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From: saquigley@watdaisy.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: flame on America
Message-ID: <6418@watdaisy.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 15-Jan-84 17:24:41 EST
Article-I.D.: watdaisy.6418
Posted: Sun Jan 15 17:24:41 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 16-Jan-84 06:54:23 EST
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 56

This is a flame, but I decided it would be more appropriate in net.politics
as it is directed at most of net.politickers, especially the americans ones.

Not being an american, I am very angered by americans' vision that anything
furthest away than 1 meter (pardon me, 1 yard) from their noses is not worth
looking at.  A few recent events have made me especially angry.

The first one is the US public outrage at the killing of those marines in
Lebanon.  Hear this, there is a WAR going on in Lebanon, and it has been going
on for YEARS.  Anybody who enters this area stands a very good chance of being
killed especially if they are representatives of what is considered to be a
hostile influence.  Those marines who were killed were not exactly blue cross
workers, they were not innocent civilians, they were a hostile (for some)
military presence and it is not surprising at all that they were targets.
In this war thousands of innocent civilians have been killed and the american
public never really cared until their own "boys" got killed themselves.  Now,
as Brooke Shields tearfully said "these boys are just like us" or something
like that.  This is true, and it is also true that marine recruits are often
people who do not have many other opportunities in life, so I feel very sad
that they did get killed and I can understand that the US public could be
outraged by the fact that they were not given adequate protection (how
much protection is "adequate" in a war?) but as I understand the public reaction
people were outraged that people DARED killed americans.  Well this might be
news, but there is nothing sacred about americans: each one of their lives is
worth exactly one life of any other person on the earth no less, but especially
no MORE!

The second event that angers me recently, but which is directly related to the
first is the big fuss that is made at election time and which seems to occupy
americans' minds so much that they fail to notice everything else.  Yes, JJ
went to Syria to save one good american black man.   That was very nice of him
(or very awful depending on who you listen to).  At the same time Mr K was
off with his commission making recommendations which except for one, if they
are followed, will mean that hundreds or thousands more people are going to
be killed in Central America.  The one "human" recommendation that aid in El
Salvador be tied to improved human rights was rejected by the administration.
Your president is giving interviews saying in a sirupy voice that he will bring
democracy and peace to central America and that governments will be elected
"by ballot and not by gunpoint" while at the same time rejecting the only
recommendation that would have shown his good will, and endorsing
recommendations calling for more aid to Honduras in the form of arms; who is
he fooling? the majority of the US population it seems. 
Is anybody listening?  no, your "intellectual" segment of the population is off
somewhere else debating whether JJ should have gone to Syria or not, or 
about which of the insipid democrats will win the nomination which won't
make any difference in the world as America loves RR which has shown once 
again that the US is great even if that means invading a little island which
could possibly not defend itself in the first place.  RR will get in again
because Americans want to believe that they are the greatest people in the 
world and he is the one who will feed them that garbage the best.  That's
all there is to it.

And then you wonder why americans are hated everywhere in the world......

					Sophie Quigley
	(and don't tell me to get the hell out of this country, I already am)