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Love of Canada


Here is an email I received in response to one of my essays.

Love Of Canada : James Poteet : jamie.poteet@insightbb.com : 2009-08-22

Where do I start, I agree with some of what you say like one person protesting does make a difference (ie) your crab throwing story nothing more true. However, why bash Americans so much?

Very simple. They are doing the majority of the evil in the world right now and I have access to speak to their population. In other times I would have been condemning the abuses of power of the Romans, French, British or Nazis.

Are other countries so perfect.

They may be just as evil at heart, but they don’t have the power to commit evil on such a grand scale as the Americans. The American have amassed nuclear and biological weapons sufficient to wipe out the earth many times. They have amassed a military bigger than everyone else combined. They started two massive wars illegally and unprovoked and waged them with a relentlessness, ferocity and cruelty that surpasses in some ways even the crimes of the Nazis.

I am not claiming you Americans killed as many people as the Nazis did, just German citizens turned a blind eye to the Nazi crimes just the way American citizens such as yourself turn a blind eye to the crimes of the USA. Some of these crimes (torture, banned weapons, violation of the Geneva conventions) are worse than the behaviour of the Nazis.

The USA has occupied Afghanistan for 16 years and 6 months and Iraq for 15 years and 1 month. In contrast WWI (World War I) was only 4 years, 3 months and WWII (World War II) was only 6 years. Americans use their military might to control other countries and exploit them economically such that Americans consume the lion’s share of the planet’s resources with only a fraction of the population. America is the modern equivalent of ancient Rome. You are trying to excuse American’s sins with a variant of but Jimmy stole a cookie too. The lesser crimes of others are no excuse to turn a blind eye to America’s gargantuan ones.

instead of basging America why not include any of the good work we do?

Why bother? Americans trumpet their own horns more than adequately for themselves. The world is amused and somewhat disgusted by the American chauvinist habit of toasting each other with their bathwater. Americans have a propaganda machine 24/7 telling them how virtuous, perfect and number one they are. Why should I encourage this deluded view? Americans imagine they are superior to all other peoples. Why encourage them? It is like asking me to find something nice to say about Nazis to counterbalance a screed on the Final Solution. Nazis already had preposterously inflated egos, just like today’s We’re Number One! Americans.

From your point of view you would thionk we are animals. I find it ignorant and offensive that you think that most Americans are so evil nothing is farther from the truth. You think that most of us agree with our government.

The carnage your country inflicts is far worse than any animal possibly could. My complaint with the average American (not every American, after all I quote many exceptional Americans all over my website and my partner is American and my ex was American) is twofold:

  1. Even lefties like Al Franken, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher support the troops. This is like a German living in Nazi Germany opposing Hitler but supporting the activities of the SS. Nearly every American is guilty of it.
  2. Large numbers of Americans put up strenuous opposition to the Viet Nam war. They eventually shut it down. This time, even anti-war Americans have rolled over and let the military-industrial complex have its way, ripping them off for over a trillion dollars not to mention the loss of life on both sides. Racism and the use of private contractors instead of a draft is at the heart of this tepid opposition.

As a nation, you are behaving much like the Germans in WWII who permitted their country to start aggressive wars and kill civilians by the millions. Just like good Germans, you close your eyes and pretend it all is not happening. You have even less excuse since all the facts are easily available to you. They were hidden from the average German. America has forfeited its right to be considered the world’s moral leader. I get roughly the same reaction from Americans telling them they have no right to invade Afghanistan or Iraq that I would have got trying to convince Germans it improper to invade Poland. When a people get so full of themselves and imagine they are master race, they excuse themselves with might makes right or irrational excuses such as yours.

Where did you get this information from a poll or something.

What information specifically? Most of what I say on politics comes from books, wire services or online newspapers. A lot of it came from the Bush White House website, right out of the transcripts of his speeches. Many of the links have gone stale and have been removed, but here are still hundreds of clickable links to the original sources. Did you follow even one of them? Have you read any of the books I recommended?

I don’t think that just because you disagree with the war on terror that all americans are evil. Also, I don;t hear any solutions from you. How was America to deal with terrorist just sit back and wait to be killed.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have nothing to do with terrorism. Neither nation attacked the USA. The USA attacked first, illegally and unprovoked. Even Bush admits this.

We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th attacks.
~ George W. Bush (1946-07-06 age:71), 2003-09-17, audio.

Deterring terrorism is a completely separate problem. The USA attacked both Iraq and Afghanistan to secure oil. I go on at great length about this in the various essays. Ironically, the extreme cost of the two wars has left the USA without funds to do something useful about terrorist attacks, such as inspect all container ships coming into US ports. The solution is simple — stop mugging other nations and keep your word on your treaties. Then the USA would have some respect in the world and it would not be so duck simple for terrorists to recruit to destroy the Great Satan.

You are right about somethings like the Iraq war this is a horrible situation, very bas choices made by our government and I can understand how it makes you so mad. It makes me sick as well, but when you speak you speak with such ugliness and offer so real solution or ideas.

It does not require a complex solution. You Americans are illegally occupying two countries. Simply leave and pay reparations mandated by the world court for the damage you illegally caused. Yes, there will be a messy, bloody power struggle, but it will be soon over. There will be far less suffering than if the USA meddles and occupies indefinitely propping up corrupt Vichy-style governments of traitors, drug lords and war lords.

And I agree that some American soldiers are less than ethical but to say that our armed forces enjoy rape and murder get real that is just sick. 99% of those men and women are good people in a horrible situation. You have to understand that most pepole join out of poverty not to kill, they are recruted and join because they are either a minority or very poor not to kill rape and plunder. When you say this you sound very uneducated!

Pray then, what is the noble motive that motivates the soldiers to kill primarily civilians and kids. If there is one, you have not yet mentioned it. Any military person is completely aware that roadside bombs in Iraq pose zero threat to their families back home. So claiming to be defending hearth and home is bullpucky.

And what about Canada I never hear you mention your homeland. Do they kill with care and empthy! Are your countrymen and leaders so great that when they go to war and kill civilian iraqis and and Afgans that you feel no ned to speak about it. What arrogance. And about your military when they join are they joining to have the same greatr power to rape and kill as Americans or is that just us.

I gather you are unaware that a Canadian radio talk show host, Lowell Green, put out a fatwah on my life for my dim views of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. They too are, to a man, guilty of a capital war crime, namely aiding and abetting an aggressive (first strike, unprovoked) war.

I do not want you to think that I am making excuses for the U.S.’s mistakes.

Mistakes? You make a cocaine gang’s lawyer look like a pillar of righteousness. Genocide is not a mistake! It is a mega-crime. You spent nearly all your words to me trying to vainly whitewash your country’s crimes, so I can hardly presume some other intent than making excuses. The core of your argument is it is not fair to point out the crimes of the USA without giving equal time to the crimes of every other nation. This is like saying, it is was wrong to talk only about the crimes of O.J. Simpson at his trial. The crimes of others were irrelevant in determining his guilt. The crimes of others in no way excused his. Ditto, when the Nazis were tried, we did not give equal time to the crimes of the Americans, British and Japanese when we discussed what the Nazis did. You judge war crimes against an absolute legal standard, not by wickness relative to other criminals.

I am effectively putting your and your fellow countrymen on trial here. You are attempting to deflect from acknowledging your wrong doing with irrelevancies.

If I did write about other nations, you Americans would not read it. You Americans are legendary for your complete lack of knowledge and interest in even your two immediate neighbours, Canada and Mexico, even Jeopardy contestants. As a nation, you are narcissistic, preferring to kiss the mirror than to examine the world around you. And if you did read it, you would do so only to seek excuses for your own wrongdoing. I am trying to force you bastards to confront your wrongdoing and to stop it. I have to crack your smug self-satisfaction and phony-holy veneer. I don’t want to dilute my message with irrelevancies.

I want you personally to get it that millions of people hate people like you with an unimaginable intensity, and with good reason, the exact opposite of the hypnotic soothing flattery you hear oiling 24/7 from your television. You, personally, are a bit like Marie Antoinette with her out-of-it Let them eat cake remark. You are not really vicious, just aggressively clueless. You are much like the enthusiastic German old ladies mindlessly cheering at the Nazi rallies.

I feel that most know that our wars are wrong and we know it but every other country involved is just as guilty period.

Other countries are guilty, but not as guilty. For example, Canada wished to avoid both wars. According to Prime Minister Chrétien, Bush arm twisted Canada into joining the Afghan war. Canada joined in Afghanistan on the condition it be excused from the planned invasion of Iraq. The USA bullies Canada by reneging on its free trade agreements by illegally slapping tariffs on Canadian goods. Since the USA is Canada’s biggest trading partner, Canada usually just quietly accepts the abuse. The USA is providing by far the bulk of the funding and manpower for the mayhem. Other counties are there as a sort of moral fig leaf to deceive the American public that everyone thinks the wars are justified.

And the last thing I would like to comment on is 9/11/2001. For anyone to say that we killes our own people is the single most retarded statement efver made you know that this is not true so why bother saying it. I think you feel that you use this statment because it is so shocking not because you think it is even possibly true, get real. You as others have zero facts about this being true so why just babble things becauase you can, don;t you want to be accurate when you speak and be taken seriously. Good-luck with your protest and hopefully Iraq and Afganistan will find peace soon.

I gave evidence for my views. You gave none, other than your gut feeling. You offered not even one piece of evidence to counter any of my arguments. Obviously, the USA is willing to sacrifice its citizens for oil. Consider the causalities in the war in Iraq. 2001-09-11 killed 3000 people and three buildings, a gnat bite by military sacrifice standards. For example, the USA sacrificed 0.13% of its population in WWI. That would be equivalent to 5.2 million people today — the equivalent of over 1700 2001-09-11s.

There are two things I find so disturbing about you personally:

  1. You apparently have done no study on 9/11 or the Afghan and Iraq wars, yet you imagine you know far more than people who have. You just mindlessly parrot what you have heard from a few unreliable sources such as FOX News (a company that sued and won in the supreme court for the right to treat news as entertaining fiction.)
  2. You are far more concerned about whitewashing the crimes of your country than you are about stopping them, yet you deceive yourself you hold the opposite.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
~ William Shakespear (1564-04-23 1616-04-23 age:52) Polonius in Hamlet Act I scene iii giving advice to his son Laertes.

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