Comments on: McCain: The New Churchill?

By: Kenneth

Kenneth — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:55:20 +0000

And giving us a real ego booster in the process.

By: Kenneth

Kenneth — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:49:43 +0000

Tim R- The accomplishments of the British are the products of history, not biology. As you’ve just wrecked my irony meter, I leave it to others to point out the hilarity of coupling a belief in racial superiority and the meliorative power of western imperialism with protests over Hitler comparisons. However:

I wonder how many people who lambaste Churchill live under totalitarian rule? How many of you who are so quick to excoriate American and British “imperialism” live either in America (which of course was founded by the British) or in lands that still recognize “Her Majesty” as their sovereign?

The status of the British sovereign is a purely nominal one. This in no way reflects British contributions to the development of the Commonwealth, whose illustrious record includes such “civilizing” efforts as creating famine in Ireland and India through the continued export of foodstuffs in the face of drought and disease and crushing incipient local industry. The British Raj generated some of the most horrible starvation in history- putting Churchill’s quip that “all great famines are manmade” in an entirely new light and making your extravagant praise for the British Empire a sick, sick joke. Moreover, I note in typical neoconservative fashion you conflate the categories of external brutality and internal repression, when historically the link between the two has been tenuous at most. Belgium was an internally free country, and one of the most externally savage (google “Congo Free State” to see what I mean). Semantic errors of this nature can only be calculated to obfuscate. They also betray a totalitarian attitude toward dissent- every time freedom of speech is used for its intended purpose- that is, highlighting the iniquities of present governments- you respond with hysteria. How odd it is that you embody the same authoritarian ethic you assail so vigorously in non-Western states.

By: Tim R.

Tim R. — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:17:12 +0000

I can’t believe some people would actually compare Winston Churchill to Adolph Hitler. That is a perverted and twisted comparison. And so what if he thought the British race was superior? They probably are! Look at all the great things British civilization has brought to the world; due process of law, the English Common Laws, jury trials, habeas corpus etc.

I wonder why a lot of people living in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, China, Cuba, or North Korea are posting on this blog? Oh yes, that’s right because they live under oppresive regimes that don’t respect freedom of speech.

By: Eugene Costa

Eugene Costa — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:54:52 +0000

Yes and no. Churchill was certainly foursquare behind traditional British enmity toward Russia–now reasserting itself–and “Iron Curtain” was for him surely, as with all the rest of his politics, a useful flourish with ready-made dupes in the United States and the rest of the English-speaking world.

By: Eugene Costa

Eugene Costa — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:50:07 +0000

You obviously know very little about Churchill or British history in the last century.

By: Anonymouse

Anonymouse — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:23:36 +0000

The kosovar fascists will soon emerge as what they are, and clinch with the serbian fascists etc. But as far as this doesn’t interfere with the oil pipeline through southern Kosovo (which is the reason why the US have their big military base Camp Bondsteel exactly there, Clinton as one of the big investors, “foreign policy” today is more private, corrupt business than anything else) nobody will really care. Putin is making some theatre for home use, nothing more, the chinese are concerned with the olympic games, having to work very hard indeed, and probably in vain, to avoid them being a demonstration of the enormous pollution and drought problems in China, especially in the Beijing region. Albanian and kosovar fascists have their tradition from Mussolini’s Balkan adventure, including the fascist “Greater Albania”, which may well reemerge. But when the polar sea ice melts entirely already this summer, I think all of this will soon be completely forgotten. The wars for water will begin instead, maybe combined with the developing oil wars in the middle east, which are on the brink of getting atomic.

The chances that mankind in any civilized form will survive the next century are maybe one in a hundred, given what we know about history and the complete inability of men to overcome their dominant psychopaths.

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:10:31 +0000

He is just showing us how special(retarded) the hawks really are!

By: alpowolf

alpowolf — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:53:34 +0000

Churchill may have had his faults but if it was not for him, and people like him, you would not have the freedom to run your mouth off and spew your rubbish on this blog. So have some gratitude.

You’re not one of those “we would all be speaking German” fools, are you? Tell me: how would that have happened, realistically?

By: Anonymouse

Anonymouse — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:45:41 +0000

If Churchill had seen and heard any of the “neo-conservatives”, or most other “politicians” from our times not least McCain and mrs. Toothpaste-smile, he would have ordered them jailed or sent to the madhouse immidiatly. And so would any other democratic politician from the times before Television (Truman was no democrat, just a silly atomic massmurderer, a war criminal). I mean, Churchill had some character. After all it was Churchill who uttered these words (in 1940): “Better to perish than to live as slaves.” Churchill didn’t enter politics for the money, he wasn’t a religious idiot believing that anything can be bought for money. He stood up against his entire nation, when they all believed in “peace in our times” with the nazis marching for war and butchering. It was then, in 1938, that Brecht wrote: “Great men are writing aggreements. Little man, write your will”. This still holds, and even more.

Of course Churchill was cruel, as was many other imperial leaders, but by far not as cruel as Hitler or Stalin, and much more intelligent and reasonable. What he did was in essence defense. He would never have attacked Iraq or Afghanistan, he would never have armed Bin Laden, he was no idiot, and no CIA barbarian. He spoke of attacking Soviet Russia in 1945-46, but that was only political theatre, probably forced upon England by the petty-bourgeois atomic madman Truman. Churchill certainly would have stopped Israel shortly after the war in 1967.

By: Kenneth

Kenneth — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:28:58 +0000

It seems “independence” is a cover for imperial domination. A medley of domestic issues, from taxation to terrorism, will be handled by a International Civilian Representative- European Security and Defense Policy- International Military Presence triad- that is to say, by unelected bureaucrats appointed by foreign powers. The Kosovars will have less say in their own affairs than they would if they had simply remained part of Serbia. The relevant counterpunch article is here:

http://www.counterpunch.org/szamuely02152008.html

One quibble: Churchill didn’t actually spawn the Cold War. This was the result of a sustained American drive for German partition, in particular when the west unilaterally imposed a currency reform. The idea was, apparently, to lure western Europe into NATO using a reconstituted German state as a bugbear. To this end all attempts at reestablishing the quadripartite arrangement by the USSR were torpedoed. Britain was too emasculated by that point to have much say in the matter.

By: Stanley Laham

Stanley Laham — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:47:51 +0000

I can not add anything more to Eugene’s exposé of Winston Churchill except to point out his despicable spawning of the Cold War with his Iron Curtain speech which, when carefully analyzed, is but a declaration of Anglo-Saxon supremacy. I would advise all to review it.

But more urgent is the application of Churchillian realpolitik in Kosovo. The US, England, Germany, France and Italy are about to recognize an independent Kosovo. This flies in the face of all international law and conventions not to mention th fundamental principles formulated in the Charter of the United Nations. If this aberration is allowed to stand, then there will be no limit in the US sponsored calculated chaos that is becoming the trademark of Western imperialism in the post-Soviet era. The next victim in their sights is Lebanon.

Will Russia oppose this dismemberment of their ally with more than just talk? China, whose embassy was purposefully bombed during the NATO air assault on Belgrade, seems to be more combative in its opposition to Kosovo becoming an American territory (notice there are as many American Flags being displayed as Kosovar emblems). Let us stay tuned.

By: parryisle

parryisle — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:39:22 +0000

Churchill died as a very frustrated man beause he had lived long enough to realize he had lost his beloved empire. McCain can repeat the British leader’s “We will never surrender” but he and we should realize the enemies in 1940 were functioning nations with which you could negotiate a truce if you so desired or else accept their surrender as we later did. No such options exist when fighting this present enemy which consists of globally dispersed religious zealots. Mcain and his fellow unrepentant warriors should be forced to tell us how they will defeat this enemy. Who will they negotiate with? It took centuries before human intelligence diminished the power of religion in Europe. So far that has not happened in Islam because our foreign policies have made their adherents rally around the extremists as we saw when the Soviet people rallied around the brutal dictator, Joseph Stalin, when Germany attacked.