A proper gander
Jim Bliss takes a scalpel to 18 Doughty Street’s hysterical ahistoricism as displayed in their latest ‘attack ad’:
Questions to 18 Doughty Street (re: A World Without America)
1. Why is Stalin still alive six years after his death by natural causes? Do you know something about America’s role in his death that the rest of us don’t? Or are you just really bad at history (and googling)?
2. You suggest that the world would never have developed a polio vaccine outside America. But you also suggest that the world would be held to ransom by foreign dictators with nuclear weapons. Who developed the nukes if not America? And might they not also have been capable of developing a polio vaccine?
3. Why would Thatcher be meeting with the Austrian president if Austria was merely a Soviet republic?
4. Why would Saddam Hussein be in power in 1999 when it’s well-established that his regime was propped up by… wait for it… America, throughout the 1980s? Wouldn’t a world without America be  by default  a world without Saddam Hussein? Do I need to dig out that photo of Rumsfeld getting all chummy with Hussein to illustrate the point?
5. Finally; wouldn’t a world without America be a world without the world’s largest arms manufacturer and dealer? Wouldn’t that be a safer world? Or does 18 Doughty Street see no connection between guns and people being shot by guns?
Posted on March 8th, 2007 at 8:40 am
| See also • The Red Menace • Flying Rodent: I’ve Got Your War On Terror Right Here • Great face for blogging |
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Filed under UK politics |
Is there much value in trying to explain the bleedin’ obvious to people who are not interested in seeing it?
Probably not, I agree. I see it in much the same way as I do visiting the zoo and laughing at the monkeys. Sure, I can’t influence their behaviour but they’re so damned entertaining.
Good set of questions. That ad was idiotic and so full of holes but perhaps more alarming was the way some people lapped it up without any thought. If this is what 18DS aims to become they’re going to be in for a shock in the long run…
Talking of Conservatives, here’s an interesting question.
In this story and any number of others, the “Taxpayers’ Alliance” is presented as a group campaigning against excessive coucil salaries on behalf of hard-pressed council taxpayers. An independent group, obviously.
But could the Andrew Allum who is their chairman be the same Andrew Allum who used to be a Conservative councillor in Westminster? Which, as it happens, would make him part of a group of people whose approach to recovering council taxpayers’ money from Dame Shirley Porter was rather less than diligent?
It was a silly advert but this is a slightly dodgy question.
Or does 18 Doughty Street see no connection between guns and people being shot by guns?
Canada has, I believe, higher per capita domestic gun-ownership than the US, but far lower per capita gun crime.
Having guns does not automatically lead to people using them.
DK
Having guns does not automatically lead to people using them.
Very true, DK. But not having them does automatically lead to people not using them.
Maybe if there wasn’t USA there’d be more “black bastards” in Africa?
Jim,
Are we not seeing a correlation/causation argument here? And are you seriously trying to tell me that Russia, China, etc. do not deal as many arms as the USA. And to far dodgier regimes? Damn it, they are far dodgier regimes…
DK
DK, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service (Library of Congress, October 23, 2006), the United States is responsible for 36% of global arms sales. Russia and China (combined) account for 19%. After the United States, the next biggest supplier is Russia, at 16% (less than half the US figure).
So yes, I am “seriously trying to tell [you] that Russia, China, etc. do not deal as many arms as the USA”.
Click here for full breakdown
Also, DK, try not to build any strawmen here. I wasn’t discussing the relative “dodginess” of regimes. I can assure you that I have never defended the current Russian or Chinese administrations and would lambast anyone who did with a vigour at least equal to my criticism of pro-U.S. propaganda.
I don’t subscribe to Dubya’s narrow “with us or agin us” view of the world. My criticism of the United States does not imply praise for China or Russia; just as my criticism of global capitalism does not imply praise for state communism. And I resent any inference that it does.
What I will say, though, on the subject of ‘dodgy regimes’ is that I — like yourself (I read a couple of your pieces just now) — am not a cultural relativist. Nor am I a moral relativist. I believe that profiting from the sale of arms (tools designed with the primary function of causing death or injury to other people) is profoundly immoral. As such, a regime which positively encourages this industry and is therefore directly responsible for more than a third of all the weapon sales on the planet, is pretty damn dodgy in its own right.