American hardly can overstate their contribution to world events. The
contributions of America have been real and tangible and they continue
to do so. It is more a case of those who contribute less being jealous
of the ability of America, her people and military to contribute and
influence world events the way they do.
Can anyone rationally argue that America overstated her contribution to
victory in WW 1 & 2?
I think not.
-Will
On Saturday, February 9, 2002, at 09:46 AM, mark d smith wrote:
>
> Somebody already mentioned that this was way off list topic and...
>
> ...the subject title is definitely inappropriate but...
>
> ...since there was a recent outbreak of a similar thread on MacOS X
> talk, it might be worth reporting what happened there. The discussion
> demonstrated the following:
>
>
> From an American perspective non-Americans _tend_ to underestimate the
> role in which the USA played in WWII, and plays in third world aid,
> peacekeeping etc.
>
> From a non-American point of view Americans _tend_ to overestimate the
> role they played in WWII, and play in third world aid, peacekeeping
> etc.
>
>
> When moved to arument, Americans tend to quote absolute numbers in
> their defence which show the US in a very good light and non-Americans
> point to figures like %GDP or amount per head which are less flattering.
>
>
> The thread on OS X talk even got as far as discussing things like
> innovativeness in the economy with the same tendencies:
>
>
> The Americans tended to say, look, most of the high tech companies are
> here, most of the cutting edge research gets done here. The non-
> Americans countered with: the same arguments of proportion and
> contended that a significant number of those companies and that
> research are either run by non-Americans or were bought from non-
> Americans.
>
>
> The point is that there are two perspectives. As a European, I tend to
> have the non-American perspectives outlined above.
>
>
> Finally, to get back to the flag at the Olympics, the Americans ought
> to have known better than to do this. Now, if there had been a flag for
> every nation which lost a citizen on Sept. 11th, nobody would have said
> anything. So, in my view, it was an error of judgement by the USA but
> not an unusual one.
>
>
> mark.
>
>
>
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