown and co don't want the Scottish electorate to know that North Sea oil production doesn't necessarily have to largely be exhausted over the next couple of decades. |
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