JimO: "Chinese space advances benefit everyone"

On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 10:10:48 GMT, (Christopher)
wrote, in part:
On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 00:24:43 GMT, lid
(John Savard) wrote:

Under democratic rule, the Chinese people would be America's friends.

France is a demoracy, yet is France one of 'America's friends'?

They gave America the Statue of Liberty!

As a Canadian...

watching France suppress nationalism in Brittany and Corsica, while
stirring up secessionism in Quebec;

dismayed at the elimination of the Atlantic cod fishery by French
fishing fleets;

remembering the death of a Canadian in New Zealand from bombs planted
by French spies...

I hardly regard France as one of Canada's friends. Its position on
Iraq was certainly not friendly to the U.S. either. (For Canada to
respectfully decline participation, due to the imminence of a crucial
election in Quebec in which the separatists were finally driven from
power, was not unreasonable, but then Chretien made indefensible
remarks later.)

Still, although France has serious disputes with American foreign
policy (the novels "Topaz" and "The Spike" were both presented with
claims that their premise was other than fictional, so there may
indeed be things wrong in France) it doesn't seem to have...
_territorial_ ambitions. It is true that they viewed TCP/IP as an
American imperialist plot which they hoped to stave off with Minitel
for a while, but they came to their senses.

France, like Italy and Mexico, has anticlerical laws, so it is not a
full First Amendment democracy. Its direct experience of Nazi
occupation has unbalanced the country in favor of the Left - and a
similar thing has happened in some Latin American countries, sometimes
for reasons for which the U. S. bears some responsibility.

France is merely confused. Red China, on the other hand, is EEEVIL!
Barring a pre-emptive nuclear strike, though, we will sadly have to
live with it, and hope the passing of time mellows it. Since the
United States outgrew Negro slavery, I suppose there is a case to be
made for patience and optimism.

But if Nazi Germany had been squashed flat the day after the
_Kristallnacht_, the world would have been spared the unpleasantness
of World War II. I don't think we really can afford to have any
dictators running around, not even in tiny countries in Africa.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html