@BigBlocky:
DS, I’d agree that if you tallied up the good and bad and did a compare/contrast with the French and US that the US would indeed come out ahead over say the last 100 years. Lets forget all the nasty stuff done to the Spanish and Indians in the 1800s cause that was some bad dodo.
This is pretty easy. Let’s too forget about the work of the CIA, the environmental disaster that is the US, the slavery and racial problems sponsored until late this last century, and if we ignore the good that the French have done, then its a slam dunk!!
You can point out lots of little bad things the US did around the world in the last 100 years but…… You can blame the entire WWI and WWII (except maybe the Japanese side of the conflict) completely on Europe. Japan was a bad actor but when the US cut of their fuel supplies in 1941 what did the US think they Japanese would do?
Europe started the two biggest messes in the history of humanity. Without the US of A in WWII, Nazi Germany would still be ruling the world today. It’s debatable if France and England could have defeated the Kaiser in WWI, after all, Russia had sued for peace in 1917, one down two to go. The addition of 100, 000 fresh US troops/month starting towards the end of 1917 and continuing for as long as the Germans wanted to fight really was the final nail in the Kaisers coffin.
The French were never sufficiently gratefull in my opinion…
BB
ahhh Europe. How about Germany? I guess you could narrow the field of blame to Serbia and Austria in WWI and Germany/Italy in WWII, but what would be the point when you can invoke a whole continent? Considering that Canada was involved too in both wars, then you can pretty much blame North America as well.
That is a fair point about Japan. Still, i’m missing the point of this. Also i don’t think of Europe as a block/country yet. There is a mass of very different communities, as different as Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and China, with the sense to simplify their lives somewhat.
Also i disagree that without the US we would be under the thumb of the German superman. Possibly a pissed off Russia, but i think that with the Anglo threat in the west tempering any German reinforcements to the eastern front, as well as an increasingly active French resistance, the Germans had overextended themselves and were starting to get slaughtered in Russia. Without the US the war would have lasted several years more, more soldiers would have been killed, and the US would have become less of an entity in the world - in Europe, anyway.
As for French gratitude, i’m curious as to what increasing this would have meant? Are Britain and Canada and Holland etc. not grateful enough? American’s have to wake up to the fact that they did not “save the world’s asses” as they claim, but they and their allies saved their own.