Special Relationships and things to ponder...

Sorry for the gap between posts there. For the next week, I'm really going to try my best to post once a day and see how that goes. But for now, this post won't be too long since I've got rugby practice soon, but I have a few thoughts on my mind I'd like to jot down quickly.

First of all, we've been talking in class a lot about the "Special Relationship" between the US and the UK. Ever heard this phrase before? Neither had I. Apparently it's a very widely known and commonly used phrase that is important to Britain, but rarely used in the United States. In Winston Churchill's 1946 speech that first coined the phrase "The Iron Curtain," he also coined the phrase "The Special Relationship" to describe the unique bond of the US and the UK. Unfortunately, I think it reflects something about this relationship that it is a large concern and interest of the British people but something most Americans are ignorant of.

A couple interesting excerpts from a British article about the current state of this Special Relationship...

A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP?
Ian Williams, The Guardian, February 11, 2007
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_williams/2007/02/special_relationship.html

"...The special relationship was indeed special and one-sided from the beginning, putting Britain in the role of the battered mistress: frequently screwed and badly treated, but clinging to the protection of the stronger USA. But no matter how humiliating, it could be argued that Britain used to benefit from it. No longer.

There was a rare moment of candour last year by a US State Department official, Kendall Myers. "There never really has been a special relationship or at least not one we've noticed," he said and added: "We typically ignore them and take no notice. We say, 'There are the Brits coming to tell us how to run our empire. Let's park them'. It is a sad business and I don't think it does them justice."

... The gains to the US are clear. It gets a difficult-to-sink aircraft carrier moored off Europe, and a significant diplomatic and military ally to save it from the total isolation that its policies would so often have otherwise condemned it to. And it comes without sending aid or covering for maverick military adventures, as it does with Israel.

A former British foreign secretary once explained to journalists that British policy was the same as it was in the time of Pitt the younger: "To ensure that no combination of powers arises in Europe that can threaten Britain."

That policy has sunk with the wooden battleships of the era. Britain should stop acting as Washington's Trojan Horse in Europe, and join in building a multilateral Europe rather than providing latter-day sepoys for the American empire."

A simple Google search will bring up many similarly fascinating and controversial articles, many of the criticizing the relationship, or at least criticizing the United States. Interesting the incredible amount of dislike for the Bush administration over here. Recent international polls (like this one http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/70046760-27f0-11dc-80da-000b5df10621.html) name President Bush or the United States as the biggest threats to world peace.

Just one more thought to leave you with on the topic of the perception of the United States. Yesterday at rugby practice (which is going excellent, by the way) one of my teammates brought Krispy Kreme donuts to practice for me cause I was so excited they have those over here. I offered them to my teammates, and one of them kept saying, "Oh, I heard about these donuts. They're like a thousand calories in each one." I said these were the same as the ones in the States and they didn't actually have that many calories, maybe 300-400.* "Well," she said, "the ones in America are probably a thousand calories though." It's as if by simply being made in America the same donuts from the same company magically must be 3 times as many calories because we are assumed to be a quite gluttonous nation. Interesting.

*I just looked it up. A glazed Krispy Kreme has 200 calories.

Random Fact #6: Band-aid type things are called "plasters" here.