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I’m doing a vigil.
Call it a filibuster.
Until Egypt is free, I’m going to keep updating this thread regularly to make sure it stays up there with Best Poodles in West Seattle and For the love of God, Zippy! Save us!
To keep it interesting, I’m going to talk about stuff. But I’ll do better than that. I’ll even talk about stuff that just maybe is related to Egypt.
Plus, I’ll throw in a picture here and there, as is my wont.
Anyway, here’s what I’m going to talk about today:
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Regarding international relations, the United States has a rather . . . shall we say . . . schizophrenic way of relating to the rest of the world.
And when I say that, I mean no disrespect either to the United States or to schizophrenics.
But let’s just consider a couple of recent case studies from the annals of American history, shall we?
Case Study 1: The Little Country That Tried To Be Our Pal
Did you know that when Ho Chi Minh publicly declared Viet Nam to be an independent country, in 1945, he began with a direct quote from the American Declaration of Independence ?
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/~vern/van_kien/declar.html
Weird times, huh? Of course, any old dictator can try to score brownie points by quoting Thomas Jefferson, but Mr. Minh went much further than that. You see, in his attempts to cuddle, he even sent a special emissary to the US State Department. He sincerely wanted cordial relations between our two countries, with the understanding that the United States would not help the French reoccupy Viet Nam. (The French had been bastards to their Vietnamese colonial subjects for more than a century, and in 1945 Mr. Minh was much more worried about them than he was about Americans.)
In any case, the State Department turned Mr. Minh’s proposal down.
He’s a communist! —the State Department warned President Truman — And once a commie, always a commie! (The French may be bastards, but they’re OUR bastards!)
Well, we all know what happened next, don’t we? Fifty-five years later “communism” is pretty much dead in Viet Nam — along with nearly 60,000 Americans, and somewhere around a million Vietnamese.
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So that’s how America treated one little country that, once upon a time, tried to be our friend.
Next time, in Case Study 2, I’ll be discussing how we’ve treated some other countries that were most definitely not our friends.
Positively schizophrenic, I’m telling you.
But what does it all have to do with Egypt?
I’m not sure just yet, actually.
We’ll see . . .
–David
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