4.04.2003 ||>
Ok, so I'm going to respond to the last comment in my blog first. But before I do, thank you to everyone else who commented for your nice comments. I love everyone who comes here regularly and sends their care!
So before I say what I want to say, please just allow me my own opinion and if it differs from yours, fine, but don't flood my comment box with disagreements because I already know the other arguments. So now, "brent": From my extensive personal library of about 10 books on the Civil War and WWII, not to mention my B.A. in Political Science, I have concluded (in short) that first, the Civil War was fought to keep the USA whole, and not to free the slaves, and that if Germany had never started it's blitzkreig on our allies and if the Japanese had never bombed us, the US would have let Germany do what it pleased. Neither of those wars were proactive and neither of them were good, they just happened to have very good results, which resulted from luck more than anything. And if you would like to criticise a genius and a Founding Father of my country, which despite recent events, I still love, fine. Just don't do it on my blog. As for me, I think Ben Franklin (who was smarter than either you or I'll ever be) was right on.
But this is not what I want to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was the anti-American sentiment around the world. Whether or not you agree with the war aside, I am worried a little bit about the rising dissent and meanness to Americans. Living in Uzbekistan has given me hope (since they're all so nice about it), but I am really distressed at other people's inability to divorce the people from their government. It seems so easy for people to do here, so I don't see why the European people seem to equate Americans themselves with governmental decisions. Do those who oppose the war not see the hundreds of thousands of protestors on the streets of America? I did. We get the Russian broadcasts here and since I can understand Russian a lot of the time, I know they're covering more Americans who are dissatisfied than those who agree with Bush. I think it makes it easier for people to say, "Well, we [the Russians] don't like Bush, but the Americans are okay, it's not their fault." And they do think of it like that, at least everyone that I have talked to. As for the other countries that oppose the war: don't those people see this too? How can they hate Americans as individuals when they don't even know our personal opinion on the matter? We are a people as well as a country and we should be valued as such. I think it's pretty discriminatory on their part to blame an individual for a governmental decision they had no part in, whether they agree with that decision or not.
