My father forwarded me an e-mail the other day, which seems to be circulating fairly widely at the moment.
When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush. He answered by saying that, "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return."It became very quiet in the room.
Which, on the surface of it, seems like a fine and upstanding patriotic quip from Mr Powell, which may indeed reassure one that the Bush administration is not composed entirely of baby-strangling oil junkies, and makes one think perhaps Europe is overreacting, probably under the influence of those damnable French. Unfortunately, it's also untrue. This is a distortion of an exchange at an economic conference in Davos, Switzerland, where Powell spoke; he was asked a question by the former, not current, Archbishop of Canterbury, who did not accuse Bush of empire-building, but suggested perhaps America was relying too heavily on military force and not on what was called 'soft power', i.e. humanitarian aid, diplomatic persuasion, and so forth. So, yes, the administration is full of baby-strangling oil junkies after all, and Europe is, in fact, right.
There's a transcript here on the State Department website.
Posted by aloysius at April 05, 2003 04:20 PM |