Implications of brutality, or of a kind of uncivilized inhumanity, seem to lurk in so many other questions foreign observers ask about America like: How could you set up that concentration camp in Cuba, and why can’t you shut it down? Or: How can you pretend to be a Christian country and still carry out the death penalty? The follow-up to which often is: How could you pick as president a man proud of executing his fellow citizens at the fastest rate recorded in Texas history? (Europeans will not soon forget George W. Bush.) Other things Ive had to answer for include: * Why can’t you Americans stop interfering with women’s health care? * Why can’t you understand science? * How can you still be so blind to the reality of climate change? * How can you speak of the rule of law when your presidents break international laws to make war whenever they want? * How can you hand over the power to blow up the planet to one lone, ordinary man? * How can you throw away the Geneva Conventions and your principles to advocate torture? * Why do you Americans like guns so much? Why do you kill each other at such a rate? To many, the most baffling and important question of all is: Why do you send your military all over the world to stir up more and more trouble for all of us? That last question is particularly pressing because countries historically friendly to the United States, from Australia to Finland, are struggling to keep up with an influx of refugees from America’s wars and interventions. Throughout Western Europe and Scandinavia, right-wing parties that have scarcely or never played a role in government are now rising rapidly on a wave of opposition to long-established immigration policies. Only last month, such a party almost toppled the sitting social democratic government of Sweden, a generouscountry that has absorbed more than its fair share of asylum seekers fleeing the shock waves of “the finest fighting force that the world has ever known.”]
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 01:24:34 +0000