No small irony those accusing the US of "red-neck ignorance" and "hysteria" are often ignorant and hysterical ideologues.
Letter to The Canberra Times
Friday, 01 December 2017
(published Monday, 04 December 2017)
Adrian Jackson (letters, 01 December) is even more extreme than most with anti-US diatribes bereft of context, nuance and facts.
Guam, US territory since ceded after the 1898 Spanish-American war, was invaded by the Japanese not the other way around.
Cuba was liberated from the Spanish, not invaded, by the US.
Okinawa was captured to help end Japanese aggression in World War II and handed back to Japan in 1972.
The US intervention in Grenada was authorised by its Governor-General following a Marxist military coup that arrested the government.
The US did not “invade Vietnam”. North Vietnam did end up conquering South Vietnam contrary to both sets of Paris Peace Agreements.
The 2001 US-led multinational intervention in Afghanistan was endorsed by the UN Security Council, following the Taliban refusal to hand over for trial the al Qa’eda leaders responsible for the Twin Towers terrorist attack.
China is building artificial islands for military purposes in international and other country’s waters – not Chinese territory – in the distant reaches of the South China Sea, not “its approaches”, contrary to international law, good neighbourliness and conservation commonsense.
Anyone can legitimately disagree with Australia participating with other democracies in US-led alliances.
But their arguments need to based on facts and logic, not the “hysteria” and “deranged red neck” ignorance they accuse the US of with no doubt unwitting irony.
Back to Letters: 2017-18
